[Senate Hearing 116-551]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 116-551
COVID 19: GOING BACK TO SCHOOL SAFELY
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HEARING
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
EXAMINING COVID-19, FOCUSING ON GOING BACK TO SCHOOL SAFELY
__________
JUNE 10, 2020
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
45-221PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee, Chairman
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming PATTY MURRAY, Washington, Ranking
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina Member
RAND PAUL, Kentucky BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania
BILL CASSIDY, M.D., Louisiana TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
TIM SCOTT, South Carolina TIM KAINE, Virginia
MITT ROMNEY, Utah MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire
MIKE BRAUN, Indiana TINA SMITH, Minnesota
KELLY LOEFFLER, Georgia DOUG JONES, Alabama
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
David P. Cleary, Republican Staff Director
Lindsey Ward Seidman, Republican Deputy Staff Director
Evan Schatz, Minority Staff Director
John Righter, Minority Deputy Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 2020
Page
Committee Members
Alexander, Hon. Lamar, Chairman, Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions, Opening statement......................... 1
Murray, Hon. Patty, Ranking Member, a U.S. Senator from the State
of Washington, Opening statement............................... 4
Witnesses
Schwinn, Penny, Commissioner of Education, Tennessee Department
of Education, Nashville, TN.................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 9
Summary statement............................................ 15
Blomstedt, Matthew, Commissioner of Education, Nebraska
Department of Education, Lincoln, NE........................... 15
Prepared statement........................................... 17
Cordova, Susana, Superintendent, Denver Public Schools, Denver,
CO............................................................. 23
Prepared statement........................................... 25
Summary statement............................................ 28
King, Hon. John B. Jr., President and CEO, The Education Trust,
Washington, DC................................................. 29
Prepared statement........................................... 30
Summary statement............................................ 35
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.
American Federation of Teachers, Prepared Statement.......... 57
National Education Association, Prepared Statement........... 71
National Association of School Nurses, Prepared Statement.... 72
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Response by Penny Schwinn to questions of:
Senator Scott................................................ 74
Senator Murkowski............................................ 75
Senator Sanders.............................................. 75
Senator Warren............................................... 76
Response by Matthew Blomstedt to questions of:
Senator Scott................................................ 78
Senator Murkowski............................................ 78
Senator Warren............................................... 79
Senator Sanders.............................................. 81
Response by John B. King, Jr. to questions of:
Senator Murkowski............................................ 82
Senator Sanders.............................................. 82
Senator Warren............................................... 84
COVID-19: GOING BACK TO SCHOOL SAFELY
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Wednesday, June 10, 2020
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
SD-430, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Lamar Alexander,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Alexander [presiding], Enzi, Cassidy,
Murkowski, Scott, Braun, Loeffler, Murray, Casey, Baldwin,
Murphy, Warren, Hassan, Smith, Jones, and Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ALEXANDER
The Chairman. Good morning. The Committee on Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions will please come to order. This
may be a little bit of a historic milestone for our Committee's
work. Every single one of us are remote today. This is a
completely virtual hearing. We had a little technical
difficulty with the cameras in the hearing room last night so
there are no Senators in the hearing room. Our witnesses are in
their hometowns and we are in our offices and other places like
that. Actually, that is all that has changed. We will all be
able to participate. We will all be able to see each other.
The media will be able to follow what we do and so will the
people who by and large tuned in to our website. Just a few
administrative matters to get started. As I just explained,
everyone can tune in to www.help.senate.gov. That is our
website. And I am grateful to everyone for working late into
the night to try to make sure that we were all together this
morning. Senator Murray and I will each have an opening
statement and then we will turn to our witnesses. We thank you
very much for being with us today. We will ask you each to
summarize your comments in about 5 minutes, which will leave
more time for the Senators to ask questions.
I will ask each Senator in rank and seniority, going back
and forth, Republican and Democrat, until we finish. On May 28,
on the Memphis Commercial Appeal, there was a story about
schools planning for the 2021 school year and included a
bittersweet image. There was a young girl reaching her hand out
to touch her teacher who is standing in line to welcome
students to the first day of school in 2019. As the Commercial
Appeal reporter wrote, ``the first day of school in August 2019
would flunk 2020's course on social distancing.'' Today's
hearing is about how we reopen schools safely this fall and
that means teachers welcoming students back without hugs or
high fives, I am afraid.
The opening of schools in 2020 is not going to look like
2019. But today's witnesses will talk about their work to help
56 million students from kindergarten to 12th grade go back to
the 100,000 public schools and 34,000 private schools and to go
back in the fall as safely as possible. In doing so, they will
help our country take its surest step toward normalcy.
Our witnesses today are Dr. Penny Schwinn, Commissioner of
Education for Tennessee Department of Education, Dr. Matthew
Blomstedt who is the Commissioner of Education of Nebraska and
partially he is the President-elect of all the State Chiefs
School Officers, Ms. Susana Cordova, Superintendent of the
Denver Public Schools, and John King, President and CEO of The
Education Trust. John is very familiar to us because he was the
United States Secretary of Education for President Obama. The
question for Governors, school districts, teachers and parents
is not whether schools should open but how to do it safely. Any
teacher can explain the risk of emotional, intellectual and
social damage if a child misses a school year. Schools need to
assess how this year's disruption has affected our children and
how we get learning back on track.
At our hearing last week on the reopening of colleges, we
heard about a variety of strategies that colleges are using to
help keep campuses safe, including keeping class sizes small so
students can stay six feet apart, creating campus-wide policies
for wearing masks, and rigorous hygiene improvements.
As with colleges, k-12 school plans will vary for each
community and will also depend on the prevalence of the virus
in the fall in the various communities. Excuse me just a
minute. I have got my pages out of order. The goals for schools
working to reopen are fundamentally the same as the colleges we
heard from last week. Some mentioned social distancing,
aggressive hygiene, face masks where appropriate, systems for
testing and contact tracing.
In order to accomplish those goals, it is clear that school
boards, superintendents and principals need to be focused on
the following. Creating an environment where students and
teachers can socially distance. Making modifications to the
school year calendar and daily schedule. Preparing to integrate
more distance learning. Restructuring classrooms and
extracurricular activities. Planning how to provide meal
services safely. Making sure the school has enough protective
equipment such as gloves and masks. Protecting the students and
adults in school buildings who are at a higher risk. To
accomplish this, schools will also need to create a strategy
for testing and tracing students who may have been exposed.
My advice is you want your school to be a part of your
state's monthly plan for testing needs. The availability of
widespread testing will allow schools to identify teachers and
students who have the virus or have been exposed to it and
trace them and their contacts. Widespread testing not only
helps contain the virus, it builds confidence that the schools
are safe. Fortunately, the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health,
Admiral Brett Giroir, told our Committee there will be 40 to 50
million tests available per month by September. That is 4 to 5
times the number of today's number of today's tests.
Today's number in the United States is twice as many as any
other country. And Dr. Francis Collins, who once led the Human
Genome Project and now leads the National Institutes of Health,
leads the competitive Shark Tank enterprise at the NIH to
discover new ways to conduct tens of millions of quick and
accurate and inexpensive diagnostic tests. Schools' COVID-19
plans should last for at least a year. The Government is
pursuing vaccines at what it calls warp speed, faster than we
have ever done that before, but no one expects a vaccine this
August. In the second half of the school year, schools should
be better able to provide more tests, more treatments, better
contact tracing and hopefully, we should begin to have
vaccines. It will likely be the Fall of 2021 though before we
begin to approach normal.
There are several reasons schools have an advantage in
providing a safe environment for students and faculty. The
first reason is that younger people have been less hurt by
COVID-19 than older people, although Dr. Anthony Fauci told our
Committee that we should be careful about cavalierly assuming
that young people are not at some risk. Second, schools are
generally small communities that are closely supervised and
monitored.
Third, outbreaks can be traced. If a child becomes sick,
that child's classmates can be tested. And fourth, individual
schools can close to control the spread of the virus while
other schools are able to remain open. Schools are not
unfamiliar with outbreaks of flu, for example, or other
illnesses that have resulted in the temporary closure of
individual schools while other schools continue to be open. But
school environments pose challenges as well. First, there is
not much extra space in our elementary and secondary schools
are there is on most college campuses. That makes social
distancing more difficult. Second, school administrators face
more rigid rules as a result of state and local and union rules
and regulations. So making changes to the academic calendar and
the class size and the school schedules will be more difficult.
