Relaxed Guidelines And Talk Of Summer School

Miami FL

25 March, 2021

8:10 AM

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A Miami Times Staff Report Mar 23, 2021 New CDC guidelines say students can safely sit just 3 feet apart in the classroom as long as they wear masks but should remain 6 feet apart at sporting events, assemblies, lunch or chorus practice. Reports indicate that many schools have already been seating students 3 feet apart for months. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the revised recommendations are a "roadmap to help schools reopen safely, and remain open, for in-person instruction." Earlier pandemic health and safety protocols have been problematic for many school systems – including Miami – that traditionally pack 30 or more children in a classroom. The guidelines also remove recommendations for plastic shields or other barriers between desks due to a lack of evidence of their effectiveness – a practice not typically implemented in local classrooms. Teachers and other adults should continue to stay 6 feet from one another and from students, the CDC said. Stepped-up efforts to vaccinate teachers and school staff of every age in Miami-Dade and nationwide also is an indication that a resumption of traditional in-person learning for all students isn't far behind. Meanwhile, many U.S. children could be faced with summer school. Although the last place most kids want to spend summer is in a classroom, experts say that after a year of interrupted study, it's crucial to do at least some sort of learning over the break, even if it's not in school and is incorporated into traditional camp offerings. Several governors, including in California, Kansas and Virginia, are pushing for more summer learning. And some states are considering extending their 2021-22 academic year or starting the fall semester early. Many cities are talking about beefing up their summer school programs, including Los Angeles, Hartford, Connecticut, and Atlanta – the latter of which considered making summer school mandatory before settling for strongly recommending that kids who are struggling take part. There is no word yet on what direction Miami-Dade County Public Schools will take. "People are exhausted right now, but they know that it is really important for our kids," said Randi Weingarten, the head of American Federation of Teachers, who has been calling for what she described as a voluntary "second second semester" and for districts to start recruiting for it. New CDC guidelines remove recommendations for plastic shields or other barriers between desks, as seen here at a Connecticut school, but not in use at the Miami inner-city school we visited last week./AP Photo/Jessica Hill The new $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package should help, as it allocates $122 billion in aid to K-12 public schools, including $30 billion specifically for summer school, after-school and other enrichment programs. The influx of money and increase in summer offerings has come as a relief to parents of kids who have struggled with remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic. Keri Rodrigues, a co-founder of the education advocacy group the National Parents Union, said her kids have floundered with remote learning even though she transformed the family's living room into a classroom. "We don't have any time to waste here," she said. "We need to access where our kids are, determine what they need, and then get to work right away and not just put it off for three months for no apparent reason while our families continue to deteriorate and our kids continue to suffer." Engaging children from high-poverty neighborhoods should be a priority, educators say. Summer has traditionally been one of the most inequitable times in education, with kids from upper- and middle-income households getting to attend camps or take part in other enrichment activities that often aren't an option for poorer ones, said Aaron Dworkin, CEO of the National Summer Learning Association, a nonprofit focused on increasing investment in summer learning. "This has been an epic aha moment for the country to understand what lower income families have to struggle with over the summer," Dworkin said. "Everything we are all dealing with in COVID is what they deal with every summer: 'I am working. My kids have nowhere to go. I need to figure out how to do it.' Now other people are seeing it." Known as the "summer slide," students typically lose ground academically during the summer, which requires teachers to spend the first few weeks of the fall semester reteaching old material. It's why The Children's Trust in Miami-Dade has invested heavily in funding high-quality summer programs with required literacy components for the past 18 years, but most camps had to suspend operations last summer due to the pandemic. Fall 2020 test results showed that students lost more ground than usual following the hasty shift to virtual instruction last spring, said Megan Kuhfeld, a researcher with one of the nation's major academic assessors, NWEA. Parents also have raised concerns, with 62% saying they think their children are behind where they would be during a normal school year, according to a survey conducted by the National PTA and Learning Heroes, a nonprofit that helps parents support their children's learning. "It has been really painful for parents," said Bibb Hubbard, founder and president of Learning Heroes, which also conducted focus groups with parents. "Literally parents say, 'My child won't take the blanket off of his head. They won't get out of bed. They are in their pajamas all day.′ The worlds between home and school have just so blurred that kids are having a really hard time finding the motivation to stay present and stay in it." The Miami Times is the largest Black-owned newspaper in the south serving Miami's Black community since 1923. The award-winning weekly is frequently recognized as the best Black newspaper in the country by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.