Some Georgia Parents Dread Return To Classroom As Pandemic Persists

From the Georgia Recorder: By Ross Williams

Gwinnett County mom Sherri Atkinson knows all too well what it’s like to care for a child with a serious illness.

Back in 2009, a case of the H1N1 strain of swine flu sent her daughter Madeline to the intensive care unit for a month. Now a rising senior at North Gwinnett High School, Madeline and her brother Andrew, a rising freshman, are hoping to start the upcoming school year in a classroom with other students, but Sherri Atkinson is uneasy.

“My daughter is still in quarantine due to being high risk, but I’m supposed to send her back to an overcrowded, germ-filled high school, without a vaccine, in about one month,” she said. “My anxiety is definitely high.”

Buford City Schools, which is enveloped by Gwinnett, is among the first districts in the state to announce its reopening plans, sticking with its original date of Aug. 5.

“We know that the best place for our students is in their schools,” Buford City Schools Superintendent Robert Downs said in a statement after a board meeting last week. “Providing a safe and stable environment for our students and staff is our highest priority. I applaud the efforts of our administrators as they work diligently to address changes necessary to keep everyone healthy.”

District spokeswoman Kerri Leland would not rule out a hybrid reopening with some students studying in person while others doing their schoolwork online, saying precise plans had not yet been established.

But as school administrators across Georgia try to predict what a return to class might look like for their students for the start of the new school year, the five-school district in the northeast Atlanta suburbs appears to lead the way with a date certain for students to roam the halls during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Many systems are planning for the likelihood that it will be too risky to pack children close together in a classroom before a vaccine or a treatment for the disease is available.

Buford is a relatively small school district with five schools and fewer than 5,000 students, but Gwinnett is home to the most confirmed COVID-19 cases of any county in Georgia, as an increase in testing there coincides with a higher number of people identified as infected with the disease. Friday, Atlanta’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the pandemic risk remains.

Buford’s reopening is a signal to some Gwinnett parents like Atkinson that their district might follow suit. That’s led to some disagreement in the family.

“It’s very hard,” Atkinson said. “It’s her senior year and she doesn’t want the traditional senior activities to be altered or cancelled due to COVID. However, from a mom’s perspective, I’m afraid if she goes back to school, she will be back at (Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta) fighting for her life once again. This time, she will be fighting with already damaged lungs. I can’t imagine living through that nightmare yet again.”

Atkinson said she’s hoping the district will allow some students to work from home while those who attend in person must maintain social distance and wear protective masks.

The safety guidelines the school will use are still up in the air, as Gwinnett School officials are still deciding what their reopening will look like, spokeswoman Sloan Roach said.

“In Gwinnett, we plan to open on August 5, but we have not yet determined if we will be meeting in-person or online,” she said. “We have a team that is working through options for both scenarios and will present them to the Superintendent. This team is taking into account guidance from the Georgia Department of Education as well as health partners to develop plans and consider the logistics for how to best serve our students.”

The kinds of options students like Madeline will have in the fall depends a lot on whether they live in a hot spot for the disease. The Georgia Board of Education and Department of Public Health jointly issued a list of guidelines early this month with recommendations based on the virus’ local spread.

Children could come and go to the school in staggered intervals throughout the day, have lunch delivered to their classrooms to avoid going to the cafeteria and study at desks spread six feet apart.

In hot spots like Dougherty County, with about 2% of its population testing positive for COVID-19, guidelines call for a more cautious approach for students to resume studies. Dougherty Superintendent Kenneth Dyer said he’s preparing for a range of possibilities when classes are scheduled to start in August.

“We are working on plans for remote learning, which will be completely virtual, online, and we are also working on plans for on-campus instruction with some modifications,” he said. “Some parents have expressed that they would have concerns about students coming back on campus without an effective treatment, or without a vaccine.”

If some Dougherty students take classes in person, they may ride to class in half-empty school buses on a staggered schedule and need to have their temperatures taken before they enter the schoolhouse.

“By the time we determine what plan we need to implement, it will be too late to start planning, so we need to be prepared to implement all of them,” Dyer said.

Yearning for normal school days

Some parents say they want the start of the new semester to look as close to normal as possible. When East Cobb mom Alicia Hethcoat sends her oldest daughter off to kindergarten in the fall, she wants it to be in a classroom and not in front of the family computer.

“I’m not a fearful person and don’t think it’s reasonable to pause life until there is a vaccine, so, while we may not jump in any mosh pits in the near future, school is necessary, and for us, attendance, in person, outweighs any potential risks,” she said.

Hethcoat, a hospitality consultant who often travels for work, said she cannot see how working parents could alternate between doing their jobs and making sure their children stay on task if they rely on virtual studies.

“It would be a disaster,” she said. “There is no way I can juggle my job, which can include travel up to 10 business days per month, as well as helping a kindergartener through school. I’m not a teacher, and I won’t be able to do what my child needs to succeed, even with online guidance from a real teacher.”

The Cobb County School District is remaining flexible and assessing how it will use the health department’s guidelines, spokeswoman Nan Kiel said.

“We do know COVID-19 has impacted each student and family differently and will provide every available resource so families are able to make decisions which are best for them,” she said.

Students and teachers who are at high risk should have the option of staying home, but most kids learn best in the classroom, said North Gwinnett High School dad Tim Long, who works in sales.

Long applauds Buford City Schools’ decision and hopes Gwinnett County will follow suit.

“We are very comfortable with our kids attending as is,” he said. “They need this bad. We have spoken to them at great length about hygiene and personal space. We don’t really fear anything about them going back to school the way school is normally handled.”

In addition to regular high school classes, Long’s son, rising senior Ashton, is enrolled in some college courses at Georgia Gwinnett College. It was not easy to tackle those high-level courses without being able to see the problems worked out in front of him or ask questions in person, Long said.

“Mentally, it was even worse for him,” Long said. “You took a very social individual and removed all aspects of his social life.”

Schools in neighborhoods with low or no COVID-19 cases can resume classes largely as they conducted them when Gov. Brian Kemp ordered them closed in mid-March, even as he resisted imposing the stay-home directive that eventually shut down the state for much of April. Health officials recommend even in those places that are largely spared the novel coronavirus, schools should make hand sanitizer available in all classrooms, clean public areas frequently and create a protocol in case a student or teacher gets sick.

Rural Glascock County is home to about 3,000 people, and its consolidated school has fewer than 600 students. Only one case of COVID-19 has been reported in the county, but Superintendent Jim Holton said he wants to be ready for anything.

“We’re waiting until it gets closer to the time to start school before we can decide what we’re going to do,” he said. “We’re going to make those decisions as August approaches.”

Share this:

• Facebook
• Twitter

This story was originally published by the Georgia Recorder. For more stories from the Georgia Recorder, visit GeorgiaRecorder.com.