The Department of Education says it regularly communicates with key stakeholders, including the governor’s office and Rhode Island Department of Health, and is “supporting each local district in making the best decision for them.”
In a statement, the department said, “Over the past two years, COVID-19 spread inside schools remains limited due to layered prevention strategies in a structured setting.”
The department notes the pandemic has created significant disruptions, resulting in impacts to student achievement and growth. In-person learning, the department says, provides critical academic and social-emotional support.
On Monday, the National Education Association Rhode Island said case levels are too high, and schools that don’t have adequate staff members, masks and testing available should move to remote learning until at least early next week.
“It’s so bad out there,” NEARI President Larry Purtill said in an interview. “If you can’t provide adequate staffing, you can’t provide a safe environment in schools. And if you have up to half your students out on a daily basis, then you can’t provide the educational opportunity you should be providing.”
Purtill said local districts need more flexibility from the state in making decisions to move to distance learning. According to the union, some superintendents report the Department of Education has been a “roadblock” in their decision-making.
“They don’t feel like they’re getting the support they need,” Purtill said. “At this point, either somebody at the state level has to make a decision and go to distance learning–or if superintendents are going to have to do it at the local level, they need to have the power to make that decision without going to anybody else.”
The Department of Education says it takes into account the “unique health and safety challenges” of individual districts when working with them on their decisions, “including shifting to distance learning for particular classes, grades, and schools.”
The Department of Health recently updated its recommendations for schools, cutting quarantine times in half and loosening other protocols. Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green says she believes those changes, aligned with updated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, will lessen pressures on districts with high numbers of teachers and students out of school.
“The CDC couldn’t have made this at a better time for us,” Infante-Green said in a call with reporters last week.
During the same call, Dr. Philip Chan, consultant medical director for the Rhode Island Department of Health, said the CDC is “a group of experts nationally with the best interests of the public in mind, so we are following the recommendations and do believe this is the right thing to keep school in person.”
Alex Nunes can be reached at anunes@thepublicsradio.org.
