Some colleges are using lessons from the fall to bring back more students in spring
This is the Coronavirus Schools Briefing, a guide to the seismic changes in U.S. education that are taking place during the pandemic. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
The fall semester has been hell for most colleges — canceled classes, dorm closures, outbreaks and deaths. No one wants a repeat.
But the failures and rare successes of the semester might help universities prepare for next year. Many schools plan to bring more students back for the spring semester, even though coronavirus cases in their communities continue to rise.
In part, that’s a financial consideration: Students paying room and board are crucial for strained budgets. But it also reflects schools’ confidence that they have learned how to handle the pandemic.
A picture of successful campus containment has emerged: Maintain social distancing. Contact trace assiduously. Put more faith in students by calibrating restrictions properly.
The most important piece of the puzzle seems to be aggressive testing. Many colleges that ran their own testing programs successfully kept cases low; those that didn’t often became hot spots.
New England, home to many American colleges, could have had a disastrous semester. But colleges prioritized testing, with many joining a partnership with the Broad Institute, and kept cases low. In Vermont and Massachusetts, college presidents and officials credited aggressive testing regimens with low positivity rates on campuses.
“There was no way there was national capacity to handle our volume of tests,” said Marc Sedam, vice provost for innovation and new ventures at the University of New Hampshire, which built its own lab to prepare for the semester.
Sedam visited a local lab early on in the pandemic. “I looked around and thought, ‘Oh no,’” he said. “If we need 25,000 tests a week, then they’re three universities away from being backlogged. Higher education will overwhelm the testing infrastructure of the state.”
The university’s lab, which he said cost $5.2 million to build and run, conducted over 250,000 tests in the fall semester. Students performed self-administered nasal swabs twice a week, then dropped them off at secure sites across campus. The university never closed in-person teaching, and cases remained low.
“I think you’ll see a lot more in the spring doing some version of what we’re doing,” Sedam said.
Syracuse University learned its lesson after Halloween, when the lab it was using produced results too slowly and transmission got out of hand, said Mike Haynie, vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and innovation. Now the university has its own testing lab within the biology department. It plans to double its capacity to about 300,000 tests between January and May.
“We realized we had to have full control and autonomy,” Haynie said.
A plug: Amelia is moderating a panel run by the University of New Hampshire tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time about college-run testing. Register for free here.
Round two in New York City
The coronavirus pandemic is getting worse in many parts of the world, including New York City, but about 190,000 children there are heading back to school starting today — a reflection of a new public health consensus.
The city is reopening elementary schools and facilities serving children with severe disabilities to families that opted for in-person learning. Depending on capacity, some schools will offer in-person teaching five days a week, while others will offer a combination of in-person and remote school.
There is currently no plan to open middle schools or high schools for in-person learning this year. A group of parents protested that decision in front of City Hall this weekend.
Schools around the country have had to make the difficult decision of when to close and what metrics to follow. Some stayed open with local positivity rates in the teens and others used low single-digit thresholds. Of the nation’s 75 largest public school districts, 18 have reverted to remote learning in the past month, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Despite New York City’s reopening, it is almost certain to close individual classes and schools in the coming days and weeks, based on the same criteria it used earlier in the fall. More frequent testing under the new reopening plan, paired with the resurgent virus, could result in more cases and more closures.
Under current state rules, the city could even be forced into another systemwide school shutdown if its seven-day test positivity rate reaches 9 percent — a level that grows nearer each day.
Today represents the start of a complicated new phase to an already chaotic year. But when Adam put his masked first grader on a bus filled with plastic dividers this morning, he still breathed a sigh of relief.
Around the country
College update
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Students and faculty spoke out against the University of Florida’s plan to proceed with in-person learning next semester.
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Some students say their mental health will be negatively affected if colleges eliminate spring break.
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Students are shaming peers on public Instagram accounts and sharing test results on anonymous Google docs.
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A good read: Casey Roepke, a student journalist at Mount Holyoke College, spoke to peers graduating early in December. “It’s definitely not a decision I would have made had we not been in a pandemic,” one student said.
K-12 update
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Three of the country’s largest school districts — Birmingham, Ala.; Tulsa, Okla.; and Wichita, Kan. — closed over the past week. In Birmingham, the superintendent said the pandemic was “drastically impacting our community and our schools.” In Tulsa, two public school employees died after testing positive. And several of Wichita’s public schools had so many staff members quarantined that they could hardly cover vacancies.
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Parents are speaking out against remote learning. “It is not working, and our kids are the sacrifices,” one parent in Oregon said. In the Bay Area, another parent called remote learning “a cruel joke.”
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In Tucson, Ariz., cases are rising but in-school transmission remains low.
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Centerville, Ohio, had to close schools because community transmission rates were so high, even though classrooms were relatively safe. “Most of the exposure has come from outside of school,” the superintendent said. “The quarantines are just really hard to deal with.”
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A student opinion: “I’m lonely,” Adeline Roza, a senior in Seattle, wrote in The Seattle Times. “I miss high school, I miss competing in track and cross country events, and I miss seeing my friends and teachers.”
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A good read: Many sports for kids have weathered the coronavirus surprisingly well. But not ice hockey. Humid, enclosed rinks might play a role, along with heavy-breathing after a sprint down the ice.
Tip: State of the block
We’re journalists, so we’re biased, but this seems like a pretty neat quarantine project: Have your kids (or your students, if you’re a teacher) publish their own newspaper. Let them draw their own comics, interview the adults in their lives and write an editorial. More ideas here. And please email us your final projects as you start the presses!
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