“No one has eyes on our district’s children,” parent Amy Hird wrote to the Board of Education. “There is no situation with zero risk.”
As virtual learning in the district nears its one-year anniversary, Chapel Hill-Carrboro families have been split nearly 50-50 over if or when to return to in-person learning. Along with input from school staff, for months the Board has been bombarded with emails and petitions from all sides.
On Feb. 4 the Board unanimously voted to approve a plan to begin some in-person learning on April 19, near the beginning of fourth quarter. The decision came after bipartisan calls at the state level for reopening schools from Governor Roy Cooper, state health secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen and state Superintendent Catherine Pruitt, as well as recent studies from the CDC, Duke University and UNC showing low rates of in-school transmission.
Under the hybrid model, CHCCS students wanting to return to school would be split into cohorts to attend in-person classes either Mondays and Tuesdays or Thursdays and Fridays, with asynchronous classes on the other days. Other students would remain online for all four days.
“We need to become comfortable with a very small amount of risk in order to educate our youth and protect their well-being,” wrote Hird, who has two children at East. “They want to meet their teachers. They want to interact with their peers. They want to be prepared for college.”
For the past few months, vocal parents have launched a Facebook group called “Chapel Hill-Carrboro Students Deserve Better” and a website, “Safely Reopen CHCCS.” The website says it is run by parents reflecting the district’s “racial, political, and economic spectrum” who worry their students’ education is suffering “due to the CHCCS Board’s cowardice and inability to move forward with plans to offer in-person learning.”
The website argues that parents face too much burden with their children at home every day, that students’ needs are not met in remote learning circumstances and that reopening schools can be done safely. It links a petition to the Board of Education, which currently has around 600 parent signatures representing about 1,200 students.
Parental stress has been one of the main reasons some families have petitioned for in-person learning options. For many, school is not only a place for their children’s education but also for childcare during working hours. One of the organizers of “Safely Reopen CHCCS” is Sean Cavanaugh, who says he and his wife both work during the day, and has a baby, toddler and a six-year old. He says he is fortunate enough to be able to pay for daycare, but knows other parents who can’t afford it.
“There’s dual working parents, or single parents or parents that don’t have income. The kid ends up doing school from their car outside of where their parent works,” Cavanaugh said. “So they literally sit in a sedan for eight hours until their parents are out of work, and then they go home.”
Of course, the need for childcare mainly affects families with younger children. According to the district learning commitment survey sent out in November, about half of elementary school students would return to schools while high schoolers are split 40 percent in-person and the majority 60 percent staying remote. At Ephesus, Morris Grove and Scroggs Elementary Schools, as many as 58 percent of students would go in-person.
Many families with younger students have found it difficult for their children to focus and learn. Some parents fear their children’s socialization needs can’t be met for proper development. Others have spent a lot of time or money in order to help their children, either by tutoring their kids themselves or paying for a babysitter or for childcare.
“I’m spending thousands of dollars extra for a really crappy experience for my daughter, like really crappy, where she only sees her teacher through an eight-inch screen for the entire year,” said Cavanaugh, whose daughter attends Scroggs as a kindergartener, but goes to a private daycare during the school day. “She gets about one equivalent day of education virtually, per week.”
In a recent ABC study done by Duke and UNC, which examined mainly hybrid models from August to October, researchers found that in the communities of the 11 participating North Carolina school districts there were 773 infections, and only 32 additional infections coming from within schools. Many have taken this as good news that schools are safe to return to, if they follow CDC guidelines.
Other parents say they will feel safe sending their children to school only if an enforceable and comprehensive plan is put in place. Jackson Odondi runs a long-term care facility and has four children from elementary to high school age in the district, two at East.
“Everybody wants kids to go to school, I think, but the problem is that many people think that it’s not safe,” Odondi said. “It’s not just a question that ‘Biden said we reopen,’ or ‘the government said we should reopen right away.’ In the district or the school, what have we put in place that will ensure a safe reopen?”
Odondi said that in his facility, frequent testing has kept residents and staff virtually virus-free since last March. He emphasized the need for schools to be testing their students at least weekly, as well as having an incremental reopening plan and encouraging widespread vaccinations.
“You cannot really ensure people wear a mask all the time or stay six feet apart. But at least I know if there is [testing] and that there is a way they are going to check initially whether [students have COVID-19], then I would take my kids to school,” Odondi said.
Some frustrated parents say they are not being heard by the school board. Some say by having the chat feature on the Zoom webinar turned off, and being required to send in questions beforehand for the Board to read, their thoughts are not getting through.
“In a non-pandemic scenario, parents will be able to go to the board and get in front of them and talk to them. Right now. If you join the board meetings, it’s locked down,” Cavanaugh said. “There’s no transparency happening right now, with communication between parents, students and the board, there’s absolutely nothing. You can just watch them or not watch them.”