Third, creating a mask-wearing culture will be harder
specially with the youngest children. Seeing facial expressions
is also important for young children. They learn to socialize
and self-regulate, so obscuring faces with masks prohibits some
learning for early elementary school-aged children. Fourth,
rigorous hygiene isn't always easy with children. Fifth,
children go home at night, potentially exposing older adults.
And sixth, even systematic testing of 50 million children, or
55 million children, is a lot of tests.
Today 9 out of 10 families with children have at least one
parent employed. And among married parents, families with
children, two-thirds had both parents employed, according to
the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And many children live in
environments where the school is the safest place they will be
in all day.
It is also the place where almost 30 million students
receive a school lunch. More than 70 percent of those students
qualify for free or reduced-priced meals. Administrators have a
responsibility to make our schools among the safest small
communities in our country this fall. And in doing so, it will
help our country move back toward normalcy.
Senator Murray.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MURRAY
Senator Murray. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
and I really appreciate all of our witnesses being with us
today as well. And as always, thank you to our Committee staff
who worked really, especially extra hard today to make this
hearing possible so we could be safe and socially distant.
Before we begin I just want to say again how inspired I am by
the young people protesting against police brutality and
systemic racism nationwide. They are calling for change and
accountability and justice, and I hope their urgency and
resolve will be an example to all of us here in Congress.
Now, we are here today to discuss something else this
country owes all young people and children and that is a
quality of public education even in the middle of a global
pandemic. COVID-19 has upended schools in ways that are truly
unprecedented, creating chaos for educators and support staff,
parents, and of course our students. As this crisis was first
hitting my home State of Washington, I got a text from my
daughter telling me the North Shore School District in
Washington State had closed because of the Coronavirus
outbreak.
My daughter didn't know what to do and what that meant. Who
was going to take care of her kids when she was still working
or what that meant for their learning. And even as a United
States Senator, I didn't have any answers for her and it wasn't
long before nearly every school district, every educator, every
parent, and every student in this country had many of the same
questions. The challenges schools and families across this
country have had to overcome this past school year were
unimaginable a matter of months ago. Schools and school
districts are now facing some of the biggest cuts to state and
local revenue that we have seen in a long time while facing
increased costs as a result of this pandemic. And it is
especially important to recognize that while this hasn't been
easy for anyone, school districts, communities, and families
with more resources have had more capacity to adapt than those
who have less.
As we talk about ways to reopen our schools safely for
students and educators and school staff, our response must not
only ensure that public health and science is driving
decisionmaking but also ensure every child can access a high
quality public education during this pandemic whether in person
or online. We know COVID-19 is having a disproportionate impact
on the health of Black communities and communities of color,
and research is already showing how it has exasperated the
inequities that existed in our education system before this
pandemic stroke.
Data projects that Black students could lose over 10 months
of learning, Latino students could lose over 9 months of
learning compared to white students who are projected to lose 6
months of learning. Because of this, estimates show achievement
gaps could grow by 15 to 20 percent in this country. We can't
let COVID-19 continue to make things worse when it comes to the
education of students of color and the same goes for students
from families with low incomes, LGBTQI students, students
experiencing homelessness, students in foster care, English
learners, migrant students, students with disabilities. So when
it comes to reopening building safely, as I have said before
and cannot say enough, schools and school districts must follow
the advice of local public health officials and let science
drive decisionmaking.
At a minimum, public health experts say before reopening
classrooms, states should be able to provide widespread testing
and contact tracing to follow-up in every single case of the
virus. The Federal Government should also start planning now
for the distribution of a safe and effective vaccine, which
will be critical for schools ultimately returning to normal.
But until we have a safe and effective vaccine, I am glad to
see so many states and school leaders engaged in detailed
scenario planning. Because before families send their children
back to the classrooms, educators return to teach, they need to
know schools have thought through every possible scenario.
Given how much we don't know about how children transmit
this disease, we need to look at it, how safe it is for
medically vulnerable parents and guardians to send their kids
back to school. There are countless questions schools have to
answer before they can physically open safely. But school
districts and schools can't do this alone. They need in-depth,
actionable guidance from the Federal Government on best
practices to ensure the safety of students, educators, school
staff and the broader community. They need additional resources
to measure and address learning loss among their students, to
implement public health protocols to protect students and
staff, and to outset dramatic declines in state and local
revenue.
But whether schools are able to open physically, operate
virtually, or use a hybrid of both, we have to ensure school
districts deliver quality and equitable educational, social,
emotional and health, including mental health services to
students. And we have to address the ways this virus has
further exacerbated inequities that long existed within our
education system. I recently heard from a mom and Yakima
Washington who told me that her children are sharing one iPhone
to learn and she is not even sure if she is going to be able to
afford that phone bill and that is just one small example of
this digital divide.
For school districts that are under-resourced in areas
without Internet access, distance learning may just consists of
a few links to online material. For the over 1.5 million
students experiencing homelessness across the country, finding
transportation to pick up school meals is not always an option.
And for students across the country experiencing trauma and
stress to say the least from this pandemic or reckoning with
centuries-long racism, it has never been more important to
ensure that every child has access to mental health and trauma
services and supports, particularly students from communities
bearing the brunt of this virus and those affected by police
brutality and systemic racism. And when it comes to delivering
these services and supports, we have to do better because if we
don't, the achievement gap that we strived so hard to close
will undoubtedly widen and we can't let that happen.
To address all of these problems, we need a massive
investment in our schools right now. The American Federation of
teachers has estimated that schools will need billions more on
top of what we already know is needed for basic things like
cleaning supplies and PPE. And we also know thanks to the work
of the National Education Association, without a significant
investment, the US could lose approximately 1.9 million
education jobs. We could have begun negotiations on this and
countless other COVID-19 priorities weeks ago and I am
extremely frustrated that has not happened yet, and I am going
to continue to push for action.
I also want to note that while I am glad we have the
opportunity to hear from these witnesses today, we do need to
hear from Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, especially about
her efforts to push her privatization agenda in the K-12 system
and her flawed interpretation of the equitable services
provision in the CARES Act. As we all know, K-12 public schools
are truly the bedrock of our communities.
Each of us here and at the U.S. Department of Education
need to be all in on ensuring schools have the resources and
support to rise to the massive challenge in front of them. I
know I am and I look forward to that those conversations today.
And Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask consent to include in the
hearing record a plan from the American Federation of Teachers
for safely reopening our schools and a letter from the National
Education Association about state and local budget cuts and the
need for additional resources from the Federal Government to
meet our students' needs. Thank you.
The Chairman. So ordered.
[The following information can be found on pages 57 and 71
in Additional Material:]
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Murray, for your opening
statement. I am now pleased to welcome our witnesses to today's
hearing focused on getting back to school safely. First, Dr.
Penny Schwinn, the Tennessee Commissioner of Education. Under
the leadership of Dr. Schwinn, the Tennessee Department of
Education has developed a number of resources for use by local
districts, including school closure toolkits, family friendly
instructional guides for programming on PBS, and a school meal
website for families.
Dr. Schwinn will be convening a COVID-19 child well-being
task force to support local leaders in communities. Our second
witness is Dr. Matthew Blomstedt, Nebraska Commissioner of
Education. He has also been chosen to serve as President-elect
of the Board of Directors on the Council of Chief State School
Officers. Under his direction, Nebraska Department of Education
has created a website, launchne.com. It suggests several
options for districts to consider for ensuring schools open
safety this fall.
The third witness is Ms. Susana Cordova, Superintendent of
Denver Public Schools. Under the leadership of Superintendent
Cordova, Denver public schools have announced that they expect
to begin on time in August and has been exploring a variety of
options for safely bringing students back to school. And I will
now turn to Senator Murray to introduce our fourth witness.
Senator Murray. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today we are
lucky enough to have Hon. John King, former Secretary of
Education under President Barack Obama as a witness. During Dr.
King's tenure, I had the pleasure of working closely with him
to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act. Dr. King has been
a steadfast champion for students, public education, and giving
every child the opportunity they deserve, and I am really glad
we have the chance to hear from him today.
