As coronavirus cases reach record levels in South Carolina, conversations surrounding how schools should operate during the pandemic have gained renewed momentum from lawmakers, educators, parents and students.
The issue has become one of the most polarizing topics in the state, sparking heated debates during school board meetings and on social media.
As virus activity surges, several leading teacher advocacy groups are imploring districts to reevaluate their pandemic learning plans and pivot to virtual models if necessary.
"We hope districts will evaluate their own capacity to safely deliver instruction and not just assume that because a model worked in September that it’s going to work in an environment where statewide case counts are four times higher per day and the positivity rate is more than double what it was," said Patrick Kelly, director of governmental affairs for the Palmetto State Teachers Association.Â
SC for Ed, the grassroots movement that organized a 10,000-strong teacher march on the Statehouse steps last year, has repeatedly emphasized its desire for districts to implement "virtual until safe" COVID-19 reentry plans.
The group’s leaders doubled down on that message this week, asking teachers to change their profile pictures on social media as a way to demonstrate their support for statewide virtual learning.
Other advocacy organizations, including the South Carolina Education Association, have stopped short of pushing for universal virtual learning in all 80 public school districts. Instead, they’ve prompted local education leaders to conduct an assessment of the virus activity in their area and adjust learning plans to account for the post-Thanksgiving spike.
Meanwhile, teachers themselves have approached their districts to execute similar plans since the early summer, with limited success.
But amid teacher protests and warnings of another holiday spike in cases following Christmas and New Year’s Eve, some districts have modified their plans.
In Berkeley County, one of 20 districts offering in-person classes five days a week, school officials faced backlash from teachers earlier in the year for its reopening model.
On Tuesday, the district’s board members shocked the public with a decision to move all in-person traditional classes to online learning for one week beginning Jan. 4 to allow students to quarantine before they return to the classroom following winter break.
Several other districts across the state have altered their approaches.
On Dec. 6, the 12,000-plus student Orangeburg Consolidated School District announced it was abandoning hybrid models and going fully virtual at least through early next year.
Jasper County students learning under the district’s hybrid model will spend the two weeks of classes following the winter holiday learning entirely online.
And over a 24-hour period in one of the capital region’s largest school systems, staff absences almost doubled — a coordinated work stoppage that shut down three Lexington-Richland 5 high schools and sent a message to administrators that more aggressive steps are needed to halt the spread of coronavirus.
In response, trustees voted Dec. 1 to reduce in-person classroom time from four days a week to two for seventh through 12th graders through Jan. 4, when students return from winter break.Â
"I think as the numbers grow, you’ll see these kinds of instances go up and I say ‘bravo.’ I am glad to see teachers putting their life and health and their families’ life and health over political rhetoric about the importance of education," said state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg.
Teachers at a breaking point
Even as some districts decide to cut back on in-person learning, others have continued to push for five days a week of face-to-face instruction.
Horry County Schools is sticking to hybrid instruction despite the county’s rising COVID-19 incidence. The same is true in Greenville County, where the district's hybrid strategy has gradually increased the days of in-person instruction since October. By January, all elementary and middle-school students there will be in class five days a week, leaving just high schools using hybrid instruction.
"Despite the handful of teachers I've heard about who've expressed serious concerns, a lot of teachers, they are troopers," said Tim Waller, a Greenville County Schools spokesman. "They are in it to win it. They are dedicated, and they are coming to school everyday."
Several teachers in Horry County have reported they believe instruction should be exclusively remote until the threat of virus contraction has been minimized.
Multiple Horry County teachers agreed to be questioned by The Post and Courier on the condition of anonymity, as each feared retribution from the school district, with many claiming throughout the year that they’ve been told to not speak out.
One high school teacher pointed to the additional duties, a lack of annual raises and fear of the impacts that the environment has on their own health as factors in diminishing morale throughout the district.Â
Another longtime teacher agreed. "We are stuck in a system that fear mongers to keep our mouths shut and yet, that same system doesn’t seem to take teachers’ thoughts, concerns, and well-being into consideration," the educator said. "Some teachers feel resentful."
