By Zander Sherry
Schools around the nation experienced disruptions in resuming in-person instruction after winter break due to the emergence of the highly contagious omicron variant.
Some school districts in regions with high positivity rates made the decision to postpone the return from winter break, or to temporarily switch to a form of online learning. While the majority of public schools did not close and students returned to in-person instruction as planned, complications surrounding the recent surge in COVID cases made it difficult to reopen with the safety of students and staff in mind.
A K-12 School tracker found that in the week of Jan. 3, the first school day in the new year, 5,542 schools nationwide shut down in-person learning for one or more days. In the following week, the number of school closures rose to 7,164, with some schools announcing a transition to virtual learning for one to two weeks.
States that have paused in-person instruction did so in response to high percentages of positive tests, staffing issues and an increased number of student and staff absences.
US News and the Sacramento Bee found that New Jersey, which had the country’s highest COVID rate, closed several of its largest school districts with plans to resume virtual instruction. The New York Times reported that large districts in Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan all made last minute announcements that they would shift to online learning until at least Jan. 14. The Detroit school system experienced a COVID positivity rate of 36% and said it would test all of its staff before returning. A third of Philadelphia schools shifted to remote learning with a 40% rate and staffing issues caused by exposures to COVID-19.
Absences in staff for districts returning in person had increased from what they were before winter break, like the Boston school system, with over 1000 teachers and staff members absent, according to The Hill. Teacher and student absences are prominent in states like New York and California and come from state requirements to present a negative test before returning to school as a safety precaution.
State governors, educators and the Biden administration are fighting to keep schools open with measures to deal with the rising number of cases. Several of the largest districts across the country have taken on new testing policies and measures, in accordance with President Biden’s winter COVID-19 plan introduced last month, which would increase the amount of testing and vaccines available to students.
California Lawmakers’ protocols for returning to an in-person school year did not include any plans for a switch to virtual learning. On Dec. 22, Governor Gavin Newsom vowed to keep schools open with the threat of the omicron variant in mind, and announced that the state will provide a rapid test to every student in K-12 public schools.
Huntington Beach Union High School District (HBUHSD), like many of California’s school districts, abided by these measures and returned from winter break with no disruptions to in-person instruction. They announced that they would be working with the Orange County Department of Education to distribute free COVID tests as they become available.
On Jan. 5, Fountain Valley High School (FVHS) Principal Paul Lopez issued an email to students and parents that they will commit to in-person learning for 2022, and outlined guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and the California Department of Public Health.
The quarantine period for students with a positive test result is 10 days before they are allowed to return, or a negative test result at least five days after.
Some students who went through quarantine periods felt disadvantaged to their in-person counterparts. With school resuming as planned, teachers were not required to translate their lesson plans online in any way to account for the large number of absences.
“A two-week absence caused me to fall behind,” sophomore Alexis Do said, “to the point where it felt like I wouldn’t be able to catch up and make up tests [or] quizzes before the end of the semester.”
Do, having missed nine days of school, relied on course material in her textbooks or information from her friends about lessons and notes, citing her access to her class content as unreliable and often unspecific.
“I would have preferred more resources from school to keep up with my in-person classmates since it felt like I was completely on my own,” Do said. “I wish the school would’ve had teachers [recording] lessons and posting assignments [and] homework online more thoroughly.”
While students in school witnessed their classmates’ absences in larger numbers, not all wanted a switch to online learning.
“[Omicron] doesn’t seem to be quite as deadly or dangerous, and if everyone is safe we can avoid massive spread,” junior Zach Smilor said.
Smilor did not find reason to go online, and even indicated at some normalcy in comparison to the time that student absences were at their height, with some of his peers already back in the classroom.
“I would say just take your time to recover and don’t stress about school,” Smilor said. “Hopefully teachers are working with students so they don’t have to make up a ton of stuff when they get back.”
In the last House of Representatives meeting, Lopez announced that the school will not be shutting down, noting a decrease in absences from 20% to 10% in the week of Jan. 13.
He later pointed out the students’ quarantine periods helped to mitigate the high rate of absences, with students returning to school safely, and their attendance returning to normal levels.
“We had that initial spike right after Christmas, and we returned to normal school attendance within a couple of weeks,” Lopez said, “and so it appears that we’re going to be on the mend.”
Between schools in California and educators in HBUHSD, a consensus was made that online learning is not an option for the sake of students, citing that the safety measures made by school leaders are sufficient in bringing normalcy to in-person instruction for the remainder of the 2022 school year.