Before becoming Secretary of Education, Mr. King served on
the Department of Education's Equity and Excellence Commission
as Acting Deputy Secretary of Education and as the New York
State Education Commissioner. He began his career as a high
school social studies teacher and middle school principal.
Currently, Mr. King is the President and CEO of the
Education Trust. That is a national nonprofit that uses
research and advocacy to identify and close opportunity and
achievement gaps from preschool through college. Mr. King holds
a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, a JD from Yale Law,
and M.A. in teaching, and a Doctorate in education from the
Teachers College and Columbia University. His personal life
story is a testament to the power of public education and the
importance of caring educators in a student's life. So, thank
you so much, Dr. King, for being here and I look forward to
your testimony.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Murray, and welcome again,
Dr. King. Now we will hear from our witnesses. We ask each of
them to summarize their testimony in about 5 minutes, which
will leave more time for questions from Senators. Let is begin
with Dr. Schwinn.
STATEMENT OF PENNY SCHWINN, COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION,
TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, NASHVILLE, TN
Ms. Schwinn. Good morning, Chairman Alexander, Ranking
Member Murray, and Members of the HELP Committee. Thank you for
inviting me to testify at today's hearing. This has been an
unbelievable period of time in Tennessee for our students and
families. As educators and students spent a spring navigating
learning, we must now consider the challenges ahead with
reopening school. To be clear, this is complicated.
Any decision we make has significant costs. No easy answers
or one-size-fits-all solutions. What might be best for one is
not for the other. In our state, we have a metro region that
experienced significant spread of the virus, and we also have a
county with its first positive case last week. So as we look
ahead to school reopening, I would like to share the major
challenges we are facing in Tennessee and nationwide, and some
of the ways we plan to address them. One, health and safety of
our school communities. Two, bridging the digital divide. And
three, high quality academics and resources.
First, school reopening must put the health and safety of
our children, their teachers, and our communities front of
mind. Under Governor Lee's leadership, Tennessee has been a
national leader when it comes to testing for COVID and we will
work to coordinate testing efforts with districts and ensure
that any school personnel or any families interested in testing
have the opportunity to do so. To support districts, the
Department will work with agency partners to provide PPE and
no-touch thermometers, along with resources to help with
planning how to implement safe and healthy practices in our
schools. But kids are kids and we need realistic solutions for
areas like nutrition, classroom supports and procedures, and
transportation.
The Department is committed to providing resources and
working with teachers and kids. There are almost 1 million
students in public schools in the State of Tennessee, two of
them are mine, and we have a responsibility to support all of
them as if they were our own. We made promises to families
every day that their children will be safe in our care and have
access to a high-quality education. We must do everything we
can to keep that promise.
Second, we must address the digital divide for teachers and
students. Districts need 21st century technology solutions,
access to devices, access to broadband, access to professional
development for educators. Our own Governor often references
not having Internet on his farm. That is a reality that is all
too true for many of our students and their teachers but it is
especially true for our rural community, our most vulnerable
populations, and those who required distance teaching and
learning from a health perspective.
The Department is devoting significant CARES Act funding to
support greater access to technology because this is no longer
a nice thing to have. For many, it is a necessity for a free
and appropriate public education. Finally, we must accelerate a
child-centered strategy rooted in our commitment to high
quality academic opportunities for every student. We must stay
committed to identifying and addressing any gaps that we see in
student achievement. We know the impact of lost learning,
especially for children who tend to experience the greatest
gaps. We must also be especially focused on literacy for our
youngest student, knowing that reading proficiency is one of
the most important indicators for future success. And literacy
instruction at a distance is incredibly hard to do. Ask any
kindergarten teacher.
The Department recently released the reopening framework
and will continue to release over 20 additional tool kits for
districts and educators to use. Our students and our teachers
must be given the resources and supports they need. It cannot
just be about helping them get through. It must be about
helping them thrive. As a Commissioner and a mom to three very
young children, I have been inspired every day, day after day,
by the way that our teachers and our schools have come together
in Tennessee, whether it is working with teachers to problem-
solve how to setup socially distanced classrooms in elementary
schools.
We are talking to superintendents about high schoolers
continuing to get access to dual credit and work-based learning
opportunities. Tennessee has shown our collective commitment
for opportunities for kids and I realize that all of these are
not small things but they matter deeply to us because they
matter for kids. So, I wish these were clear-cut decisions, but
they are not. The challenges that we face are large. We must
keep people safe and we must keep kids educated, and our job
and our responsibility is figuring out how to do that well.
We are deeply appreciative of the CARES funding to help
jump-start the necessary needs that we have in our schools and
districts across the state. And as we head into next year, I
hope we are all able to appreciate what has been done, what is
in front of us now, and what still lies ahead. And in these
challenges I see opportunities.
Our kids, my own included, need us to meet those challenges
head-on with optimism and courage. Our kids are counting on us.
Thank you so much, and I look forward to your questions later
in the hearing.
[The prepared statement of Penny Schwinn follows:]
prepared statement of penny schwinn
Good morning, Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray and Members
of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Thank you for
inviting me to testify at today's hearing, ``COVID-19: Going Back to
School Safely.'' I very much appreciate the opportunity to share
Tennessee's story, and incredible work that continues to be done by our
districts, educators, and department of education on behalf of our
students.
As commissioner at the Tennessee Department of Education, I feel
strongly that our agency must work to support high-quality educational
opportunities for the nearly one million students in our care. While
this is true every day, it is even more important to set a clear focus
on this work now, so that we can ensure no child is more disadvantaged
by the current COVID-19 pandemic and that our schools and districts are
supported moving into and throughout next year and beyond. Although I
have the privilege of serving as commissioner, I am also a mother of
three children, with one whose adoption was finalized last week. I have
seen first-hand the impact of this pandemic at the classroom level,
specifically for my school age daughter's learning and for her teacher
in our local public school system. Yet I also know that even with the
challenges we face, we must collectively seize opportunities to excel.
To understand where we are headed, we must look back to when this
pandemic began, and how our state has collaborated and come together
along the way to ensure our children are safe, healthy, and like every
year, ready to face the challenges and seize the opportunities of a new
school year.
On March 16, 2020, Governor Bill Lee urged public school districts
in Tennessee to close to protect the health and well-being of Tennessee
students, teachers, and communities across the state. On April 15th,
Governor Lee recommended extending public school closures through the
end of the school year. In each instance, all public-school districts
in Tennessee followed the Governor's recommendation.
This launched an unprecedented need for COVID response work for
Tennessee schools, districts, and the State Department of Education.
Prioritizing both the health and safety of students as well as
academic instruction, the Tennessee Department of Education team
responded swiftly and began working diligently to communicate with
districts and issue guidance to help them make plans and decisions to
ensure a continuation of academic instruction as well as critical meal
and other services for students during times of school closure. Central
to this work has been the department's engagement with stakeholders,
specifically with school superintendents, educators, and policymakers
to seek input and feedback both to inform the response and to help
prioritize urgent needs of districts, schools, educators, and students
during a public health crisis. At the department, we knew we needed--
and will continue to need--this input to formulate the most effective
ways to help school districts address student, family, and educator
needs resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.
On March 16th, the department began hosting three times per week
conference calls for superintendents, which continue to this day. These
regular conference calls have fostered close coordination with
superintendents across the state and been a valuable tool for the
department to provide updates, answer questions, and solicit feedback.
The department began sharing health and safety resources developed
by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Tennessee Department of
Health, and developing a series of guidance and toolkits focused on the
specific needs, challenges, and decisionmaking that school and school
district leaders had to address, including:
Guidance Documents
Cleaning Guidance....... Handwashing Best Practices
Coronavirus: A Guide for Infection Control Tips for
Schools......................... School Buses
Emergency Plans & Instruction, Assessment,
Procedures for Schools.......... and Accountability
Federal Programs and Nutrition
Funding.........................
Guidelines for Health Special Populations
Care in a School Setting........
.............................. Staffing, Educators, and
EPP Resources
School Closure Toolkits
Academics and Nutrition
Instruction.....................
