SC schools spent months planning how to reopen. McMaster’s pushing for something else

School districts around the Midlands and across South Carolina are scrambling to adjust their reopening plans for the fast-approaching fall semester after new guidance Wednesday from S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster.

Joined by several lawmakers but no educators, McMaster announced that all public schools are urged to restart in-person classes after Labor Day. It should be up to parents to decide whether to keep their children home or send them to school, McMaster said. The governor said his guidance is not a mandate but said he advised the state education department to deny any reopening plans that didn’t include five-day-a-week in-person instruction as an option.

The announcement came just two days before school districts were supposed to submit initial plans to the state department of education.

Now, some local school districts are having to reconsider reopening plans they’ve spent months deliberating.

Several school districts, including Lexington 1, Richland 1 and Richland 2, had planned to have some sort of “hybrid” or virtual schooling option should coronavirus continue to have “medium” or “high” spread throughout South Carolina.

Other districts, such as Lexington-Richland 5, were already planning in-person classes (with the option for online-only) but had planned to start on Aug. 19, not after Labor Day, as McMaster proposed Wednesday. District spokesperson Katrina Goggins said the district was moving ahead with its plans but was considering changing its academic calendar — a move that would need school board approval. Lexington-Richland 5 will release detailed reopening plans to parents later this week, Goggins said.

Lexington 3 school district, in Batesburg-Leesville, also had full in-person instruction as an option in its plans, but only for elementary school students. Middle and high school students in the district would have the option to choose between fully virtual schooling and a two-to-three hybrid of in-school and virtual days. Some studies suggest children’s likelihood of contracting and transmitting coronavirus increases the older they are, putting middle and high schools at greater risk.

Lexington 3 spokesperson Mackenzie Taylor did not comment on how the governor’s statement could alter the plans. Lexington 2 and Lexington 4 had not released proposed reopening guidelines by Wednesday afternoon, but both were planning to offer virtual and in-person learning, according to spokespeople.

Asked if McMaster’s announcement changes Richland 2’s reopening plans, spokesperson Libby Roof said district officials are in the process of figuring that out.

Lexington 1, which also planned to allow parents of elementary and middle school students to choose between in-person and virtual school, is also assessing its plans in light of McMaster’s request.

Just one day before McMaster’s announcement, most South Carolina K-12 schools had been planning to reopen with a similar template:

If coronavirus spread is “high,” — a determination made by the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control — classes would be online only; if the spread is “low,” classes would be completely in-person with some precautions; if the spread is in the middle, some classes would be online and others would be in-person, according to school reopening plans.

The reason those plans were similar is because AccelerateEd, an official task force formed by the S.C. Department of Education, recommended that would be the safest way to get children back into the classroom while minimizing the spread of COVID-19.

“Today at 11 o’clock was a change,” Lexington 1 Superintendent Greg Little said at a Wednesday meeting with school district employees, referring to the governor’s press conference.

Little said the district had already submitted its reopening plans to the state Department of Education. Although plans must be approved by state education leaders, Little said Lexington 1’s roadmap to reopening would have to be flexible to account for shifts in information.

Little did not specify in the video conference how plans could change.

Another Lexington 1 leader, school board member Anne Marie Green, took to Twitter to express discontent about state Sen. Greg Hembree’s comments during the governor’s press conference. Hembree, R-Horry, and other Republican lawmakers criticized students’ virtual education during the pandemic.

“I hope it was not your intent @GregHembree to insult & demoralize SC’s amazing teachers who worked all spring to keep their heads above water while also keeping their students afloat after they were all thrown - w/o warning or time to prepare - into deep, uncharted waters,” Green wrote in the tweet. “Even if it was not your intent, words matter...and leaders’ words REALLY matter. You owe teachers an apology.”

McMaster’s new guidance drew the ire of a number of educators Wednesday, including Patrick Kelly, a Blythewood high school teacher who served on the AccelerateEd task force.

“A one-size-fits all model will not work in a system with systemic inequities and different (coronavirus) spread among counties,” Kelly told The State.

Asked if the task force’s recommendations were taken seriously, Kelly said, “They were not taken seriously at the press conference, but fortunately, they are being taken seriously by the school districts.”

Several education officials, including Kelly (who is also the director of governmental affairs for the Palmetto State Teachers Association), Palmetto State Teachers Association Executive Director Kathy Manness, SC for Ed and S.C. Department of Education spokesman Ryan Brown, confirmed that the governor’s urging for all schools to return to in-person five days per week regardless of coronavirus spread contradicted the official recommendations issued by AccelerateEd.

As of July 12, all S.C. counties save for Marlboro, had “high recent disease activity,” a DHEC distinction based on the number of new cases, the percent of tests that are positive and whether the case numbers are increasing. When an area is listed as “high,” online-only classes are recommended, according to the AccelerateEd recommendations.

Many South Carolina school districts had crafted “hybrid” learning models — which use both in-person and virtual learning — and “cohort” structures that rotate different groups of students throughout the week to minimize the number of students in school on any given day.

S.C. Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman, who rarely contradicts McMaster, said Wednesday she could not support returning all school children to in-person classes five days per week because the recommendation did not account for the rate of local COVID-19 spread. She declined McMaster’s invitation to attend the press conference, the governor said.

Educators and pediatricians agree students learn better and are mentally healthier in the classroom, but “we cannot reopen schools until we know schools are safe for students and teachers,” Manness told The State. Although children are not thought to contract and spread the COVID-19 virus as much as adults do, school reopening guidelines emphasize the need to monitor and take precautions against coronavirus in schools.

McMaster’s spokesman, Brian Symmes, defended the governor’s decision, saying it should be up to parents to decide whether to send students to in-person classes or let them take classes online.

Not all school districts are following McMaster’s urging. Jasper County, which is at “high” risk, will return to virtual-only classes on Aug. 17, according to the Island Packet.

—Maayan Schechter contributed to this report.

This story was originally published July 15, 2020 at 6:14 PM with the headline "SC schools spent months planning how to reopen. McMaster’s pushing for something else."