COVID-19 Update: Districts accelerate their planning for the 2020–2021 school year

It’s time for anoth­er install­ment of of our spe­cial series COVID-19 Update, bring­ing you the lat­est devel­op­ments on the nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break that pub­lic health author­i­ties here and across the coun­try are work­ing to mitigate.

Wash­ing­ton

Many coun­ties are ask­ing for per­mis­sion to lift restric­tions on com­merce and oth­er activ­i­ties. For exam­ple, on Tues­day, June 9th, the Ben­ton Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly, three to zero, to apply for Phase II sta­tus of Gov­er­nor Inslee’s “Safe Start” pro­gram.

On Wednes­day, June 10th, the Franklin Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers vot­ed 2–1 to also apply for Phase II sta­tus – Com­mis­sion­er Clint Didi­er vot­ed against the appli­ca­tion, call­ing on busi­ness­es to defy the law and ful­ly open.

On Thurs­day, June 11th, Cowlitz Coun­ty, in south­west Wash­ing­ton, decid­ed to post­pone an appli­ca­tion to advance to Phase III status.

Also on June 11th, the Office of the Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion, head­ed by Chris Reyk­dal, released a pro­pos­al that calls for face to face sched­ules for most stu­dents at the start of the 2020–20201 school year.

Devel­oped in con­junc­tion with the state Depart­ment of Health, the pro­pos­al envi­sions that all stu­dents and staff will need to wear masks, desks will have to be a min­i­mum of six feet apart, gym­na­si­ums may become class­rooms as nec­es­sary, stu­dents and staff will be screened for COVID-19 symp­toms before enter­ing school build­ings, and plans will have to be in place to quick­ly switch to remote learn­ing if an out­break occurs at a giv­en school.

The Wash­ing­ton Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion teach­ers union and edu­ca­tion advo­ca­cy groups are con­cerned that the plans were made with­out the input of families.

On Fri­day, June 12th, the Fed­er­al Depart­ment of Jus­tice filed a “State­ment of Inter­est” in sup­port of a law­suit by the Har­borview Fel­low­ship church of Gig Har­bor, which was ini­tial­ly filed June 1st.

The Jus­tice Depart­ment report states that Gov­er­nor Inslee’s restric­tions regard­ing indoor church ser­vices are stricter than those for “com­pa­ra­ble sec­u­lar busi­ness­es,” and poten­tial­ly in vio­la­tion of a recent fed­er­al Supreme Court rul­ing on May 29th, South Bay Unit­ed Pen­ta­costal Church v. New­som.

In an appar­ent swipe at recent events in Seat­tle, the state­ment of inter­est not­ed that “Gov­er­nor Inslee has placed no lim­it on total num­bers for out­door protests, only request­ing that par­tic­i­pants ‘be safe for them­selves and the peo­ple around them” by “wear­ing a mask and…distancing as much as you can.’”

Yes­ter­day, the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Health released a state­ment and report regard­ing recent COVID-19 trans­mis­sion increas­es in mul­ti­ple coun­ties, of which Ben­ton, Franklin, Spokane and Yaki­ma coun­ties are of gravest con­cern; espe­cial­ly that, on a per capi­ta basis, these coun­ties are present­ly at a rate com­pa­ra­ble to that of King Coun­ty in March of 2020.

Also yes­ter­day, Coy­ote Ridge Cor­rec­tions Cen­ter in Cor­nell, a town south­west of Spokane, announced that it would be restrict­ing move­ment in its medi­um-secu­ri­­ty unit after over a hun­dred offi­cers and inmates test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

Ska­ma­nia, Asotin and Whit­man coun­ties have been upgrad­ed to Phase 3 sta­tus of Gov­er­nor Inslee’s “Safe Start” pro­gram. Chelan and Dou­glas coun­ties have been upgrad­ed to a mod­i­fied Phase 1 status.

Ore­gon

On Thurs­day, June 11th, Gov­er­nor Kate Brown, due to one hun­dred and sev­en­ty-eight con­firmed and pre­sump­tive cas­es of COVID-19 with­in the pre­vi­ous twen­­ty-four hours as of Noon that day, declared a “pause” on all reopen­ing efforts with­in the state. Three weeks ago, the sev­en day rolling aver­age of new dai­ly cas­es was just under thir­­ty-two. It’s present­ly over one hundred.

The pause came just before Oregon’s most pop­u­lous coun­ty, Multi­n­om­ah, was about to start Phase I of their reopen­ing process, and is in response in part due to a spike in cas­es at food pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties.

On the same day, the Ore­gon Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion released a frame­work that will place the respon­si­bil­i­ty on indi­vid­ual schools as to whether they will teach on-site, online, or through some com­bi­na­tion of the two approaches.

