What lies ahead for high school sports?

Alternate days, half days, mix of in-person and online classes possible.

School and athletic officials face tough choices about traditions in COVID-19 era.

At this point, I’ve listened to a half-dozen webinars on reopening schools amid the coronavirus pandemic, including a deep dive last week by the National Academies of Sciences,

Engineering, and Medicine, which is preparing its guidance about whether and how to safely reopen schools, and a United Way of Greater Atlanta town hall a day later that was more localized in scope.

Education prognosticators agree schools will reopen in the fall as state and federal governments consider the resumption of classes vital to America’s economic recovery. Parents need to return to work. And advocates for children believe child well-being will be imperiled without a return to the structure, stability and socialization that schools provide.

The question is how stu

dents will return. It may be every other day. It may be half day. It may be a mix of on-site classes and digital learning, especially for middle and high school students.

“We will have school on Aug. 3 in Clayton County,” said Clayton Schools Superintendent Morcease Beasley at the United Way event. “We are looking at face-toface, a virtual academy and we’re looking at a blended model where we possibly, depending on social distancing, alternate a group on A day and a group on B day.”

On Monday, Buford City Schools announced it was planning to begin in-person classes on Aug. 5, although specific plans have not been completed.

“We are seeing the same thing across the metro area. School will start in August,” said Ken Zeff, a former Fulton County School System leader now heading Learn4Life, a coalition of businesses, nonprofits, communities and eight metro school systems working to raise student achievement.

“People are holding their breath that maybe we can get in-person. But once you are in your classroom, there will be signage, there will be a lot of sanitation, a lot of washing your hands, recess will be staggered, things will be different. But school will be happening in August,” said Zeff.

When school resumes, experts believe schools must prioritize children’s social-emotional development.

Addressing the National Academies, leading early childhood researcher Karen Bierman said while the initial concerns were about cognitive losses from lockdowns, schools also influence young children’s social and emotional development. Schools help children develop a capacity to get along with other people, make friends, cooperate, self-regulate, negotiate and collaborate. “School is where children learn to organize themselves with peers and function as a team,” said Bierman, a distinguished professor of child-clinical psychology and director of the Child Study Center at Penn State University.

“It’s been very hard for people to rally and do school, both the adults and the kids, without the structure that school provides,” said Sarah Y. Vinson, associate clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Morehouse School of Medicine, at the United Way forum.

Across these forums, education researchers, leaders and advocates say the reopenings will be guided by local leaders, communities and conditions and will not look the same everywhere. Districts with few cases of COVID-19 may have fewer restrictions and less concern from parents and teachers than metro Atlanta or Dougherty County, which experienced one of the worst outbreaks in the country.

But many schools will have to plan for teacher shortages if older teachers opt not to return because of health fears. About 18% to 20% of teachers fall into the vulnerable age categories. The question is whether those at-risk teachers will don masks and return to their classrooms or retire.

“We aren’t going to know that answer with any clarity until a few days before people are expected to show up for pre-planning,” said Mike McGonigle, legal services director for the Georgia Association of Educators. Because teachers have signed contracts for the 2020-21 school year, McGonigle said they’d have to seek releases. Those able to offer physician documentation of medical risks would be on the best footing.

“If teachers are not retirement age and in those high-risk medical groups, that will be a harder case to argue,” said McGonigle, “because being fearful of the virus doesn’t seem to be sufficient reason in some people’s estimation.”

All districts will face state budget cuts that could range from 10% to 30%. “There are schools worried about whether they can keep their lights on, never mind teachers,” said Stephen Pruitt, former Georgia Department of Education official, the ex-Kentucky commissioner of education and now president of the Southern Regional Education Board.

The budget cuts could impede many recommendations, including increased sanitation and cleaning as it would require a tripling of custodial staffs in schools to attain the high standards of hospitals.

What is becoming clear: The debate over whether online classes can effectively replace in-person classes is moot. In many cases, districts will simply not have the choice. While the best technology during the COVID-19 quarter was generally what schools and teachers already knew how to use, there are now expectations teachers must deepen their online instructional capabilities.

“We need to be careful not to put the burden entirely on teachers to make that successful. It seems we think give the teachers more training and that will fix the problem,” said Duke University education professor Kristen R. Stephens during a media forum in May. “It won’t. I think the biggest issue is having the infrastructure and considering the inequities that exist. We even have teachers who live in locales where they don’t have reliable internet and are driving to their school parking lots and having class from the inside of their cars, so that they can access reliable internet. So, we just need to be aware that there are other elements that are probably bigger than giving teachers professional development on how to deliver online instruction effectively that have more of an impact than just the quality of the instruction.”