School districts in downtown Phoenix made plans to partially reopen in-person learning starting in January.
The Phoenix Union High School District and the Phoenix Elementary School District hoped to reopen their schools sooner but have decided to push back the reopening to January as Arizona continues to see new coronavirus cases.
The Arizona Department of Health Services also recently released a new checklist for schools to follow when reopening.
The checklist includes rules to ensure the amount of COVID-19 cases and illnesses are at a low level.
One of the checklist’s points to reopen is that the district must have a two-week decline in the number of cases, or they must have below or equal to 100 cases per 100,000 people, according to the department.
They also must have less than 7% of positivity for two weeks in the district, according to the checklist. The district must have two weeks with the number of hospital cases because of “COVID-like illness” below 10%.
CHECK OUT: AZ school boards focusing on individual needs, student success amidst pandemic
However, some school districts have their own benchmarks systems to gauge when they will allow in-person classes.
“The Phoenix Elementary School District governing board adopted a reopening metric specific (for the district),” Linda Jeffries, the director of marketing communications for PESD.
The district’s benchmarks are a little more “rigorous” than the Arizona Department of Health Services’ checklist, Jeffries said.
The school has decided to tentatively reopen its schools starting January 14, 2021, the PESD’s Facebook page said.
“We did postpone the reopening until at least January 14th. If we are hitting the district benchmarks over that winter break,” Jeffries said.
Jeffries added that they also need to give everyone enough time to prepare for coming back.
“We just needed time to communicate with our families and allow our teachers’ opportunities to come back into their classrooms and prepare their classrooms,” Jeffries said.
The Phoenix Union High School District is also planning on reopening schools in January, the PUHSD website said.
“We promised our community that we would make decisions quarter-by-quarter, not week by week, in order to give our staff, students, and families sufficient time to plan accordingly,” the district said in an announcement.
The district is slowly trying to bring back athletics, the arts, ”and other important students’ engagements” back into the schools, the announcement said.
The ADHS has three different categories for its benchmarks: the red, yellow and green categories.
Red is when there are a substantial amount of cases. This means the districts must learn virtually. The yellow means moderate, and that districts can shift to hybrid learning. Green means minimal, and that the districts can shift to in-person schooling, the AZDHS website said.
The districts have been working to adapt to online learning. The Phoenix Elementary School District teachers are doing their best to teach the students, Jeffries said.
It is challenging “especially for our youngest learners, that’s where we see the most difficulties with our youngest learners,” Jeffries said. “There is nothing more that we would love than to have every one of our students pulling in person and in our classes.”
Looking ahead, officials at the Phoenix Union High School and Elementary School districts said they’ll continue to keep the health and safety of students and staff a major priority.
Contact the reporter at astanbri@asu.edu.