Early Childhood......... Safety and Operations
Finance................. School-administered Before/
After Care Programs
Fine Arts............... Special Populations
Health and Wellness..... Staffing
IT and Distance Learning
The department also developed school closure toolkits for families,
made available in English and Spanish, to assist families in
identifying resources and making plans to support the academic and
nonacademic needs of children while out of school. Utilization of these
resources was robust, with over 250,000 views of our COVID19 website,
but the needed response to address the impacts of coronavirus went far
beyond the capacity of many districts in Tennessee, especially those
that are small or rural.
With the passage of time and conversations moving past the
immediate response to COVID-19 and the resulting school building
closures, we began to sense how the pandemic is elevating known gaps
and required even more acceleration of a child-centered strategy.
To support districts and schools as they were navigating an
unprecedented challenge, the department began work to develop
partnerships that provide resources and supports for students and
educators.
The department brokered several critical partnerships which, in
true Volunteer State spirit, led to a variety of free, optional
resources to support educators, principals, families, and students
across the state.
These include:
Partnership with all 6 Tennessee PBS stations to
deliver up to 30 hours per week of daily academic instruction
and educational content to first through eighth grade students
during times of school closure. Developed by the department in
collaboration with Tennessee teachers, three hundred and 20
lessons on math and English language arts were broadcasted
statewide. These videos are also posted on the department's
YouTube page where they have received over 77,000 views.
Accompanying lesson plans for educators and student work
packets are available on the department's website.
Partnership with the University of Tennessee's Center
for Educational Leadership to support principals at no cost as
they lead their staff and schools in addressing student needs.
The Tennessee Principal Professional Learning Series leverages
the intellectual resources of the university, as well as other
external expertise, to address the most pressing problems of
practice facing school principals. As of June 6th, more than
500 principals representing 82 of Tennessee's 95 counties have
completed this training.
Partnership with Trevecca Nazarene University to
offer free professional development for Tennessee teachers to
help them prepare for digital teaching and learning. As of June
6th, over 14,000 Tennessee principals have participated in this
training.
Partnership with the ReadyRosie early education
platform to provide Tennessee families with free and easy
access to critical early literacy lessons. Around 2 minutes
long in both English and Spanish, the video ``moments'' feature
real families demonstrating instructional activities that
parents can then replicate with their own children and are
rooted in learning goals for children on topics such as
literacy, early math, health and well-being.
Partnership with Hoonuit to provide families with the
most up-to-date information on meal pick-up locations closest
to them through SchoolMealFinder.com. Hoonuit utilizes an
interactive map to allow users to search by city, zip code, and
address to locate the nearest food pick-up site.
Partnership with the Tennessee STEM Innovation
Network (TSIN) to develop the STE(A)M Resource Hub to provide 3
weekly challenges to promote critical thinking and career
exploration that can all be done in the home. The challenges
are ideal for students grades 3-12, but younger students can
also participate with parental assistance.
While we know these partnerships and the resulting resources helped
to fill some gaps that emerged following school building closures, more
significant challenges within our field have become apparent. In some
cases, there are new challenges that we must face together. In other
cases, they are challenges that have been brought to the forefront of
the public consciousness and demand to be addressed.
Achievement Gaps: We are incredibly proud that Tennessee was
the fastest improving state from 2011-2015. Still, achievement
gaps have not closed and school building closures will likely
serve to widen those gaps further. This is not a new challenge,
but the pandemic has served to poignantly highlight existing
gaps in student achievement and opportunity. As educators and
students navigate a new distance learning environment, there is
a need for innovative resources to support learning.
Rural Communities: School building closures have continued to
highlight the disparity related to connectivity and broadband,
access to more community resources, and opportunities to raise
and use local funds in support of public schools in our rural
communities.
Early Literacy: In Tennessee, just over 33 percent of 3d
graders and 27 percent of 8th graders are reading proficiently.
Reading proficiency in 3d grade is one of the most important
indicators for future success and must continue to be an area
of focus. School building closures will likely exacerbate this
challenge, especially for children in our youngest grades.
Mental Health: The pandemic has highlighted the significant
challenges that districts, schools, and educators face related
to student mental health and behavioral needs. School building
closures have brought this conversation to the forefront as
children and families struggle with the anxieties associated
with the pandemic, and in some cases additional familial
struggles that would normally be identified and addressed
earlier by schools.
We know for certain that our education community will work to
support our students. By working collaboratively with educators and
district leaders, investing in high-quality materials and supporting
the implementation of best practices, we will continue to accelerate
the work that moves our field forward. We must invest in both resources
and people.
While there are some policy conversations that need to take place
to address the impacts of the pandemic, we have also seen that
educators will step-up to fill the space.
However, merely stating the expectations does not mean people can
meet them. We have seen that schools and districts are rapidly trying
to pivot to address the current needs, with minimal time for
development or meaningful support. We must create opportunities to
provide resources and professional development opportunities to our
educators and system leads.
To be clear, this is complicated. Any decision we make has
significant costs and there are no easy answers. There is no one-size
fits all solution for a state as regionally varied as Tennessee. This
is why the role of the state education agency is so important--it is
the critical link between policy and practice. It considers the broader
landscape of policy decisions and then works to determine how to make
those applicable and real for practitioners that are making important
school reopening decisions for their local communities.
Given that, as we plan for school reopening this fall, we must ask
ourselves: What is in the best interest of students and staff, as we
balance the needs of community health with the needs of children to
have access to strong educational opportunities, families to
financially support themselves, and critical services to be delivered
to students?
School reopening must put the health and safety of our children,
their teachers, and our communities front of mind.
Tennessee has been a national leader when it comes to testing for
COVID-19. Already, 7.3 percent of Tennesseans have been tested, with
sites available across the state. Tennessee ranks in the top 12 states
for testing per capita and in lowest percentage of positive cases. The
department of education will continue to work closely with Governor
Bill Lee's COVID-19 Unified Command group \1\ and the Tennessee
Department of Health to coordinate testing efforts with districts and
ensure that any school personnel or any families interested in testing
have the opportunity to do so.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The Unified-Command Group is a COVID-19 response tactic that
merged the Department of Health, Department of Military and Tennessee
Emergency Management Agency to streamline COVID-19 response efforts
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Further, in close partnership with Tennessee Emergency Management
Agency (TEMA) and Unified Command, the department will be able to
provide Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) like masks and no-touch
thermometers to our districts at no cost to utilize if and how they
choose. The department is coordinating efforts geared toward reducing
some of the financial burden associated with health and social
distancing recommendations.
Considering that and the recent guidance from the U.S. Centers of
Disease Control, the department will continue to offer a suite of
resources to districts. In the first weeks of school, we are
encouraging districts to monitor key statistics to manage the success
of reopening. Those include: availability and use of PPE; reported
virus cases and spread statistics in the school, district, and
community; frequency of disinfection of materials and shared areas;
quarantine/illness space needed vs. available; physical and virtual
attendance of staff and students; and other metrics comparable to prior
years (ex. counseling, staffing, nutrition, etc.).
We have also identified significant operational needs that may
exist in our districts, which cover a range of topics, including:
Procurement of disinfecting and personal hygiene
supplies
Classroom reconfiguration to maximize the ability of
students and staff while socially distancing from one another
Cohorting consistent small groups of students for
recreation and eating
Elimination of assembly and mass gathering
Procurement of signage to communicate policies and
procedures to staff, students and families
Implementation of daily symptom checking of students
and staff, to include non-contact temperatures upon arrival
when feasible
Need for additional janitorial service to perform
regular and frequent cleaning of high-touch surfaces in
restrooms, hallways and classrooms
Bus ridership for costing out additional or multi-
trip routes, if needed
Minimized community entry into the school and
exposure to students, including parent drop-off and
consideration of staggered drop-off times and
Isolated illness spaces and protocols for immediate
removal of symptomatic individuals
These are just a handful of the significant operational and
logistical considerations that must be taken at the school and district
level. While schools are not typically built for this level of
operational emergency and health response, districts are working
diligently to make the changes necessary to keep people safe. As such,
our systems must also remain flexible enough to make changes as the
data indicates.
School reopening must include a series of scenarios from which
local districts may operate, in the best interest of local needs.
Broader policy conversations have discussed the three ways in which
schools can reopen: physically in person, in a distance format, or in a
hybrid format. However, our schools require much more guidance than
that. Many of our schools do not have the physical capacity to house a
full student body and maintain social distancing but may also have the
need or desire to ensure all children receive a commensurate high-
quality education in-person (as able). Over the last month, I spent
time setting-up example demonstration classrooms in regions across the
state. Depending on the classroom size, intended capacity, and student
needs, both myself and the teachers who provided feedback were struck
by the various ways teaching and learning may need to adjust.
