On June 3, the Pa. Dept. of Education (PDE) released its preliminary guidance for reopening K–12 schools for instruction as of July 1. PDE plans to provide additional information at the end of June, but local administrators are already working to incorporate the state’s guidance into their ongoing planning efforts.

Bethlehem Area School District Superintendent Dr. Joseph Roy has been working with his executive cabinet continuously to plan for four different reopening scenarios: fully online learning; hybrid online and in-person learning; full in-person opening; and opening followed by closure due to changing public health conditions. He spoke June 5 about these ongoing planning efforts.

Given that the Pa. Dept. of Human Services (DHS) has already given specific guidance to childcare facilities, Dr. Roy first addressed the question of the district’s childcare facilities.

“We’re going to survey our customers, which is going on now,” he explained, “to see about summer programming, and, depending on interest and our ability to meet all the guidelines for distancing and so forth, we’ll make a decision about whether we can offer anything. We’re behind, because typically we’d have summer programming lined up and ready to go already, but nothing will happen until July 1.”

With respect to the larger picture of opening schools for instruction in late August, Dr. Roy noted that very little in the PDE guidance was surprising.

“We’ve been looking at all kinds of information, including from other states that posted their guidance earlier [than Pa.], and obviously the health department guidelines,” he said. Although he and his team had not anticipated the PDE mandate to appoint a “pandemic coordinator,” district officials have already been meeting with local health authorities and working internally to cover every aspect of reopening.

BASD is fortunate in that its food service and transportation workers are district employees, although Aramark and TransPar are involved in some aspects of management. The heads of all the departments to which district employees belong are involved in weekly meetings even in normal times; at present, these meetings focus on planning efforts specific to the coronavirus response.

The district has also benefited from its adoption of Schoology for middle and high school course management prior to the novel coronavirus outbreak. Dr. Roy noted that BASD teachers had already created online modules deliverable through Schoology in 2019, “because we wanted more people to be using it more robustly.”

Now, “the crisis has moved everybody ahead dramatically in their use of Schoology.” For middle and high school students, the preparation for a scenario that involves online learning includes ensuring a common look and feel across subjects and classes.

“Our goal,” Dr. Roy explained, “is that if we open with a hybrid schedule – every other day in-person – everything’s available online.” Similarly, “if we’re open, and then we have to close later in the fall, everything will be online, and we can seamlessly transition to a two- or three-week online period if we have to.”

School-based planning includes the “nuts and bolts of how we might achieve social distancing,” based on individual building layouts and other limiting factors.

Dr. Roy noted that schools are different from other businesses in a major way: “Schools are not built for social distancing.” The DHS guidance on daycare acknowledges a similar incompatibility, and in fact does not compel six-foot distancing in daycare facilities, focusing instead of keeping groups of students together, giving staff cloth face coverings, and disinfecting surfaces frequently.

Citing the many similarities between childcare and elementary school operations, the superintendent remarked, “Elementary schools are already – the way they operate, they operate in their classes – grouping students together for the entire day. They stick together.” Because of this structure, “I could definitely see a scenario where elementary comes back, and if things are not good in the community, maybe the middle and high schools don’t come back.” It’s a dynamic situation, so “any mix of those things is possible as we get closer to decision time,” Dr. Roy said.

The PDE guidelines are troublingly vague on a few fronts, including the social distancing requirement. Dr. Roy attended a virtual meeting of superintendents across the state, at which the consensus was, “By saying, ‘Where feasible’ [about six-foot distancing], the PDE is setting us up for failure, because we can’t have school if we’re going to be six feet apart. You can’t have a normal-sized class of 25 kids and be six feet apart. […] If the guidelines say six feet is mandatory, the best we can do is the hybrid [in-person and online instruction on alternate days] model.”

Again, the situation is different in elementary schools, where classes are smaller – from the teens to approximately 21 students per class – and stay together for instruction for the bulk of the school day under normal circumstances.

With respect to face coverings, Dr. Roy anticipates the ability to make a more informed decision closer to the end of the summer. Echoing DHS Deputy Secretary Tracy Campanini, who told reporters that children wearing masks end up requiring more contact with adults than those without, Dr. Roy acknowledged that asking children to wear masks all day would be challenging.

“There’s going to be a discussion with the health experts,” he said. “We’re fortunate to have a certified school nurse or nurse assistant who’s an RN or an LPN in every building. And Kathy [Halkins] is retiring [as BASD supervisor of health services], but we have a very good replacement in Kim Brannan,” he added.

BASD administrators regularly consult with community health experts at St. Luke’s, Lehigh Valley Health Network, and the City of Bethlehem Health Bureau.

“We won’t do anything that is not blessed by the health experts,” Dr. Roy says. “What we’re doing is to get all these plans in place, and at some point later in the summer, we’ll decide which plan we’re following.”

Parent input is also important in the district’s planning process, so the district will send a survey to parents during the week of June 8 to gauge their readiness for a full reopening as compared with an online-only or hybrid opening. Parents will also be asked about their comfort level with transportation options and about their childcare needs.