Reply to Hogan Wants Schools Open Statewide

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hogan just lost me. I would have happily voted for him for president, as a democrat. Not anymore.[/quote]

Agreed. And my problem isn't that he set the metrics for reopening and declared that it is "safe" to begin reopening. Those metrics should have been stated long ago by the Department of Health.

There are two separate issues at play with school reopening decisions. The first, which this announcement addresses, is whether, from a public health perspective, community spread of the virus is at a level where local districts can considering bring students back into the schools. The Governor has established metrics to judge what level of in person learning makes sense, based on public health risk factors. Again, the first issue is public health, and his pubic health experts should have offered more guidance months ago.

The second issue is whether schools can reopen in a way that minimizes risk as much as possible. There is never going to be zero risk, but can each local district put measures in place to allow some level of in person learning to occur. This is where the CDC guidelines come in, and logistics, budget, teacher contracts, and a host of other factors are involved in these decisions. The schools will need to address social distancing, ventilation, masking, plans if there are positive cases, etc. These determinations, made by educators at a local level, including decisions about that student populations should be brought back into the schools, whether schedules should be staggered, etc.

My problem with Hogan is that this was all theater. No district has the ability to course correct for the school year at this point. I don't buy that this press conference was a well-intentioned effort to light a fire under local districts to transition to in person after the first quarter. If it was, it could have waited until after the schools had already started the school year. The timing and tone of this announcement was all theater. Hogan was sticking it to the local districts and the teacher's union, in an effort to gain the support of parents who are angry about virtual learning. Not only that, but it is completely disingenuous to place blame on the local districts, when they made their decisions when the cases were much higher and when it was the Governor himself who has the most control over reducing community spread. If the Governor truly cared about lowering community transmission and getting kids back into schools, he could have limited reopening of indoor businesses and imposed a mask mandate much earlier. If he had done that, the school districts would have made their plans under much different circumstances. He is a large part of the reason the schools are all opening virtually, but he is ducking responsibility for taking action to control the spread too late, by making it seem that educators are unmotivated.

I should also add that yesterday's message was not sufficiently clear. People came away with the believe that the Governor said that it is safe for all schools to reopen in person throughout the state. That's not what the metrics suggest. By the metrics he established, it is safe for all districts to being bringing some students back for in person learning, as in small groups. The metrics established were that jurisdictions with positivity rates below 5% and cases rate of 5 per 100,000 people over 7 days, "should" be able to open for in person learning,with social distancing, masks and other measures in place. Only Cecil, Calvert, St. Mary's,  and Garrett county have that right now (unless I'm misreading the numbers). I can't tell from the Maryland dashboard, because that's not a number our state tracks, which makes it interesting that this metric is  driving decisions. Oh, and the Deputy Health Secretary also said that schools need to reopen in compliance with all CDC guidelines. The huge obstacle to overcome, even before you address the school buildings themselves, is how to transports students to school with social distancing. All other districts, using this new decision tree, may consider using hybrid plans to reopen, because the state positivity rate is less than 5%.

Instead of grandstanding, the Governor could have conveyed this information to local districts directly and asked them to begin working on plans to bring small groups into classrooms. Instead, our leaders continue to operate like a dysfunctional family. It is shameful.[/quote]

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