To support this local decisionmaking, the department released
guidance that added options within those broad categories. For physical
return to schools, the department has suggested that districts consider
a traditional return, a staggered return over a set period of time, a
staggered schedule to minimize physical occupancy, or a year-round
schedule to reduce physical capacity.
For virtual or distance options, there are the possibilities of
virtual synchronous models as well as asynchronous models where
students learn at a self-pace during the day with the support of their
teachers. As noted in the spring, the universal access to technology
and internet is a significant concern for many districts and families,
especially those in rural communities, serving less resourced
populations, or vulnerable student groups. These are significant
considerations that districts must discuss at a local level, and for
which the state would encourage application of the U.S. Coronavirus
Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) funding to support.
For those districts considering a split model, the department has
provided alternatives for split days with morning and afternoon
cohorts, alternating days or weeks, or attendance based on need to
accommodate children with disabilities and those requiring additional
services.
The department has also presented a category related to cyclical or
intermittent distance education based on staff and family choice or a
virus resurgence. Regardless of the options selected, students and
staff with personal or household health risks must have a viable option
for maintaining their education or employment from home.
The decision on how to reopen schools is a challenging one which
balances health and education. Both are important to the future of our
children and all facts must be included in the discussion as it
progresses. Each of the scenarios listed above include opportunities
for flexibilities and options within the model. What is most critical
is that local needs, resources and statistics drive decisionmaking
within the framework and boundaries outlined through the Departments of
Health and Education.
School reopening must include supports for our local districts, as
needs increase and resource efficiencies become critical. This must be
done with a child-centered strategy.
We must address students' academic and physical and mental health
needs. Regardless of the reopening option(s), districts will still need
ways to determine the academic, physical and mental health needs of
returning students. Districts should ensure that there is a whole child
plan in place to address the different social and mental health needs
that may exist for some students due to school closures and resulting
from the impact of the pandemic and recent events.
We must provide a virtual option for the most vulnerable students
and staff members. Until there is a vaccine for COVID-19, there is
still a risk of seasonal waves of the virus. So, the most vulnerable
students and staff (those with underlying health conditions or
undergoing disease treatment) may not be able to return to a school
campus. Social distancing is difficult in public spaces and even more
challenging in the typical classroom or campus setting. Districts may
identify and provide high-quality distance learning to vulnerable
student populations and should clearly communicate the options to
families.
We must provide strong opportunities for students requiring at-home
care. Students who are diagnosed and/or live in a home with a confirmed
positive case may be required to isolate for days on end and there will
need to be accommodations made to support that student.
We must stay committed to identifying and addressing any gaps that
we see in student achievement, which will necessitate a beginning of
the year progress check. Districts should ensure that any diagnostic
(or optional checkpoint tool provided by the state at no cost) used in
the fall is aligned with state standards and is accompanied by quick
turnaround. These assessments should be used for information purposes
only, to better capture student learning and needs and to ensure
educators and families have information to provide an understanding of
where their students are starting for the year.
Guidance documents are being developed by the department to support
that locally driven effort.
The department is in the process of developing and finalizing over
20 school reopening toolkits, which will cover many of the same topics
as school closure toolkits did. Over the course of the next few weeks,
these resources will be provided to district leaders, many of whom
contributed to the content and framing of this work as a reflection of
what authentic and meaningful partnership can look like in times of
uncertainty.
These school reopening toolkits will include:
Academics
Procedures
Assessing Student Learning
Professional Development
Childcare
Public Charter and Non-Public Schools
Communications
Safety and Operations: Emergency
Consolidated Funding Applications Operations,
Pandemic, Post-recovery
Counseling Evaluation
Equitable Access and Opportunity
School Improvement
Finance
Social Distancing at Schools
Governance and Management
Special Populations
Health and Public Health
Staffing
Nutrition
Technology
Policy and Legal Considerations
Transportation
Postsecondary Transitions
Well-being and Mental Health
While we sincerely hope and believe these resources will be
critical for districts as they make the best decisions for their local
communities, we must acknowledge that beginning a new school year this
year might be different. Children and educators have experienced a
global pandemic; their lives or livelihoods may have been impacted;
they need to feel safe; and they will still face the exciting
challenges and opportunities of starting a brand-new school year.
No different than the past several months, the work of reopening
schools and addressing the academic and whole child needs of all
children will be like never before. We are navigating the very fabric
of education and how we build critical relationships, deliver excellent
instruction, and provide opportunities for all of our children to
thrive.
This is difficult work and I have been inspired day after day by
the way that Tennesseans have come together and shown our collective
love for children and commitment to their well-being. As a
commissioner, a former teacher, and a mother, I applaud and appreciate
the hard work of our school communities.
We must continue to pull together, work hard, and keep pace. Our
commitment to our children is unwavering, and I also know that in many
ways doing this is a marathon that we have all been running at a full
sprint. I am confident that we will be stronger after this, and that we
will use the innovative spirit of our Tennessee educators and districts
to continue accelerating the achievement of our children.
I hope we are all able to appreciate what has been done, focus on
what is left to do and remember what still lies ahead.
Thank you and I look forward to answering any questions from the
Committee Members about the great work being done in the Volunteer
State.
______
[summary statement of penny schwinn]
Good morning, Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray and Members
of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Thank you for
inviting me to testify at today's hearing, ``COVID-19: Going Back to
School Safely.'' I very much appreciate the opportunity to share the
Tennessee story, and incredible work that continues to be done by our
districts, educators, and department of education.
As commissioner at the Tennessee Department of Education, I feel
strongly that our agency must work to support high-quality educational
opportunities for the nearly one million students in our care. While
this is true every day, it is even more important to set a clear focus
on this work now, so that we can ensure no child is disadvantaged by
the current COVID-19 pandemic and that our schools and districts are
supported moving into and throughout next year and beyond. Although I
have the privilege of serving as commissioner, I am also a mother of
three children, with one whose adoption was finalized last week. I have
seen first-hand the impact of this pandemic at the classroom level,
specifically for my school age daughter's learning and for her teacher
in our local public school system. Yet I also know that even with the
challenges we face, we must collectively seize opportunities to excel.
To understand where we are headed, we must look back to when this
pandemic began, and how our state has collaborated and come together
along the way to ensure our children are safe, healthy, and like every
year, ready to face the challenges and seize the opportunities of a new
school year.
No different than the past several months, the work of reopening
schools and addressing the academic and nonacademic needs of all
children will be like never before. We are navigating the very fabric
of education and how we build critical relationships, deliver excellent
instruction, and provide opportunities for all of our children to
thrive.
This is difficult work and I have been inspired day after day by
the way that Tennesseans have come together and shown our collective
love for children and commitment to their well-being.
We must continue to pull together, work hard, and keep pace. Our
commitment to our children is unwavering, and I also know that in many
ways doing this is a marathon that we have all been running at a full
sprint.
I hope we are all able to appreciate what has been done, focus on
what is left to do and remember what still lies ahead.
______
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Schwinn.
Dr. Blomstedt, welcome.
STATEMENT OF MATTHEW BLOMSTEDT, COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION,
NEBRASKA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, LINCOLN, NE
Mr. Blomstedt. Members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify at this important hearing today. I am
honored to participate with this distinguished panel in this
critical discussion of where we need to go as a country with
our education system this fall. Nebraska, like all states,
experienced the arrival of the pandemic with little advanced
understanding of the dramatically long-term impact it would
have on the Nation and our education system. This pandemic is
an inflection point for the challenges my state and this
country face.
This crisis has laid bare the persistent inequities of our
education system and of every system and sector across the
country, from healthcare to justice. I want to take a moment to
say I mourn the loss of George Floyd and every other Black life
lost because we allowed inequities to permeate our society for
far too long. I have worked my whole career believing that
education is the right place for society to make progress to
ultimately ensure equity. Closing schools statewide was never
something I anticipated as part of my role as Commissioner of
Education.
