Education Week - August 26, 2020 - 11

said. "My mind is constantly asking, 'What are the areas that we're
not thinking about?' and that's what
keeps me up at night."
Days before schools were set to
open for hybrid learning, Tulsa's
school board voted to keep buildings
closed until the local infection rate
declines.

Air Ventilation Needs
The coronavirus, several researchers have concluded, spreads more
rapidly in crowded, poorly ventilated areas where there's heavy
breathing or shouting and can stay
in the air and on surfaces for several
hours.
With students returning to school,
even in smaller groups on a part-time
basis, experts have raised concerns
that school buildings will only exacerbate infection rates.
The hallways are narrow, classroom space is limited, and students,
loud and rambunctious, touch everything, including each other. Not
all schools are requiring or will require students to wear masks, despite compelling evidence that face
coverings are one of the best preventions against spread of the virus.
Districts have been required by

shift does not necessarily translate
into similar educational experiences
for different racial groups.
A recent study of 50 families in
Cleveland from two researchers published by the MacArthur Foundation,
for example, followed 24 Black families looking for the "package deal"
of moving to a good neighborhood
with a good school. They found that
just 13 were able to make the move to
the suburbs, and just three were ultimately satisfied with the quality of
their suburban school.
By contrast, of 12 white families
studied, eight made the move to the
suburbs and all eight were satisfied
with their suburban school. Yet for all
that, Piazza said, he works with districts in Massachusetts where educators have worked hard to support nonwhite students and make integrated
schools work.

Language and Self-Reflection
A recent study published by Piazza
and two other researchers conducted
in the state found a precipitous drop in
the number of "intensely segregated"
schools where at least 90 percent of
students were white, but a simultaneous if not equivalent rise in intensely
segregated nonwhite schools, over the
past dozen years.
If the federal government were to
exercise more aggressive legal oversight of school segregation, use the
bully pulpit and share important data
to focus attention on the issue, and
direct voluntary grants to communities interested in desegregation efforts
like those created at the tail end of the
Obama administration, according to
Piazza, the collective weight of those
actions could affect everyday conver-

states to overhaul their cleaning strategies, and they've pledged to more
frequently deep-clean buildings.
Their primary concern, though, is
air ventilation.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report in June that
in order to prevent the spread of the
coronavirus, more than 41 percent of
school districts need to update or replace their heating, ventilation, and
air conditioning systems in at least
half their schools.
"The need is urgent," said Corey
Metzger, the chair of the schools
team for ASHRAE's epidemic task
force. ASHRAE, a professional group
for heating, refrigerating, and airconditioning engineers, has put out
guidance for schools to prepare for
the coronavirus.
Metzger runs an engineering
consulting firm in Ames, Iowa, that
designs schools and helps school
administrators keep their buildings
up to code. This summer, he said,
several districts have asked his team
to help upgrade ventilation systems,
a process that can run anywhere between 50 cents to $50 a square foot.
Others see the price tag, gawk, and
decide to open up their poorly ventilated schools anyway.
All the readying it takes to reopen

sations among many suburban white
parents.
"Oftentimes, once those policies are
in place, people's attitudes change,"
he said.
Just how consistent Trump's "Suburban Housewives of America" rhetoric
is with his approach to education issues
in recent months is up for debate.
In June, Trump's campaign called
attention to former vice president Joe
Biden's "troubling" 1979 vote in the
Senate that helped protect the taxexempt status of private schools accused of barring black students.
The Trump administration has
highlighted its support for school
choice in several public events recently, amid increased outreach by
his campaign to the Black community;
some polling shows support for school
choice measures among Black voters.
Trump said that "school choice is the
civil rights statement of the year" at a
White House event in June.
But Trump's pitch to the suburbs not
only underestimates suburban voters'
support for diverse communities and
schools, but uses prejudice to pit people against each other, said Liz King,
the program director for education at
the Leadership Conference on Civil
and Human Rights. "The fallacy that
white children will succeed only at the
expense of Black children is just that.
It is a fallacy," she said.
The president's unsubtle rhetoric
might also lead to some self-reflection
and make it very clear to suburban voters where they should stand and what
actions they should take, King said.
"You have euphemisms and you
have jargon as a way of avoiding the
underlying agenda," King said. "What
Trump is doing is sidestepping the
jargon and the euphemisms."

school buildings comes at a steep
price many districts can ill afford.
Spending on facilities is one of the
most inequitable and insufficiently
funded corners of school finance.

Cash for Facilities Is Scarce
A study in 2016 showed that the
average school needs more than
$4.5 million worth of repairs. Because more than 80 percent of capital costs are funded locally, whether
a district has money to upgrade a
building depends mostly on whether
the surrounding taxpayers think it's
a good idea.
With districts facing sizable budget
cuts in the coming months, many administrators have either frozen or cut
their school building maintenance
costs, a less noticeable measure than
teacher layoffs.
In 2015, voters in Tulsa passed a
$415 million bond for the district,

which serves a student population
that is more than 80 percent lowincome and 59 percent Black and
Latino. A panel that monitors the
spending of that bond this summer
expanded its rules to allow for administrators to upgrade several of their
schools' ventilation systems, which
cost the district around $2.7 million.
The district this summer also
purchased 148 static sprayers, each
costing $1,500 each, and $650,000
worth of new cleaning supplies,
chemicals, and hand sanitizer, said
Nolberto Delgadillo, the district's
chief financial officer. He said he
also anticipates having to pay for staff
training and possibly overtime hours
for maintenance workers.
The district this year has already cut
$20 million from its budget and, without an infusion of federal emergency
aid from Congress, anticipates more
cutting soon.
Bell and the district's communica-

tions department decided to start the
Facebook live sessions after hearing
concerns among parents that school
buildings won't be safe.
During the sessions, which last
around 20 minutes and take place
throughout the city, Bell talks to bus
drivers, maintenance workers, and
HVAC contractors about ways they
plan to prevent the spread of the
virus.
She opens doors to show cabinets
stocked with containers of disinfectant wipes now accessible to
teachers, walks through classrooms
to show spaced-out desks, and describes all the new chemicals they
use to keep buildings germ-free.
Throughout the sessions, which
have garnered thousands of views,
parents pepper her with questions
about reopening plans.
"We want families to know that
we're doing things differently this
year," she said.

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Education Week - August 26, 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - August 26, 2020