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“Realistically, we’re in a crisis: the pandemic of a generation, and it’s going to change how we live, how we educate and how we work.”
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— Dr. Jennifer Bryan, MSMA Board chairwoman, Aug. 31
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Experts Fear The Worst As School Districts Return to Classrooms by Nick Judin
Mississippi’s school districts are returning to traditional, full-sized, in-person classes, against the warnings of Mississippi’s leading health experts.
the plan bearing their names. “Dear Task Force,” it read, “I had every intention of sending you the plan before it went live, but I got in a hurry and forgot.” Bryan requested another conversation with Townsend after the release of the plan to reiterate her warnings and those of Dobbs, and health experts across the nation. “Traditional is not best practices,” Bryan told her. She worried that the inclusion of the task force’s names and titles in the document implied to parents that they had signed off on the document—in fact, they’d never seen it before. As September arrived, with thousands of students already quarantined across Mississippi in just a matter of weeks, Rankin’s public-school students and teachers are returning to traditional in-person classes. Educators from across Rankin County School District reached out to the Jack-
son Free Press in July and August, baffled by the Smart Restart Plan and fearing for their safety in the upcoming school year. One Rankin County teacher shared a photo of a bottle of hand sanitizer, cleaning spray and two cloth masks. “This is our PPE,” she said. “We can check out another bottle of hand sanitizer if we run out. I think.” Central to the concerns of every RCSD teacher who talked to the Jackson Free Press was the impossibility of the 6-foot separation needed for even a basic degree of social distancing. “My biggest class has (over 20) students,” a different educator told the Jackson Free Press in July. Six feet of separation, the recommended distance—especially for unmasked activities like eating—was absolutely out of the question. “I’ve had to put my desks into groups to fit all my students in the classroom,” she said.
The unprecedented growth of Mississippi’s coronavirus cases in late July forced alterations to the plan. With the state deep in the nation’s red zone for coronavirus growth, RCSD put the “enhanced traditional” model on hold, temporarily, opting for a hybrid model that alternated days for half of the student body to attend in person. Now, in September, a modified version of the original plan arrives for the entire district, with state-mandated masks. Rankin County is far from the only school district to reject the urgings of the Mississippi State Department of Health and other prominent medical stakeholders. Indeed, the traditional plan is the norm across the state. Though many RCSD teachers reached out to share their stories, many more from other districts and counties expressed a powerful sense of dread before the return to in-person classes. more SCHOOL DISTRICTS, p 10
September 2 - 15, 2020 • boomjackson.com
courtesy Rankin County School District
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t was mid-July when Dr. Jennifer Bryan received the Rankin County School District’s “Smart Restart Plan,” a comprehensive document establishing the structure and guidelines of the upcoming fall semester. Her name and title were displayed at the document’s closing, a message to Rankin County families that the district had sought the approval and expertise of a wide range of professionals. Bryan is chairwoman of the board of trustees of the Mississippi State Medical Association, the state’s largest physician organization and public-health advocacy group. Her Flowood medical practice and representation of a broad field of physicians made her a natural choice for RCSD’s Smart Restart Task Force, a team of experts and community stakeholders meant to ensure the district’s back-toschool plans properly served the county. The plan itself painted a picture of a school year as close to normal as was possible, with a heavy focus on sanitation practices. There was only one problem: She had firmly rejected the plan. “We had the meeting, and very vocally I said, ‘we don’t need to do traditional, we need to go hybrid at least, and virtual needs to be a big part of that.’ And then they sent out the letter, publicly, to all the parents, with my title in it, and the whole Smart Restart Traditional Plan,” Bryan told the Jackson Free Press in an interview. The first “enhanced” traditional plan offered limited protection against the spread of COVID-19 at best. It encouraged masks, but made them optional in all settings other than buses. The document described contingency plans for hybrid and virtual learning options, but they focused on worstcase scenarios. Full classes and in-person teaching formed the baseline for RCSD, against the advice of Bryan and State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs. RCSD Superintendent Dr. Sue Townsend sent the entire task force an apology shortly after publicly sending out
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