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Author: GREGORY EVANS Category: Greg's Blog



education roundup

Public and private schools in Maryland and elsewhere are divided over in-person instruction.

An emergency order issued Monday by Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, which countermanded a Montgomery County Health Department directive regarding school closures, has highlighted a divide between public and private schools over reopening plans.

The county health department had instructed all private schools to start the year teaching remotely, as every public school district in the Washington area has already decided to do, including those in Montgomery County. Private schools would not be allowed to begin in-person classes until after Oct. 1, the order said.

But Mr. Hogan, a Republican, said on Monday that county health officers didn’t have the authority to stop private schools from reopening, noting in his statement that public school boards and superintendents have made individual decisions with the help of local health officials and saying that private institutions should be allowed to do the same.

“Private and parochial schools deserve the same opportunity and flexibility to make reopening decisions based on public health guidance,” Mr. Hogan said. “The blanket closure mandate imposed by Montgomery County was overly broad and inconsistent with the powers intended to be delegated to the county health officer.”

A similar dynamic is playing out in some other parts of the country, where public schools are opening remotely while private schools are planning in-person or various hybrid models.

Montgomery County, just outside the nation’s capital, is home to some of the nation’s most prestigious private schools, attended by the children of politicians, public officials and diplomats. They include St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, attended by Barron Trump, the president’s youngest child.

St. Andrew’s has not yet decided whether it will begin the school year with distance learning or a hybrid model. But some other private schools in Maryland, including Georgetown Preparatory, an all-male Jesuit school in North Bethesda, planned to let families choose between online or in-person classes, and would have had to alter those plans under the county order.

Other key education developments:

  • Students in Mexico will exclusively take classes broadcast on television or the radio when the school year begins later this month, in an effort to avoid further coronavirus outbreaks, the government announced on Monday. Schools will only reopen when authorities determine that new and active infections, which remain high across the nation, decline enough for a safe return to the classroom.

  • A rash of positive cases during the first week of school in some parts of the United States foreshadows a stop-and-start year in which students and staff members may have to bounce between instruction in the classroom and remotely at home because of infections and quarantines.

  • Israel reopened schools in May, and within days infections were reported at a Jerusalem high school. The virus rippled out to the students’ homes and then to other schools and neighborhoods, ultimately infecting hundreds of students, teachers and relatives. Other outbreaks forced hundreds of schools to close, and across the country, tens of thousands of students and teachers were quarantined. As countries consider back-to-school strategies for the fall, the outbreaks there illustrates the dangers of moving too precipitously.

N.Y.C.’s health commissioner resigns after clashing with the mayor over the virus.

Her departure came after escalating tensions between City Hall and top Health Department officials, which began at the start of the city’s outbreak in March, burst into public view.

“I leave my post today with deep disappointment that during the most critical public health crisis in our lifetime, that the Health Department’s incomparable disease control expertise was not used to the degree it could have been,” she said in her resignation email sent to Mr. de Blasio, a copy of which was shared with The New York Times.

“Our experts are world renowned for their epidemiology, surveillance and response work. The city would be well served by having them at the strategic center of the response not in the background.”

Dr. Barbot’s resignation could renew questions about Mr. de Blasio’s handling of the response to the outbreak, which devastated the city in the spring, killing more than 20,000 residents, even as it has largely subsided in recent weeks. And it comes at a pivotal moment: Public schools are scheduled to partially open next month, which could be crucial for the city’s recovery, and fears are growing that the outbreak could surge again when the weather cools.

The mayor had been faulted by public health experts, including some within the Health Department, for not moving faster to close down schools and businesses in March, when New York emerged as an epicenter of the pandemic.

Public health officials have bristled at the mayor’s decision to strip the Health Department of its responsibility for contact tracing and give it instead to the public hospital system, known as Health + Hospitals. The Health Department has performed such tracing for decades; the public hospitals have not.

“It had been clear in recent days that it was time for a change,” Mr. de Blasio said in a hastily called news conference. “We need an atmosphere of unity. We need an atmosphere of common purpose.”

The mayor moved quickly to replace Dr. Barbot, immediately announcing the appointment of a new health commissioner, Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, a former senior leader at Health + Hospitals.