Teachers across the state are reaching their breaking point, whether it be from exhaustion or their district’s handling of the virus, said Saani Perry, a Rock Hill teacher and SC for Ed’s diversity and inclusion officer.
His district is one facing pressure from parents to reopen with in-person learning five days a week.
"I feel disrespected. I don’t feel cared for whatsoever, and I really feel like not only my value but the value of my students is just nonexistent to leadership," Perry said.
Perry knows several teachers that are actively looking for other jobs. Sometimes it feels like every day he learns of a new teacher's resignation via social media.
He’s even thought about quitting himself.
"In my entire career, this is probably the worst I've ever seen teacher morale," he said. "Honestly, I think a lot of teachers are at the point where they don’t want to protest, they just want to quit."
News of a Lexington elementary school teacher’s death rocked the state’s education community this week, said Sherry East, president of the S.C. Education Association. Staci Blakely was the third Palmetto State educator to die of COVID-19 complications this year. A school custodian in Orangeburg County has also died.
"This is a deadly thing," East said. "Educators right now are having that real serious talk with themselves about 'is this worth my life?'"
Monitoring community spread
As teachers and district employees clamor for safer working environments, growing national and international research on COVID-19 shows young children who are infected don’t tend to transmit it, for reasons still unknown.
"We don’t see significant evidence of transmission in schools," state epidemiologist Linda Bell said recently. Rather, public health officials are more concerned about what’s happening in homes or other parts of the community when it comes to spreading of coronavirus.
Over the past two weeks in Richland County, for example, more than 1,860 residents have tested positive for a cumulative total of 22,200 — among South Carolina’s highest rates. But over that same span, no public school in the county reported more than five cases, according to state data.
"Fortunately, we’ve not had a lot of positives," especially compared with the high COVID-19 counts in Richland County, said Dawn MacAdams, Richland Two’s health coordinator and past president of the state Association of School Nurses.
Several districts that have resisted calls to abandon any form of in-person learning echo Waller's response, but expect at least one to implement state-offered rapid testing kits over the next several weeks.
"A substantial amount of infrastructure and logistics needs to be in place for that to happen," Richland Two Superintendent Baron Davis said. That includes waivers to build out clinical laboratories, developing infectious disease control plans, creating data tracking and additional training for nurses.
Richland Two third grade teacher Demi Bannister died in early September at the age of 28.
Statewide, 3,367 students and 1,446 employees of K-12 public schools have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past month, DHEC reports. Bell stressed those represent cases associated with schools, not necessarily contracted there.
Greenville's Waller said COVID-19 cases among its staff and students have remained low, despite the hikes in the broader community, and most of the cases that are discovered don't stem from classrooms. Greenville County's rolling, seven-day average exceeded 400 on Sunday, the highest it's ever been. As of last week, the infection rate inside schools was about half what it was in the community, but student counts pull the average down.
"Even with the huge increase in cases nationally, statewide and locally, when we look at the cases we do have and contact tracing data ... we've come to the conclusion that we believe kids are a lot safer eight hours a day in our classroom than outside," he said just before Thanksgiving. "For the most part, our safety protocols in the schools are working," he added, while acknowledging nothing's 100 percent guaranteed.
This lack of certainty is what worries Rep. Wendell Gilliard, D-Charleston. Gilliard has written nearly a dozen letters to state leaders, including Gov. Henry McMaster, state Superintendent Molly Spearman and Charleston County Superintendent Gerrita Postlewait. Â
All students should be learning online until a vaccine becomes widely available, he said.Â
Since November, Gilliard said he's gotten phone calls and emails every day from concerned educators who fear for their safety. Â
"My heart goes out to teachers," he said. "When they talk to us, we should listen."
Seanna Adcox, Nick Masuda and Anna B. Mitchell contributed to this report.Â
