Dallas County health committee recommends virtual learning until COVID spread weakens
A Dallas County committee recommended Thursday that schools be limited to virtual learning when the school year begins over the next couple of weeks.
Dallas ISD agreed to adhere to the recommendation and will require virtual learning when the semester begins Sept. 8 until at least Oct. 6. The committee notes that 63 of the country’s 101 largest school districts have decided to start the semester with virtual learning.
The School Public Health and Education Committee is made up of experts in pediatric medicine. The committee looked “exhaustively at the issue of protecting children in schools,” according to a county release.
The committee plans to release more information soon, but wanted to share its guidance with school superintendents sooner rather than later.
“I commend them for their work, and as I’ve said before, I recognize that I am not a doctor and will rely on the advice of medical specialists who have trained their entire adult lives to advise us in this moment,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said.
“Their recommendations have been adopted and strongly recommended by our County’s Public Health Authority, Dr. Philip Huang, and the ultimate decision on what to do for the next four weeks will be made by the school superintendents of each school district in Dallas County. After that time, should continued virtual learning be necessary, a vote of the school board of the school will be necessary to extend for any further delay of in-person instruction.”
The committee recommends that all extracurricular activities be limited at school and off-campus, including strength and conditioning, contact sports, band and drill team, and all visual and performing arts activities. Playing of musical instruments in groups, especially band and wind instruments, and singing activities have been found to contribute to the spread of the coronavirus, the committee notes.
“We recommend that schools not sponsor or condone organized sporting activities, music practices and events, theater, and choir and any other singing during times when levels of spread of the virus precludes in-person learning,” the release said. “When the initial phase of return to in-person learning is deemed to be safe, with some students safely returning to campus with social distancing, masks mandated, and frequent hand hygiene, educators should assess how to safely implement play periods for younger children outdoors and physical education with social distancing outdoors for older students.”
Even when in-person learning is recommended, the committee still expects that high-risk activities for virus transmission such as strength conditioning in a gym, contact sports, team sports and band and choir should be limited.
Along with Dallas ISD, the school districts of Richardson, Garland, Irving and Highland Park are some of the larger ones in the county.
“We understand children and adolescents are eager to return to school,” the committee said in its release. “We are aware that teachers miss their students and being in the classroom very much. We are also aware that the eventual return to school in the coming weeks and months will be a very different kind of school experience for students and teachers. It will not be a return to a typical school day. Students and teachers will all have on masks. Everybody will be social distancing. Student and teachers will not be eating seated together. Students will not be engaging in sports, choir, band or theater together.”
The committee said its recommendation does not reflect an opinion that “schools are not ready or eager to take on this challenge.”
“We know that they are. Acknowledging the reality that children and teens may not always comply with social distancing and hygiene represents another risk factor in the setting of high viral spread,” the committee said.
The committee said recently published research showed that several hundred thousand children in the U.S. have contracted COVID-19 in recent months, including “nearly 100,000 childhood infections in the last two weeks of July.”
“We know that children do get sick with the virus, although typically less than adults both in numbers and severity,” the release said. “Adolescents, in particular, appear to transmit the virus at the same levels that adults in the community do. It is certain that by returning to in-person learning, the rates of transmission of the virus will increase. In this sense, a return to in-person learning is a large-scale natural experiment conducted nationally with millions of students.
“The results of this experiment are as yet unknown, but the inherent risks appear formidable given the current positivity index in Dallas County.”
