At the March 8 curriculum committee meeting, the Bethlehem School Board discussed a plan to end the hybrid model in the district’s elementary schools, making more days of in-person education available every week. Middle and high schools will continue to use a hybrid model, with fully virtual eClassroom as an option. The board will vote at its full meeting March 22 on a proposal to return; if the plan is approved, fully in-person education will begin April 12.

Health guidance has changed

Although many factors were involved, two items key to the district’s consideration of a return to more in-person education were an emerging consensus in the medical community that children age 10 and younger pose a fairly low risk to their peers and to adults in school settings, and mid-year literacy testing results that district officials call “heartbreaking.”

As reported in various publications under the JAMA umbrella, young children are not the powerful disease vectors for the novel coronavirus that they may be for other infectious diseases, and schools are not hotbeds for transmission the way that nursing homes and prisons apparently are. As Dr. Margaret Honein noted in a Jan. 26 op-ed (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775875), “As many schools have reopened for in-person instruction in some parts of the US as well as internationally, school-related cases of COVID-19 have been reported, but there has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission.”

Additionally, data collected worldwide over the past year indicate that there is virtually no difference in the risk of coronavirus transmission among elementary-aged children, whether they are seated 3 feet apart, or 6 feet apart. Positioning desks three feet apart, BASD can now physically return its elementary students to their classrooms without running afoul of the ever-moving scientific consensus on mitigation strategies.

Student achievement has suffered

Students are tested at the beginning, middle and end of each year as part of the “Reading by Grade 3” (RBG3) program. Typically, the percentage of students reading on their own grade level increases as the year progresses, demonstrating the success of the district’s neuroscience-informed reading instruction. After having dramatically reduced instruction from mid-March to the end of the last academic year, and with only two days per week of in-person instruction this academic year, results have been very poor.

Only 44 percent of kindergarteners were reading at grade level at mid-year; the figures for grades one, two and three were 49 percent, 64 percent and 59 percent, respectively. These are the lowest mid-year percentages the program has ever achieved. Because reading is a foundational skill, the effects from the shutdown and the extended period of hybrid education will continue to challenge these students.

Indicating the fragile nature of literacy in young children, mid-year testing data indicate that even the “RBG3 cohort” – the group of children who have been part of the RBG3 program since its inception – is struggling with literacy: Only 59 percent of these third-graders can read at grade level, compared with 78 percent at the midpoint of their second-grade year. These students, who have “received the full effect of BASDRBG3 teacher training, curriculum development, and evidence-based instruction since kindergarten, showed a decline in reading progress [at the mid-year checkpoint],” the district’s report states. “The BASDRBG3 Cohort will not achieve its previously achievable goal.”

Showing the board the reading test results, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Jack Silva said, “That slide is enough to make a grown man cry.”

More face-to-face instruction - albeit with all-day mask-wearing and at least three-foot distancing - looks like a crucial first step in getting the district’s early literacy efforts back on track. In the mid-year report, district officials vowed, “The BASD is absolutely committed to rebuild and get back on the road to achieving its BASDRBG3 goals. The elementary leadership team is in the process of developing a comprehensive academic recovery plan that will prioritize activities in Marking Period 4, the summer of 2021, and the 2021-22 school year and beyond.”

Parents support return

overwhelmingly

In response to the change in public health advice and the obvious negative impact of hybrid education on early literacy efforts, the district surveyed both parents and teachers currently participating in the hybrid model. Of elementary parents responding to the district’s survey statement, “As COVID cases decrease this spring and local health experts support a return to school for elementary-age students, I feel comfortable having my child attend in-school instruction five days per week (instead of two) if the school can maintain 3-6 feet social distance in classrooms among masked students, and 6 feet during lunch when unmasked,” an overwhelming 84 percent agreed. Academic continuity, socializing with other students and confidence in the district’s coronavirus mitigation techniques topped the list of parents’ reasons for their choice. Superintendent Dr. Joseph Roy said 71 percent of parents of eClassroom or BASD Cyber Academy students preferred for their children to remain online-only.

Teachers, on the other hand, expressed reluctance to return to five days a week of relatively normal-sized classrooms. Roughly two-thirds of teachers responding to the survey disagreed with the statement, “As COVID cases decrease this spring and local health experts support a return to school for elementary-age students, I feel comfortable having my students attend in-school instruction five days per week (instead of two) if the school can maintain 3-6 feet social distance in classrooms among masked students, and 6 feet during lunch when unmasked.” More than 300 teachers provided described their reasons; 133 responses cited vaccination as a key factor in their degree of comfort with fully in-person instruction.

Roy said the survey was done before Pa. announced the decision to add teachers to the priority list of vaccine recipients. Within the next week, the district expects that every elementary school employee who has signed up to receive one of the emergency-authorized coronavirus vaccines – 840 individuals – will receive the first dose, either through the state’s allocation to the school district (686 doses), or through another community partner. Roy also noted that given the exigencies of meal distribution to fully online students, as well as other operational concerns, the plan is likely to involve just four days per week in person, rather than five.

FAQs answered

Board member Angela Sinkler read Roy’s answers to pre-submitted questions during the meeting:

• Regarding to a question about small groups, Roy said that the minimum distance will be three feet.

• Gym classes will move outside.

• Any time that students are not wearing masks – whether eating breakfast, having a snack, or taking a “mask break” – they will be separated six feet apart. With more students in the classroom, one way to accomplish this distancing is taking an outdoor walk.

• Answering a question about busing, Roy said BASD’s return-to-school plan (approved last summer) calls for two students per seat, masked. This will not change.

• Responding to a question about a potential surge after Easter and Spring Break, Roy said the district will monitor cases; if Pa. Department of Education (PDE) guidelines indicate that a school needs to move to fully remote instruction, they will do so. (PDE guidelines, based on BASD building sizes, would require closing school buildings with four students testing positive at the elementary level, six at the middle school level, or ten in one of the high schools.)

• The policy of seating students six feet apart when unmasked will be enforced at lunch.

• One parent noted that this year, BASD has not automatically defined students sharing a classroom with an individual who has tested positive as “close contacts” for the purposes of testing, because they are six feet apart and masked while in the classroom. Roy explained that the district will handle the designation of close contacts as it has all year: on an individual basis, by determining whether students were closer together than six feet for 15 minutes.

• One parent questioned the legality of barring eClassroom (fully online) students from switching to fully in-person education when it becomes available. The district responded, “We are running two educational systems right now: fully online for 1100 elementary students, and our hybrid program for the rest. Our district created 44 sections of eClassroom to serve the families of elementary students who chose that option, moving roughly 40 elementary teachers to the fully online system. There are realities to staffing and class size that need to be analyzed; we put a freeze on moving from eClassroom while we did the survey, and we are working on ways to accommodate parents’ requests.”