Teachers go Extra Mile to Keep Children Safe During the Pandemic
As far-right COVID-19 deniers work overtime to spread their misinformation about the global pandemic and mask usage under the auspice of "news," teachers and Anchorage School District staff have been working overtime to make certain that classrooms do not become a breeding ground for the ever mutating virus even as they are limited by space, and class sizes some say are still too large.
Last year, the Anchorage School District pled with residents in the municipality of Anchorage to wear masks and social distance in an effort to lower new cases of the virus and keep our hospitalization numbers low. Due to action taken by Anchorage Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson and Anchorage residents — COVID-19 cases have indeed fallen and hospitalizations have dropped significantly, lending credence to the notion that a majority of residents do in fact support the emergency orders and mandates issued in Anchorage.
A report issued by the State of Alaska last week seems to have proven scientifically that both mask mandates and hunker down orders helped to reduce the spread of the virus in the state of Alaska at a time when the United States reached another grim milestone: 400,000 americans are now reported to have died from the virus — a virus that continually mutates and which has become more contagious overtime — with new variants spreading throughout the country.
Recognizing the highly infectious virus, the number of dead americans and the increasing number of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS-C) cases in children, as well as wanting to keep their own families safe — Anchorage school district employees have been working diligently to comply with CDC guidelines for classrooms and do the best they can to keep everyone safe.
Some Anchorage residents have recently claimed that children will be kneeling for hours in Anchorage classrooms. One local teacher I spoke to has not seen or heard evidence to substantiate the wild claim made just as the Anchorage mayoral race has officially begun, telling me, "I haven’t heard of kids kneeling for hours. What I do know is that kids for the most part will be spaced no more than three feet apart and sometimes only two depending on the number of kids returning. Some kindergarten teachers have resorted to floor seating with floor desk setups to conserve space and help be able to better achieve their ability to maintain maximum social distance with the kids."
Some parents and city residents also seem to lack an understanding of how each school is addressing COVID-19 and implementing safety measures to guard against the virus, as schools have been independently responsible for developing their own mitigation strategies and protocols — meaning that protocols can differ between each school.
At one Anchorage school, for example, recess time is broken up into "quadrants." Children must stay with their cohort bubble in their designated quadrant and they’ll be rotated either daily or weekly through three different quadrants so as not to mix the groups. However, at other schools, while children must wear masks to recess, staff are reportedly not making children stay with their classroom groups and they get to mingle freely.
Some in the school district have raised concerns that this individualized practice could lead to children becoming infected or bring germs from other groups back to their own classroom bubbles after recess. One educator tells me that the variability between schools and mitigation plans "is just insane."
Still, COVID-19 case numbers have been dropping within the municipality and children are headed back to the classroom in what will be a test of the mitigation strategies developed by each individual school.
Incoming president Joseph Biden has said that returning to school this year will look "very, very different." The Biden administration is stepping away from the Trump administration's attempts to downplay and politicize the virus and has released a five-step roadmap to reopening schools by:
- Getting the Virus Under Control
- Setting National Safety Guidelines and Empowering Local Decision-Making
- Providing Emergency Funding for Public Schools and Child Care Providers
- Ensuring High-Quality Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Closing the COVID-19 Educational Equity Gap
While it's not yet clear how a Biden administration might affect Alaska schools, if at all, a source close to the Biden COVID-19 team said today they are nervous about what the Trump team hasn't told them, citing a "lack of full cooperation and transparency from the outgoing Trump administration," as the Biden administration works to have a majority of K-8 schools open across the country in the first 100 days of his presidency.