Some parents have gone so far to propose suing the school district because of feeling like their thoughts haven’t been considered. Many felt like the topic of reopening kept being pushed back at meetings, and the current opening in April is a month later than originally proposed. They have cited other examples of parents in other cities who have sued for in-person learning, such as in San Francisco.
One parent in the Facebook group wrote, “Was just thinking that this MUST end up in Court, whether or not this specific lawsuit goes anywhere. What these low-level administrators have done is criminality. This is not incompetence but a low-level dictatorship.”
Other parents say pursuing the legal option wouldn’t be an efficient or productive way to reach their goals. Instead, they want to continue putting pressure on the board in other ways, such as with their voting power or by emphasizing the town’s public image. Between first and second quarters, the Board said the district lost 87 students.
“We were featured in a Propublica article as one of two districts in the entire country with a 17 percent decline in kindergarten enrollment,” said Eileen Connell, mom of two McDougle Middle School students. “It’s going to become embarrassing for Chapel Hill.”
However, while some parents feel that it may be safe for their children to return, teachers have overwhelmingly shown they don’t feel the same way. In a letter with 370 signatures, teachers and staff from elementary schools around the district wrote that they would not feel comfortable returning to in-person teaching this year, citing many flaws in the hybrid model, such as limited classroom time and not enough precautions around COVID-19.
“To re-open schools in the fourth quarter would be a huge disruption and distraction to the progress that students and teachers have made thus far,” wrote LeAngela Baker, a CHCCS parent and teacher at Seawell Elementary. “I understand that there are some parents that want their student to return to in person however, I am not confident that 2 days a week of in person learning would have a significant advantage to students’ academic progress.”
Vaccinations seem to be top of mind for many teachers as well. Some say that they would feel much more comfortable teaching in schools if all staff were vaccinated first.
“Vaccines are being administered, teachers will get theirs soon, but not soon enough,” wrote Tracy Anders, a Pre-K teacher at Ephesus Elementary. “If our state wants to prioritize school reopening, they should prioritize teachers in vaccine distribution as other states have.”
Many East teachers also wrote to the board, echoing the concerns over spreading the virus, lack of real benefit, and possible added stress from Plan B.
“We all want life to be back to normal. But things are not yet normal. Nothing about public education during a pandemic is normal,” science teacher Erin Shindledecker wrote to the Board. “My students won’t be able to hang out with their friends or come get help during lunch, or work collaboratively with classmates. Please do not be pressured by a small group of very vocal parents that want to return to normalcy.”
Cavanaugh said he does not want parents in favor of in-person learning to be painted as uncaring about their teachers. Still, he points out that many other jobs have had to go in-person for months.
“Honestly, it’s offensive to me that people think I’m anti-teacher. No one’s anti-teacher. We love our schools,” Cavanaugh said. “But we don’t understand why [are schools different]? Are daycare workers less important than teachers? Or like, my wife is a clinical pharmacist and worked for months without a vaccine, and she was breastfeeding.”
A large part of the reopening debate surrounds the implications for families of color, whose students are disproportionately harmed by virtual learning. A June study from McKinsey & Company found that achievement gaps between Black and White students could be exacerbated by 15 to 20 percent by the beginning of 2021. However, there is a stark difference in race in CHCCS parents’ decision on whether or not to return to school.
Last summer, then-interim superintendent Jim Causby said there was too much of a risk of “segregating” the district if a hybrid model was implemented.
In our district, only about a third of Black families responded in the survey that they would return to in-person learning, compared to over half of white families. Across the nation, this is a consistent pattern that played out in numerous other cities like Oakland, Washington and New York City. The differences in response can be attributed to many factors, including historical distrust of school and medical systems, household situations and higher rates of underinsured or uninsured families.
Connell says that the district needs to focus on reopening in an equitable way, by placing emphasis on encouraging the families who need in-person learning resources the most.
“Our students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are hurt the most by [remote learning], and this is going to exacerbate the achievement gap. One of the worst achievement gaps in the entire country,” Connell said. “The district needs to reassure these parents that it’s safe for their students to go back, and that it’s in the best interest of students to go back.”
According to the approved plan, families will be able to confirm their learning options at the end of February, and decide whether or not to send their students to school for fourth quarter in the hybrid model.
“I like to say at work when I have a project that’s not going that well, is this a will issue or is it a skill issue? And in Chapel Hill, we had the skills. It was a will issue. We weren’t able to convince the teachers that it was safe to go back, we weren’t able to convince enough of our families that it was safe to go back and those issues are still there. So we need to take that into consideration, and make sure that the teachers are willing to come back and that certain families are willing to come back and they feel safe,” Connell said. “Doing so should be job one, and it should have been job one from the beginning.”
Photo by Caroline Chen/The ECHO