In our earliest days of closing, I knew the more difficult
tasks would ultimately be reopening schools. In late March and
early April, we identified summer learning as a time to focus
energy on the recovery reopen and reopening scenarios. By April
16th, I was publicly announcing efforts that were underway to
plan for the fall semester. On Friday May 8th, we announced
Launch Nebraska as a way to organize a recovery and reopening
approach organized around three major pillars, leadership and
planning where we would focus on Government operations and
technology, conditions for learning really focused on
facilities and wellness, and then continuity of learning with a
real focus on instructions and transitions back into education.
Schools in Nebraska are diverse. Nebraska's small school
districts have under 100 students in the most remote areas of
the state while our largest in Omaha exceeds 53,000 students.
Additionally, Nebraska has counties that have yet to
officially experience their first COVID-19 positive case, while
other areas have been affected at rates similar to the worst
per capita cases in the country. We have organized several
working groups including nearly every school across the state
that are developing regional and local plans with local public
health officials School leaders are committed to balancing this
difficult task of safe opening with the needs of students,
families, communities and staff in mind. There are few one-
size-fits-all moments in these planning efforts.
It has become increasingly clear that large-scale guidance
needs to be available for local school and health officials to
customize for local conditions and environments, and that is
what we are attempting in Launch Nebraska. Although I believe
most schools in Nebraska are planning to open in the fall, we
are concerned that many will face extensive disruptions and
interruptions across several communities. As school buildings
closed across Nebraska this spring, educators and school
district officials were rightly concerned about their capacity
to appropriately meet the obligation--such services were not
pandemic proof. I continue to engage in productive dialog with
parents and disability advocates to provide a path forward.
I expect that as restrictions are lifted, schools will need
to provide necessary compensatory education. Although I know
that broadband is not in the jurisdiction of this Committee, it
is apparent that a lack of broadband access is a huge inequity
for many of our students and households. I am concerned that
the economic impact of the pandemic will result in necessary
and sustained cuts in PK-12 education funding, perhaps to
exceed 20 percent in Nebraska. This is a perfect storm as we
face increased needs and decreased resources.
I cannot express enough how proud I am of Nebraska--amazing
talented individuals. But in recent months, they have all
stepped up in incredible and unprecedented ways to serve our
students. While we have many challenges ahead, I remain
confident in the abilities of local Nebraska educators to make
the impossible possible. But we also must protect our
educators. Our teachers will continue to be on the front lines
and we must address individual accommodations that will also
limit an already strained workforce. This will require
additional contract time for some teachers and educational
staff that may be asked to provide supports beyond the normal
school day. I want to thank this Committee and all Members of
Congress for the relief funding through the CARES Act.
Schools are addressing many of the barriers with these
funds and securing critical services and infrastructure for the
recovery. At a state level, we continue to partner across the
education and health sector to build state and regional
supports to address conditions for and continuity of learning.
I understand and share the concern that many have expressed
regarding the Secretary's equitable services provision
interpretation of CARES.
I urge Members of Congress to clarify this as soon as
possible. I want to ensure that both public and non-public
schools are able to move forward quickly without lingering
doubts about the proper use of these funds. In closing, we must
seize this opportunity to address the systemic inequities that
have persisted for decades. It has become a bit of a mantra
with our partners in Nebraska that we need to build back
better.
In fact, they tell me radically build back better. I truly
believe that education is and must be a substantial part of the
effort to erase inequity in society, but it will take a whole
societal approach to address these challenges in this time.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Matthew Blomstedt follows:]
prepared statement of matthew blomstedt
Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, thank you for the
opportunity to testify at this important hearing, ``COVID 19: Going
Back to School Safely.'' I am Matt Blomstedt, Commissioner of Education
in Nebraska and incoming President of the Council of Chief State School
Officers. I am honored to participate in this critical discussion to
reflect and begin to address our next steps as a Nation and the
supports needed for state and local education agencies to continue on
the path of response and recovery.
Nebraska, like all states, experienced the arrival of the pandemic
with little advance understanding of the dramatic effects that the
pandemic was to have on the Nation. In mid-February, a few short months
ago that feels like a lifetime, I, like others, struggled to comprehend
the enormity of the emergency that was about to hit Nebraska and the
country. The warning signs seem obvious to us now, in retrospect, but
rapid onset at the time left schools with little time to respond. We
are still experiencing a wave of current challenges that we have to
fully grasp, and must prepare to overcome.
I especially appreciate the opportunity to provide testimony with
my colleagues at this hearing and ask that these times be a moment of
unity for our country rather than further division. Nebraska, like many
states, is diverse in views, populations, and impacts. This pandemic is
an inflection point for the challenges my state and this country face,
including persistent inequities that manifest in communities across the
Nation. The tragic consequences of a failure to address inequities in
education, health, housing, income, and opportunity is amplified in
current events as we witness our own citizens suffer injustice and
discrimination and an apparent disregard for Black lives.
I feel like I was born into a better place after the historic
efforts of the 1960's to establish civil rights legislation led by
civil rights giants. (Among this legislation, as you know, was the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which remains a key
pillar of the Federal role in promoting educational opportunity for
all.) Yet today, I see how fragile that balance has been and the
curtain pulled back proves we have chipped away at necessary progress
for civil rights and equity while civil rights expectations in
education are at risk of being limited by the pandemic and further
weakened by blatant and obvious actions of violence and racial
injustices. I mourn the loss of George Floyd and every person who has
been lost as a result of the failures of this country to recognize and
act on the inequities that we have allowed to permeate society.
In my view, the role of the Federal Government is to set a tone and
direction for the country that establishes an expectation of equity. I,
as a state official who understands his state well, freely admit that I
alone am not strong enough to overcome the larger injustices that our
students of color and their families face. I have worked my whole
career believing that education is the right place for society to make
further progress to ensure equity, but our collective failure as a
Nation to successfully confront the pandemics of poverty, racism, and
injustice has left us more vulnerable to the pandemic of COVID-19 and
its generation-shaping consequences.
Impacts on students and communities: Closing schools for any reason
is not in my normal job description as Commissioner of Education in
Nebraska. Education leaders must be necessarily adept at understanding
local conditions and responding appropriately based on the community
needs and norms, however, especially in unprecedented circumstances.
On February 27, when I received the first call from a school
district superintendent asking how we were going to lead through the
impending impacts of the pandemic, I responded, ``That's funny; you've
never asked me to tell you what to do before.'' My ``tongue-in-cheek''
response was quickly followed by calls with medical and infectious
disease control experts, including the Chancellor of the University of
Nebraska Medical Center, our Governor's office, and other state and
local education leaders and policymakers. We sprung to action with the
primary realization that schools would potentially have to close
suddenly to contribute to the efforts to contain the invisible threat
of the virus. Make no mistake; there was very little understanding at
this point of the scale of this threat except through the valiant
efforts of a few health officials and infectious disease experts that
had little other reason to engage with school leaders before. The
situation was a fast-moving challenge for leaders.
Nebraska's first COVID-19 case was identified on March 6. It had a
broad impact because the person identified was a participant at a
widely attended Special Olympics event. The event assembled athletes
and communities from multiple school districts across a wide geographic
area. By March 9, we had at least three school districts temporarily
announce school building closures and many others who were about to
begin spring break and chose not to return to school.
By March 12, I had met and spoken with dozens of local school
leaders and the Governor as well as the Chancellor of the University of
Nebraska Medical Center. By Monday March 16, I had been involved in
three statewide press conferences and numerous stakeholder meetings
announcing that schools would soon take steps to physically close
buildings and would soon be closing with no clear sense of when or how
they would know how to open again. In 10 short days, COVID-19 went from
being a fringe concern to the primary focus of my agency and state.
Our state's first concerns were for the role that schools could
play in containing the virus and broader public health issues. It was
immediately necessary to understand the impact of schools in promoting
food security and the general well-being of school age populations
across the state, and there was little time to understand the enormity
of the disruption that was taking place.
School administrators, teachers, and food and nutrition staff,
shifted to an emergency relief mission where health, safety, and food
security were the first concerns. But it was also quickly apparent the
broader routines for children were also critical, particularly for
students already at risk. For example, several administrators reached
out to me to express concerns about students that had been on suicide
watch and were already suffering from trauma and being further
traumatized by school closures. We also know that reports of child
abuse and neglect are down primarily due to the role schools play in
the reporting system. Additionally, we know that students and families
have suffered from extended out-of-school time for multiple social and
economic reasons as well.
