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Dear Fellow Trustees,
As you know, based on guidance issued by TEA, school boards now have a lot more authority to make decisions on when to reopen schools. Previously, public health departments could order school closures preemptively to prevent a Covid 19 outbreak. But AG Paxton issued an order last Tuesday saying health departments can only close schools if there is a current outbreak, not preemptively. TEA has given school districts the authority to limit in person instruction up to the first 8 weeks without loss in state funding. In RRISD, superintendent Flores has chosen to start the school year 100% virtually for the first 3 weeks, with the first date of in-class instruction beginning on Sept. 10, 2020. According to TEA, he can continue to be all virtual for one additional week (up to 4 weeks), but then must get the approval of the Board of Trustees to continue to limit on-campus instruction for another 4 weeks. After that first 8 weeks, we must provide a 100% in-person instruction model (except for high school, which can be hybrid) or we will lose state funding.
Dr. Flores and President Weir stated in their July 13, 2020 letter to Commissioner Morath that they requested suspending in-person instruction until the seven-day average hospitalization rate is 5 or less, as determined by the Austin-Travis County public health agency. The New England Journal of Medicine released an article July 31, 2020 recommending that elementary schools reopen when daily average new infections are below 10 per 100,000 residents (they limited their guidance to elementary schools). They cited a Harvard Global Health Institute Covid Risk Chart that categorized risk based on four levels: Red, Orange, Yellow and Green. Yellow is the risk category that corresponds with their recommendation (1-10 new daily infections per 100,000 residents). It is interesting to note that most European schools did not reopen until their daily infections were in the green zone, <1 new infection per 100,000. The article cites that those reopenings in Europe, with their corresponding precautionary measures, did not result in spikes in cases.
That begs the question of where we are in Williamson and Travis counties. In terms of the stages set by Austin-Travis County Public Health, we are at stage 4, but our daily hospitalization rate is actually in the stage 3 range. The last time we were in the stage 2 range (<10) was 5/31/20 and the last time we were at 5 admissions or less was 3/27/20. Our daily new infections per 100,000 residents for Travis County on 8/2/2020 were 19.4. In Williamson County, they were 12.5 as of July 31,2020. That is down from their peaks (7/3/20 in Travis at 43.9 and 7/9/20 in Williamson at 30). As a contrast, if we look back to where we were on 6/1/2020, Travis County was at 4.8 and Williamson at 1.7. That demonstrates much can change in a few short weeks.
Another important statistic is the percentage of Covid tests that are positive. The World Health Organization has said that before reopening schools, positivity rates should be at or below 5 percent for at least 14 days. Positivity rate refers to the percentage of COVID-19 tests performed in a given area that come back positive. As of 7/30/20, the positivity rate in Williamson County was 43.8% (which was a huge jump from two days earlier when it was 18.9%). In Travis County, the positivity rate from 7/19-7/25 was 9.36%. The last time we were below 5% in Williamson County was 5/13/20.
According to the guidance, opening schools in our current Covid climate is not advised. Conditions would need to improve substantially to meet the criteria set by the various authorities. We are trending in a good direction and I pray that we are in a position to reopen schools as planned 9/10/20. I will continue monitoring the statistics and I hope we can agree upon a set of criteria at our 8/13/20 board meeting.
Dear Fellow Trustees,
At Thursday’s meeting we discussed the guidance Williamson County Health Dept. had provided regarding reopening schools. On Friday, Austin Public Health released its guidelines, entitled “Risked Based Guideline Stages for Phased-in Learning.” Based on the CDC Level of Community Transmission (Stages 1-5), schools would be allowed to have different percentages of students for on-campus learning. Our current Stage 4, would allow for up to 25% of students to be on-campus.
Leander ISD’s Superintendent announced Thursday that, with this guidance, they will consider allowing select students back on campus Sept. 8th. He stated, “We are not intending to be 100% virtual learning after September 8th. Our intention is to start bringing students back, but the health officials are advising that we need to do that in a very measured way, and so we’ll be phasing students back in likely – potentially starting with 25% of our capacity, as we start bringing students back in that first two weeks to see how things go and to make sure that we can keep everybody safe inside that in-person environment…based on what happens that first two weeks, we’ll look at expanding our capacity after that.” He went on to clarify the groups of students prioritized in that first phase. “Our special needs children, our youngest learners are going to be first on that priority list. We’re also going to prioritize staff children because we know that in order for them to be able to be 100% engaged with their students they need to have their own personal children taken care of.”
In terms of the previous guidance from Williamson County, which only recommends in-person when incidence rate is below 7 per 100,000 for the previous 14 days and positivity is below 10% for the previous 7 days, we aren’t there yet. Positivity has remained below 10% in Williamson County for about 7 days, but the incidence rate is over 25. Travis County has an incidence rate around 16 (harder to track positivity but I believe it is also below 10%).
In my opinion, Austin Public Health’s guidance is a middle ground. By limiting capacity based on community transmission, it balances the real need for in-person instruction, which is absolutely critical for certain populations, with the reality of community spread of Covid 19.
Our next meeting to discuss this is August 27th and Dr. Flores has indicated he would like to make decisions regarding the Sept. 10th return to in-person instruction at that time. I am hoping we can have a constructive dialogue via this Message Board as we lead up to that crucial meeting.
The Williamson County numbers are coming down, but if you look at the WilCo COVID-19 dashboard by city the numbers in Round Rock are very high. We might need to look at city numbers as well as county numbers. We also need to remember that there may be a spike after Labor Day, and with many college students coming back into Austin that Travis County numbers may see a jump in the coming weeks as well.
I agree that Austin Public Health’s Guidance is a good middle ground. The recommendations do allow for some students to return. As you know Dr. Flores has the authority to add one more week to virtual learning, but I agree that our special education and our youngest students need to be back in the classroom. If we go with the Austin Public Health Guidance, we should be able to bring back these students, and then wait for 2 weeks to see what is happening in our area, how the students and teachers handled the situation, and how well our safety protocols are working. The Austin Public Health Guidance document agrees with the phased in strategy for our special needs and youngest students on page 6. “The National Academies for Science, Engineering and Medicine recognize the importance of in-person interaction for learning and development and recommend that schools prioritize reopening with an emphasis on providing full-time, in-person instruction in grades (Pre) K-5 and for students with special needs who would be best served by in-person instruction.”
On Friday Trustee Math and I met with Dr. Flores and some of his team to discuss the agenda for Thursday. Brandy Hafner, our Director of Health Services, is still collecting data to be presented, hopefully her findings along with the full COVID presentation will be posted on Monday for everyone to review. I did ask about our special education students being able to return as soon as possible, and Dr. Flores indicated that staff is preparing a plan for partial return. Hopefully it will be presented this week.
The Board has another called meeting planned for September 3rd. While it is not specifically a COVID update meeting, if need be, we can make a more informed decision at that point about the roll out of in-person learning.
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