Education Week - September 8, 2021 - 16

Which students have to quarantine, and
when, differs from district to district. The
CDC recommends that unvaccinated students
quarantine if they have been within
6 feet of an infected student unmasked for
15 minutes or more, or within 3 feet while
masked. Unvaccinated students who have
been within 6 feet of an infected adult for 15
minutes or more should quarantine, regardless
of masking. Vaccinated students do not
need to quarantine. Still, CRPE, which is
tracking districts' COVID responses, found
a lot of variation in its review of 100 large,
urban school systems.
Most districts, but not all, exempt students
who have been vaccinated-though this distinction
is irrelevant for students under 12,
who aren't eligible to receive the vaccine yet.
And some exempt other student groups, including
those who have recently recovered
from COVID, students who are masked, or
students who receive a negative COVID test
result after exposure. Quarantines are generally
between 10 and 14 days.
Districts' plans to keep students learning during
those quarantine periods are just as varied.
" First of all, there's not a lot of information
Johnson County High School Teacher Michael Caneege leads an anatomy class for students learning remotely after the district switched to
online instruction because of rising COVID-19 infections and quarantines.
being put out yet about what is happening, "
said Dusseault, of CRPE. In an analysis last
month of the same 100 districts' quarantine
plans, only 38 share any information on their
websites about how students will keep learning
if they're sent home.
Among those that offer specifics, the details
How Can Schools Keep
Quarantined Students Learning?
By Sarah Schwartz
Just weeks into the start of the academic
year, schools in some areas have seen thousands
of students placed into isolation or quarantine
after contracting COVID-19 or having
been exposed to someone with the coronavirus,
as the Delta variant has caused case
counts to spike in many parts of the country.
As a result, a significant number of children
are once again learning from home-
even as some states and districts have limited
access to remote instruction in their
attempts to encourage students to return
to five-day-a-week in-person instruction.
Keeping students engaged and on-track
during quarantines has quickly become a
thorny challenge.
In many school systems last year, students
who had to quarantine shifted temporarily
into their district's 2020-21 remote learning
option, sometimes videoconferencing
into in-person classrooms. That's not always
an option this year, as some districts have
pivoted away from this kind of concurrent
teaching-a model that many teachers found
overwhelming.
Other districts don't have a remote option
any longer. In Texas, for example, the state
legislature hasn't funded virtual learning,
meaning districts that want to offer it have to
find the money elsewhere.
What that leaves, in many places, is a patchwork
of solutions for quarantined students
that varies school by school and even classroom
by classroom. Some teachers say that
they've shifted to a fully asynchronous model
for students at home, posting assignments online
or sending paper packets.
This kind of instruction is " really going back
to the old days " of the pandemic, said Dan
Domenech, the executive director of AASA,
the School Superintendents Association.
And teachers say it's taxing, for them and
their students. " We kind of went into this year
thinking it would be OK. But it's twice as bad
as it was last year, if not worse, " said Kathryn
Vaughn, an elementary art teacher in a rural
district in Tennessee.
Almost as soon as students came back this
year, in early August, children at her school
started getting sick or exposed to others who
were sick, rotating in and out of the classroom.
(Vaughn's district started the school
year without a mask mandate, and then put
one in place. Under an executive order from
Gov. Bill Lee, though, parents can opt their
children out of the mandate.) The uncertainty
has made it hard to plan instruction,
Vaughn said.
" It's kind of a constant state of disequilibrium, "
said Jim Bentley, a 5th grade teacher
in Elk Grove, Calif., who said he's had up to
a quarter of his class out at any one time this
school year, which started mid-August. He's
worried about the continued interrupted
learning. " The inconsistency in what students
are going to experience is probably going to be
much greater, " he said, than if they were fulltime
remote or full-time in person. (Students
are required to wear masks in the district,
with exemptions for medical conditions.)
Improving quarantine instruction is an
urgent priority, said Bree Dusseault, the
practitioner-in-residence at the Center on
Reinventing Public Education. Even in districts
with low community spread and strong
COVID-19-mitigation measures, it's possible
that students might get exposed and spend
some time at home.
" Right now, we do not know if we're going
to be experiencing these outbreaks for weeks
16 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 8, 2021 | www.edweek.org
or months or the whole year, " Dusseault said.
" We cannot have another year with students
getting limited to no access to instruction. "
Quarantine instruction policies are
all over the map
Heading into this school year, nine states
banned schools from issuing mask mandates.
The move has spurred fierce debate among
parents and community members, and has
been met with condemnation from public
health officials who have said that it could
lead to increased spread of the virus. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
and the American Academy of Pediatrics
both recommend that all adults and children
wear masks in schools, regardless of vaccination
status.
Some high-profile cases of large student
quarantines are in districts where masks are
optional, or where parents could opt their
children out of mask requirements-like in
Hillsborough County, Fla., where more than
10,000 students and staff were in quarantine
or isolation just a week into the school year,
in a district of about 224,000 students and
24,000 employees total. But even in some
schools with universal mask mandates, community
spread of the virus has forced students
out of the building.
Mae Pagett, a 6th grade science teacher
at Drew Charter School in Atlanta, said her
school took precautions as the school year
began: requiring masks, testing teachers
weekly, and installing portable air filters.
" They were really thinking about a lot of stuff,
but just the number of students that came into
the building, and the Delta variant hitting
Atlanta right before school opened, it threw
everybody a curve ball, " she said.
are all over the map: Some say they'll send
home packets; others will deliver assignments
electronically. Six districts mention that they'll
have someone check in with students, and only
four promise synchronous instruction.
'There's been a lot less direction'
After 18 months of distance learning and a
summer to build back-up plans for quarantined
students, how did some schools end up back
where they started in March 2020: relying on a
patchwork of paper packets and asynchronous
online activities to provide instruction at home?
In some places, teachers say, new state laws
placed constraints on what districts were able
to provide. Vaughn, the Tennessee art teacher,
said that the governor's ban on schools pivoting
to virtual learning sent her school back to paper
packets for quarantined students.
The governor's rule doesn't prevent schools
from offering remote instruction temporarily, to
individual students in quarantine. But because
her elementary school doesn't offer a regular
online option anymore, Vaughn said, there's no
infrastructure or plan to provide assignments
virtually.
" Teachers are having to prepare paper packets
of work, kind of guesstimating how long
students will be out, " Vaughn said.
Other districts are asking teachers to make
work available virtually, but not requiring any
live instruction. " There's no real, official backup
[for quarantined students], " said Stephanie,
a high school teacher in Atlanta Public Schools
who asked that her last name not be used.
Stephanie uploads assignments to Google
Classroom, and students who are out are supposed
to complete the work by the end of the
week. She says that most haven't so far. It's hard
to know if her students have made much progress
in these few weeks, she said.
" There's been a lot less direction, " said Bentley,
the California teacher. He's tried to maintain
connection online, recording videos of
himself and trying to engage students in reading
and writing. He's been considering setting
up a livestream of his class via Zoom, but it's not
a requirement, he said.
Even in schools where teachers are able to
provide some synchronous instruction for stuStephen
B. Morton/AP

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Education Week - September 8, 2021

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