Health metrics need to be in the lower- to lowest-risk categories before Norfolk will resume in-person instruction, the School Board decided Wednesday.
After months of being asked to decide what would lead schools to reopen, the board decided students will return only after community health measures like the percentage of positive cases are “in the green” for 14 consecutive days.
That timeline and current metrics, some of which are presently at “high risk” levels, pushes back a proposed Nov. 4 return and means the district’s second quarter will begin virtually.
Once the metrics improve, some students with disabilities and those learning English will return first. Then, so long as health conditions remain steady or improve, other students will return in a five-phased approach that will span at least 15 weeks until the last group of high schoolers returns. Until each transition, students and teachers will continue with all-virtual learning, which is how Norfolk decided to start the first nine weeks of the school year.
That gradual approach means some students won’t return until February at the earliest.
The 6-1 vote on the plan, with Vice Chairman Rodney Jordan opposed, came after a contentious debate that took up most of a seven-hour meeting. The board met over Zoom after determining, as it has repeatedly, that it was not safe to meet in person because of the pandemic.
Multiple motions were proposed but were voted down or abandoned before a vote, and after failing to reach any consensus on how to reopen during the first four hours, both board members and the superintendent chastised their inability to make a decision, with several observing the discussion was “going in circles.”
“We’re just throwing motions left and right,” board member Tanya Bhasin said. “I’m a little flabbergasted.”
“This is the sausage being made,” board member Noelle Gabriel said later.
The board paused the reopening discussion to deal with other matters on the agenda, which included an hour-long closed session that Jordan later said violated the state’s open government rules, then returned to reopening at the end of the night at Superintendent Sharon Byrdsong’s insistence that the board make a decision.
“This was really a difficult task,” Chairwoman Adale Martin said after the board reached a decision at 11 p.m. “But we made it through the tough discussion and we arrived at some direction.”
Reaction to the decision was predictably split, with some parents sharing in online forums that they appreciated the cautiousness and others expressing dismay at the length of time it will take before all students return. A change.org petition circulating asked for a more specific plan.
“Enough is enough, schools all over the country and our region have a plan,” the petition states. “This is not an impossible task. Those schools have had a plan since the beginning of the school year and our school board’s dysfunction has paralyzed them.”
The district’s plans are more conservative than neighboring Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, who began bringing students back in September, but less conservative than Portsmouth, which voted to remain all virtual until January. Board member Carlos Clanton said he knows there are questions about why Norfolk isn’t returning when other districts are but that the comparison isn’t fair because each city’s demographics and health concerns are different.
Byrdsong had initially presented a hybrid plan that called for some students to return to classrooms for a portion of the week starting in November. Over the weekend, the president of the Education Association of Norfolk said her group, which represents teachers in the district, couldn’t support the hybrid plan without more guarantees of safety for students and staff.
Between the board’s last meeting and Wednesday’s, administrators tweaked their plan so that third graders would be part of the first phase and they also added more time in between each new phase. But otherwise, Byrdsong’s proposal has stayed the same, with the idea that students will be sorted into two groups, some of whom attend Mondays and Tuesdays and some who attend Thursdays and Fridays. The same teachers will have in-person and online-only students and be expected to teach the two groups simultaneously.
On Wednesday, board members began offering reopening suggestions of their own before Byrdsong and administrators had finished presenting their own plans, with Lauren Campsen asking the board to listen to Gabriel, a pediatrician, on health matters.
Gabriel then proposed to follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s school metrics dashboard and only allow in-person instruction when all of the primary and secondary indicators were in either the lower or lowest risk categories.
That’s a more conservative approach than the CDC and Virginia Department of Health have said districts must take. Their guidance says secondary indicators, like the percentage of occupied hospital beds, should be used to help make the decision but not be the “main criteria.”
Norfolk’s health metrics have fluctuated over the past few months with a rise in cases during the summer. Right now, in-person instruction is considered a “higher risk” based on the number of new cases per 1,000 people but a “lower risk” based on the percentage of positive tests.
The board agreed to Gabriel’s proposal, but then battled back and forth over how to bring students back once the health metrics direct the go-ahead. Later in the meeting, Gabriel and Clanton suggested delaying any in-person return until February, an idea shot down by other members who said it contradicted the earlier decision to base the timing on health metrics.
Byrdsong repeatedly deferred to the board to make the decision, saying it was their responsibility and not hers and that she had given the board options and information to decide for themselves. That’s been her approach in most of the reopening discussions. In Norfolk, the elected board members have largely directed the plans, in contrast with some other districts whose superintendents have played a more decisive role.
“You can’t pick and choose when you want me to be the leader,” said Byrdsong, who became superintendent just before the pandemic began.
Aside from what will trigger it to begin, the phased approach the board approved is similar to what she and staff were originally suggesting.
Byrdsong’s Phase 1 had included pre-K through third graders in addition to students with disabilities in self-contained classrooms and some students learning English. The board split that into two groups and pulled preschool students out entirely.
Students with disabilities in self-contained classrooms and some students learning English will be the first to return once health metrics are in the green, and will likely be the only students the district can accommodate for in-person learning four days a week.
The next four phases of students will return on the hybrid schedule, with two days of in-person instruction per week. Several board members expressed concern over the hybrid plan, but Byrdsong said the district doesn’t have the staff or space to bring individual students back more than twice a week while still maintaining social distancing guidelines.
Phase 2 will consist of kindergartners through third graders. Phase 3 will bring back fourth and fifth graders, and the district will re-evaluate at that point whether preschool students can return.
The board pushed back the return of preschoolers over fears they’re too young to follow social distancing guidelines or wear masks consistently. That makes Norfolk an outlier in the area. Preschoolers are one of the groups of students the state has encouraged districts to look at bringing back first, and Byrdsong’s proposal included them in the first phase. Board members were split on the issue but ultimately overruled her plan.
Phase 4 will bring back middle school students, and Phase 5 will bring back high school students.
There will be at least three weeks between each phase, and that’s if the health metrics stay stable or improve. The board didn’t discuss whether to roll-back in-person instruction if the metrics fall out of the lowest risk categories, but their decision would prevent the next group from being phased in if the city’s health metrics have worsened.
Sara Gregory, 757-469-7484, sara.gregory@pilotonline.com
