Schools In CT On Track To Reopen, But Many Questions Remain

CONNECTICUT — Connecticut is about six weeks away from the start of a new school year and numerous questions remain concerning what exactly this school year is going to look like.

Will students return to the classroom or will parents opt for distance learning this fall? These are just a couple of unanswered questions on the topic of schools.

The state Department of Education is still a good 2-3 weeks away from having a handle on just how many students will be returning to in-school classrooms in the fall, according to Gov. Ned Lamont, but the state remains on track to reopening the schools in early September.

Lamont said his decisions to start in-classroom learning is not influenced by the "hot rhetoric coming out of the White House," but "based upon the metrics, based upon the trend lines... the science and the numbers, to give (parents) confidence we can do this safely."

During a news conference last week, Lamont said the ball is currently in the court of the school superintendents who are currently reviewing the guidelines prepared by the state Department of Education.

"They're going to come back to us in the next couple of weeks and say, 'This is what works for us, this is where I can see we need some improvement, and this is the financing we would need in order to do this safely,'" Lamont said. Schools have a deadline of July 24 so submit their plans for reopening to the Department of Education, according to the state guidelines issued on June 29.

Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona, who joined the news conference via video conferencing, took issue with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who earlier in the day made a comparison between reopening schools and retail outlets.

"Schools are not Walmarts," Cardona said, noting that such comparisons were "not helpful."

Cardona said that teachers have communicated "a lot of fears, and that's natural," particularly about their own pre-existing conditions, but that the Board of Education was working closely with the Department of Health to mitigate those concerns.

Stressing the value of in-person education, Lamont acknowledged that many students are not going to want to return to a physical classroom, some maybe opting to even wait until a vaccine becomes available. The Department of Educations is currently surveying districts and expects to have a firm number on how many students will be returning in "2-3 weeks," according to the governor.

Lamont said the state has done a lot of analysis in the past few weeks on how municipal HVAC and ventilation systems stacked up against the new threat of an airborne COVID-19 virus. In a change to its previous thinking, the World Health Organization noted on Thursday that studies evaluating COVID-19 outbreaks in restaurants, choir practices and fitness classes suggested the virus might have been spread in the air.

"Miguel's team is looking at the ventilation systems and the air flow systems across all of our schools to see what we can do on an expeditious basis," Lamont said.

Cardona addressed concerns that there would not be a deep enough pool of substitute teachers available should the state experience a resurgence or "second wave" of the coronavirus, saying that his office was working to identify and reach out to certified Connecticut teachers who were not currently working. The Department of Education will make that data available to the school districts so that they have a "bank of substitute teachers available to help."

"I'm doing everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen," Lamont said.

The next big date to keep an eye on concerning a schools update is July 24.

See also: Some CT Parents Criticize Back-To-School Plan

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