Any onsite plans must draft a day to day oper­a­tions plan, health pro­to­col and response plan in the event of a COVID-19 outbreak.

Those schools that pro­vide sole­ly online learn­ing must explain why they won’t pro­vide a com­bi­na­tion of onsite and online learning.

All stu­dents and staff must be screened for COVID-19 symp­toms when they board a bus or enter school build­ings. Class­room capac­i­ty must assume a min­i­mum of thir­­ty-five square feet per stu­dent. All staff who reg­u­lar­ly inter­act with­in six feet of stu­dents must wear masks or some oth­er form of face covering.

On Fri­day, June 12th, the Ore­gon Supreme Court found in favor of Gov­er­nor Kate Brown and ordered Bak­er Coun­ty Cir­cuit Court Judge Matthew Shirt­cliff to vacate his pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion of May 18th, which declared Gov­er­nor Brown’s emer­gency actions, depend­ing on which sec­tion, invalid or expired.

The Court reasoned:

In cas­es involv­ing com­pet­ing pri­vate inter­ests, consider­a­tion of the ‘pub­lic inter­est’ fac­tor may play lit­tle or no role.

In this case, it predominates.

The Gov­er­nor is defend­ing not her per­son­al inter­ests, but her con­sid­ered under­standing of the pub­lic inter­est. Her exec­u­tive orders, as plain­tiffs acknowl­edge, are direct­ed at pro­tect­ing the public.

As the Gov­er­nor of Ore­gon, she is unique­ly sit­u­at­ed, and duty-bound, to pro­tect the pub­lic in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions and to deter­mine, in such emer­gen­cies, where the pub­lic inter­est lies.

The chal­lenged orders were issued in per­for­mance of those duties, based on con­sid­er­a­tion of the range of dan­gers that dif­fer­ent Ore­go­ni­ans may face from COVID-19, the scientif­ic evi­dence that is avail­able to her regard­ing how best to con­tain the dis­ease, and the strong inter­ests of Ore­go­ni­ans in main­tain­ing their reli­gious prac­tices and busi­ness­es but also in pro­tect­ing them­selves and their loved ones.

On the same day, Pre­ci­sion Cast­parts Cor­po­ra­tion made pub­lic the largest to date man­u­fac­tur­ing lay­offs as a result of the nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, with sev­en hun­dred and sev­en­teen employ­ees los­ing their jobs.

Idaho

On Thurs­day, June 11th, Ida­ho entered Stage IV, its final stage, of the Ida­ho Rebound Plan. Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Brad Lit­tle made a point of empha­siz­ing how it almost didn’t hap­pen, however.

“I want to stress some­thing very impor­tant, we almost did not make it to Stage IV this week…Despite our incred­i­ble progress, there are some in Ida­ho who are not prac­tic­ing mea­sures to keep them­selves and oth­ers safe.”

Indi­vid­ual respon­si­bil­i­ty is being pro­mot­ed by Lit­tle’s admin­is­tra­tion as the pri­ma­ry means of pre­vent­ing and restrict­ing trans­mis­sion of COVID-19. “The most effec­tive way to mit­i­gate the spread of the virus is through our per­son­al actions…” Peo­ple are encour­aged to take the One Ida­ho pledge as part of the process.

Broad statewide school re-open­ing pro­ce­dures have been in place since May 4th, with some schools already open, but oth­er dis­tricts and enti­ties are still deter­min­ing specifics regard­ing next steps for the fall, and state Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion Sheri Ybar­ra intends to pro­vid­e a set of guide­lines and rec­om­men­da­tions spe­cif­ic to open­ing lat­er this year, like Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon are doing.

British Colum­bia

The province has been con­sid­er­ing how to open their schools for autumn class­es since May. Schools were opened to option­al, part-time, in-class instruc­tion on June 1st.  As of June 7th, 30% of stu­dents were tak­ing in-class instruction.

A group of Black and Indige­nous orga­niz­ers through­out the province have start­ed the Black in British Colum­bia Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port Fund for COVID-19, and are request­ing that the provin­cial gov­ern­ment begin col­lect­ing race-based data for COVID-19 cas­es and deaths.

The hard, cold numbers

Wash­ing­ton state has had 26,573 cas­es and 1,221 attrib­ut­able deaths.

462,602 peo­ple have been tested.

Ore­gon has had 5,535 cas­es and 174 attrib­ut­able deaths.

166,189 peo­ple have been tested.

Ida­ho has had 3,399 cas­es and 87 attrib­ut­able deaths.

62,658 peo­ple have been tested.

British Colum­bia has had 2,709 cas­es and 168 attrib­ut­able deaths.

165,256 peo­ple have been tested.