LIHU‘E — The fall semester for all public elementary, middle and high schools on island kicks off today with enhanced COVID-related safety measures for daily, in-person learning.
In addition to strict mask-wearing, elementary schools will learn in “bubbles” to limit contact with students in other classrooms, state Department of Education Kaua‘i Complex Area Superintendent Paul Zina said Monday.
“We recognize the need to keep kids in school, in-person, as the first option for learning in our community,” Zina said.
Zina pointed to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state Department of Health guidance, which states that schools should be one of the last to close and first to reopen during the pandemic.
“In our pandemic response, schools should be the last to close and first to open,” Zina said.
Since the pandemic started, there have been zero confirmed infections linked to Kaua‘i public schools, Zina said, “We want to keep it that way.”
The DOE is still offering distance-learning options, as well as a state-sponsored, distance-learning option for elementary schools, Zina said, suggesting that more information can be found in a school’s office.
“I’d like to remind students, staff and families to continue completing daily wellness checks before reporting to school,” Zina said. More school-specific plans and schedules can be found at bit.ly/kauaipublicschools.
Today, roughly 165,000 students and 13,500 teachers will return to campuses across the state.
DOE Interim Superintendent Keith Hayashi said that schools are adhering to safety protocols and mitigation strategies. Social- and emotional-support resources, food security and extracurricular activities are just some of the benefits of returning students to school.
“Right now, the state is open for business with no other industry shut down. Schools are ready to open as well, and we can do it safely,” Hayashi said Monday.
At a press conference Monday afternoon, Gov. David Ige said there’s a “layered” approach to mitigating the spread of disease, which includes social distancing, masking up, sanitization and vaccination among students, staff and teachers.
At this time, COVID-19 vaccination is only available for people aged 12 years and older. Last week, the state saw an increased surge of COVID-19 cases, about 25% of which were amongst children.
DOH Director Dr. Libby Char said that the benefit for schooling “far exceeds the risk” because of the mitigation efforts in place.
“There will be an inevitable rise in cases no matter when we open the schools,” Char said. “If we delay opening schools for a couple of weeks, we will see a rise in a couple of weeks. If we delay it for six weeks, we will see the rise in six weeks.”
Char said that has to do with the nature of putting 180,000 people across the various campuses. There is no “hard cut-off” of what would happen to make schools shut down or go to distance-only learning.
“It’s so hard right now to predict because this pandemic is unfolding before our eyes and we’ve never lived through this before,” Char said “As we get more science and data and evidence … that all has to factor in, and it changes things.”
Hawai‘i State Teachers Association President Osa Tui Jr. expressed disappointment Monday that parent and educator concerns were not taken into consideration with this most-recent surge in COVID cases.
“What we can’t understand is that transmission is so much higher than last year but a lot of contingencies are being removed,” Tui said.
According to the DOH’s Guidance for Schools, when a close contact is identified within the school, unvaccinated students and staff are required to quarantine for 10 days and may only return when 10 days have passed since the last contact with the infected person and they are not exhibiting symptoms.
“Schools should not require a negative COVID-19 test or a clinician’s note to return to school if the person has completed 10 days of quarantine…” the guide states.
For fully vaccinated students and staff who have had close contact with a person, so long as they remain asymptomatic, they will not need to quarantine or be tested.
Tui said educators have reported improper mask enforcement and suspected transmission prior to student return. “Sadly, just saying that schools are safe places does not make it so,” Tui said.
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Sabrina Bodon, editor, can be reached at 245-0441 or sbodon@thegardenisland.com.