The challenge we face, in Nebraska and the Nation, is to better
understand the balance of the health risks and broad societal costs.
That is a burden we are all going to share as we make decisions about
how to safely open schools.
Closing and Reopening: As the impact and likelihood of sustained
closures to in-person schooling were becoming clearer, Nebraska
established a clear approach to guiding schools through the pandemic. I
sought to make clear with local public and non-public school leaders
that a first priority was community health and well-being and
educational opportunities were part of that need. Schools were truly
remarkable in shifting to these priorities and establishing remote
learning. Schools were asked to submit basic continuity of learning
plans to the Department that answered two basic questions, `` How do
you plan to serve students?'' and specifically, ``How do you plan to
serve students with disabilities?'' (See more at http://
www.education.ne.gov and https://cdn.education.ne.gov/wp-content/
uploads/2020/03/Statement-on-Continuity-of-Learning---3.27.2020.pdf).
I am confident in the abilities of local Nebraska educators to
adjust educational practices when there is clarity about the learning
environment. Our NDE team and partners established Launch Nebraska as a
way to organize a recovery and re-opening approach organized around
three major pillars:
1. Leadership and Planning: Government, Operations and
Technology
2. Conditions for Learning: Facilities and Wellness
3. Continuity of Learning: Transitions and Instruction
We have organized several working groups across the state that are
developing regional and local plans with local public health officials.
This effort started early on as our Educational Service Units (Nebraska
intermediate education agencies) helped to organize regional
conversations with public and non-public schools to create a feedback
loop directly to me as well as to the Governor regarding their needs.
We maintain weekly calls statewide to discuss re-opening efforts and
have further pursued intentional planning efforts at a regional and
local level among schools. Additionally, organizational leaders have
developed plans among like-sized districts to understand how to best
open schools. Our local health officials are collaborating to create
easily understood local risk assessment and develop communication
tools. Each effort to share and review these plans advances the
conversation to open schools.
There are some things that are becoming clearer in the effort as
well. There is a substantial desire and pressure to open schools in the
fall as normally as possible. At the same point, there is an
uncertainty about how to best weigh and mitigate risk. The Launch
Nebraska resource allows us to break up the conversations among
stakeholders and groups to review feasibility and determine tradeoffs.
For instance, today there is an increasing belief that wearing masks is
a necessary step in maintaining the most normal environment. There is
also an understanding that social distancing is dependent on many
circumstances. Although frequent handwashing, cleaning, and masks seem
feasible in many classrooms, spacing desks at least six feet apart and
other tradeoffs are very difficult.
School leaders are committed to balancing this difficult task of
safe opening with the needs of the students, families, communities, and
staff. There are few ``one size fits all'' moments in the planning
efforts. Instead, it is important to shape broad guidance, with
specific examples, that contribute to specific local plans. The efforts
have been immense to date and we will soon have decisions made by
schools based on this work.
Additionally, the NDE has provided and will continue to provide
supports to schools including professional development for the
environment we are now in. Thus far, we have offered eight sessions
focused on professional learning for addressing content areas and
equity in a remote learning environment. We will continue to shape
professional learning in partnership with our LEAs and intermediate
agencies. Additionally, we are advocating to expand digital resources
collectively with schools as part of the effort to fill gaps that have
become obvious for some learners and for some schools. Schools across
the state are planning to address these challenges by building local
plans and we will continue to support these efforts from a state level
as well as help facilitate best practice development and exchange.
Serving Students with Disabilities: In these early days and weeks
of the COVID-19 pandemic, meeting the needs of students with
disabilities in extraordinarily challenging circumstances was my
primary focus. As school buildings closed across Nebraska and the
Nation, educators and school district officials were rightly concerned
about their capacity to appropriately meet their obligations to
students with special needs. As a result, many school districts became
temporarily paralyzed, in effect, by fear of litigation and were
resistant to providing services that were necessarily inconsistent with
the expectations of Individualized Education Plans developed before the
pandemic made the provision of planned services functionally
impossible.
I refused to allow fear of litigation to dominate our actions and
understood the need to guide responsible action. NDE staff and I
encouraged our school districts (and school attorneys) to understand
the obligations of the law while also encouraged them to provide the
best services possible. Teachers teach, and that is what I committed us
to do during this national emergency. Instead of retreating and viewing
parents and advocates as a potential threat, and that costly litigation
under IDEA as inevitable, I sought to facilitate communication and
engagement with stakeholders in support of students and families.
Because the NDE is also responsible for Nebraska Vocational
Rehabilitation as well as Disability Determinations, we have a
tremendous set of partners in the disability community that helped us
set a tone and direction for school services. We will continue to do
this work. In some cases, we are finding that schools are still
struggling to provide services especially for those students who need
in-person services. But what is clear, and remains clear, is the
importance of communication with the most effected students and their
families. We continue to issue guidance and have most recently issued
summer learning guidance and specific guidance for students with
disabilities. (https://www.launchne.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/
SPEDGuidanceFinal2020.pdf ).
We continue to engage and listen to these important groups and hear
from concerned parents and parent representatives. This helps us better
understand the concerns of parents for whom school is a lifeline for
necessary developmental support. We take seriously the concerns of
advocates and attorneys seeking to protect hard-won legal protections
for students who have been ill-served in public education systems
across the country.
My intent is to continue to build relationships between educators,
parents, attorneys, and advocates that will ensure that we are all on
the same side of the table, working together on the same mission of
ensuring that all students succeed in Nebraska schools. These
partnerships, forged during times of crisis, will continue to help move
forward the reopening of schools and the reimagining of public
education in Nebraska.
English Learner Students and Families: Nebraska has approximately
130 different languages spoken in schools across the state and some of
our communities were struck especially hard by the impacts of the virus
in the meat packing industry. We continue to see communities that have
suffered a greater impact as a result. Because schools were closed so
suddenly, we did lose a normal communication approach with families.
Certainly, English Learner students become a critical communication
link to families who may not speak English. As this became obvious,
schools began to organize and communicate through schools about
critical health and safety issues. In a few cases, students themselves
helped to organize messages in multiple languages to help ensure that
the non-English speaking populations would understand the threat of the
virus. This work is still ongoing but it has been clear that we face
some barriers in working with our refugee and new immigrant populations
without schools.
Systems Involved and Homeless Youth: I have substantial concerns
for our students who are in treatment, detention, foster care, and
those who are homeless. Though we typically face challenges to serve
these populations properly, it has become evident that these students
have, and will have, further challenges due to the pandemic. I have met
regularly with our treatment centers and facilities that serve systems-
involved youth in treatment and rehabilitation centers. I have also
benefited by working with our Supreme Court, court system, Department
of Health and Human Services, Foster Care system, and other public and
private providers. Nebraska is in the middle of efforts to reform parts
of this system and the pandemic has been a substantial setback for the
attention needed for these vulnerable youth. I intend to continue
efforts in this moment that expand access to appropriate digital
resources, and better track and sustain progress for these students. In
my view, we need to be especially mindful of investing in systems that
eliminate the school-to-prison pipeline and find strategies that
address the inequities these students face in school and society at
large. If not for the pandemic, this would be my primary focus for the
summer. Now it will be a primary focus as part of the larger recovery
effort. We really cannot miss an opportunity to improve the system
dramatically that is already disproportionately represented by students
of color, poverty, and disability.
Summer Learning / School Building Reopening: Nebraska has provided
guidance to schools for the summer and fall through an effort called
``Launch Nebraska'' (www.launchne.com). It combines strategies from
across the state and is informed by a variety of partners including
state and local health officials and experts from the University of
Nebraska Medical Center and College of Public Health as well as
national efforts in partnership with Opportunity Labs, LLC. This work
originated in the need to provide guidance for schools during the
pandemic around remote learning for the spring, summer, and fall. As my
staff began to address needs, it was clear that guidance from CDC and
other national sources was only beginning to trickle out while schools
needed to gather, explore, and share best practices.
It has become increasingly clear that large-scale guidance needs to
be available for local school and health officials to customize for
local conditions and environments. Schools in Nebraska are diverse.
Nebraska's smallest school districts (Pk-12) have under 100 students in
the most remote areas of the state while our largest district in Omaha
exceeds 53,000 students. Additionally, Nebraska has counties that have
yet to officially experience their first COVID-19-positive case while
other areas have been affected at rates similar to the worst per capita
cases in the country. This has proved to be an extremely complex
environment as Governor Ricketts and health officials have worked to
keep track of the capacities of hospitals as to not overburden the
health care system. However, explaining to lesser-impacted communities
the role in reducing the spread is a challenge. Yet, as the virus
persists, the likelihood of affecting communities without any health
care providers and only volunteer emergency medical technicians is also
a challenge.
Federal Role: Thank you for the bipartisan congressional efforts to
provide relief and for including education in the CARES Act. The
availability of funding for our state and schools has cut through much
of the immediate concern for schools as we addressed this unprecedented
challenge. Although I was personally concerned that there was not clear
guidance and direction available from the CDC about reopening, I am
appreciative of the efforts of CDC officials to release what was
eventually permitted. Like one can expect, the scale of the challenge
is real and providing guidance that can be customized for state and
local use is appreciated. I compliment the USDA and USED for rapid
responses on waivers for various programs including the regular
communication from our USDA field offices and the ability to shape
programs as quickly as possible to meet the food security needs. I also
appreciate the quick responses by USED on flexibility around existing
funds and waivers for annual assessments and accountability as well as
the turn-around on applications for ESSERS funding and GEERS funding
provisions.
We need a level of trust among and between agencies across Federal,
state, and local government. This is not a moment of national divide,
but instead a necessary time to manage a crisis collectively. I cannot
emphasize enough need for leadership and unity. Nebraska has taken this
to heart, and I hope and expect that Congress will also. I continue to
work regularly with Governor Ricketts and the agencies under his
Nebraska Constitutional executive branch control. The Nebraska
Department of Education consists of a separately elected State Board of
Education and this independent, nonpartisan Board appoints the
commissioner of education. As such, some might expect division and
divide, but in Nebraska, we are constantly working together for what is
best for our state and constituents. The divide at this point is
primarily between those who want to work fast and those who want to
work even faster. We have weaknesses and we have made mistakes along
the way in this crisis. However, I am proud to continue to balance the
needs of our state with all of the energy to do what is best. There are
differences of opinion and the importance of proper investment in
public health and capacity for local governments is clear. During the
historic flooding of 2019, we witnessed the same spirit but nothing in
my lifetime compares to the challenges we face in this pandemic.
Unfortunately, I feel that the country does not have that same
unabashed willingness to lock arm-in-arm to address the challenges we
face. That is Nebraska's greatest risk at this point, and the Nation's.
CARES Act: Nebraska is still finalizing approaches for the CARES
Act (ESSER and GEER) and we are guided by our survey of schools and
communities as well as parents. The results have informed preliminary
decisions based on the top-five areas identified as priorities for our
schools and communities:
1. Enhance technology infrastructure (e.g., broadband, devices,
platforms, data privacy, etc.) for students and families
2. Build supports for planning for possible interruptions upon
returning to school and student and staff reentry
3. Ensure student nutritional needs are met
4. Provide professional learning to support an inclusive remote
learning environment and engagement, along with best practices
for different student groups
5. Create or expand mental, behavioral, and social emotional
supports (e.g., telehealth)
In addition to the CARES Act funds, we have been working across
agencies and with our non-profit partners to establish a community
response. This effort started early in the pandemic and we have been
working with communities across our state to leverage multiple partners
to respond to community needs. We are working across agencies including
Nebraska's Department of Health and Human Services, the Nebraska
Department of Education, the Nebraska Department of Labor, and numerous
entities and agencies as well as nonprofit sectors. We have benefited
from an effort organized to address children and family needs through
``Bring Up Nebraska'' under the Nebraska Children and Families
Foundation and assisted by Nebraska's First Lady, Susanne Shore. There
continues to be a high level of coordination across the state with
multiple community partners and agencies.
Equitable Services Conflict: One major, unexpected challenge in the
implementation of the CARES Act has been the U.S. Department of
Education's non-regulatory guidance on equitable services for non-
public schools. Before the Secretary released this guidance on April
30, we were planning in Nebraska to implement equitable services under
the plain language of the CARES statute, which expressly requires
districts to follow the traditional Title I approach to equitable
services. When ED released its guidance, however, which advances an
interpretation that conflicts with statute and would provide much more
funding to private schools in Nebraska and nationwide, including
wealthy schools that serve no low-income students, it caused much
confusion.
I understand and share the concern that many have expressed
regarding the Secretary's interpretation of CARES. By requiring school
districts to calculate the share of CARES funds based upon all students
and not just the low-income students considered under Title I, this
could have the effect of diluting CARES funds and directing them away
from kids who need the most help in both public and private schools. I
also understand, however, that students in private schools are also
affected by COVID-19, and they also deserve appropriate supports of
state and Federal Government to manage this crisis. This has presented
a conundrum and a major implementation challenge in my state and many
of our school districts.
Some students do need more support than others. It is my role to
promote equitable educational opportunities for all students and bridge
opportunity gaps that plague our system. Without thoughtful approaches
in this moment, we may limit our state's success as we emerge from this
pandemic. As we have worked to implement equitable CARES services in my
state, I have refused to allow us to be paralyzed, even temporarily, by
confusion at the Federal level while students across my state need
immediate support.
I have led engagement statewide with nonpublic schools in support
of a real-world solution that works best for all kids in my state who
need support, whether they attend public or private school. I have
encouraged private schools with limited student needs to carefully
assess those needs to better deploy CARES Act funds that Congress
targeted to public school districts on the basis of student poverty. At
the same time, I am working with our Governor to use state-level CARES
funding to provide improved broadband internet access, devices, and
digital resources to all students including those who attend nonpublic,
as they are also deserving of support in this crisis.
It is my responsibility as Commissioner to connect students and
families in need with the resources they need to survive this pandemic
and succeed in school and in life. I am working to successfully balance
our unique state and local needs with Federal rules and to engage my
longtime state and local partners on an effective path forward in
Nebraska. Nonetheless, I urge Congress to step in to further clarify
its intention regarding CARES Act equitable services and resolve
uncertainty and discord currently present in states across the country.
Additional Federal Funding and Ongoing Flexibility: I do not know
what we may yet face as a state and Nation but I believe we will have
even greater challenges ahead. It is imperative that Congress and the
Administration act with a unified regard for the challenges that are
happening in our local communities, counties, hospitals, public health
districts, and schools.
Our Nation's schools and communities will face untold challenges
this summer and into fall. Although I believe we will see that most
schools in Nebraska are able to operate this summer, we will face
extensive disruptions and interruptions. One ongoing effort where we
need more Federal support is in providing broadband access to the homes
of students and teachers. Although I know that broadband is not in the
jurisdiction of this Committee, it is apparent that lack of broadband
access it is a huge inequity for many of our students and households.
We in public education can no longer simply accept the educational
result of being forced to overcome every inequity in society based in
housing, labor, health, and infrastructure policy. It is critical that
we as a Nation address inequity where it persists if we are to overcome
the inequities in schools and results that surface.
I appreciate the waiver approach for assessment and accountability
for the past year but we also need to hold accountable the efforts of
sectors beyond education for the future. Nebraska intends to measure
the amount of unfinished learning and the persistence and potential
growth in an educational gap that is a matter of this circumstance.
However, I cannot stand by an artificial notion that education will
solve this challenge without a much more substantial lift of other
sectors overseen by the Federal Government including your Committee on
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. I have a great deal of respect
for Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray and deeply appreciate
the work of this Committee.
Future of Education: I do not believe that we should miss an
opportunity in the midst of this crisis to build back to the same
systemic inequities that have persisted for years and made visible in
educational assessment and accountability. Instead, as has become a bit
of a mantra with our partners in Nebraska, we need to ``build back
better.'' I truly believe that education is and must be a substantial
part of the effort to erase inequity in society but it will take a
whole societal approach to address these challenges. I believe we need
to redirect efforts to meet the most pressing needs of our students and
families while marking a new expectation of individual progress and
growth for each student.
Nebraska will need additional supports to manage the ongoing crisis
for our students and families. I am very concerned that we lack the
technology infrastructure to provide remote learning for sustained
periods of time as well as make the investments in the appropriate
resources and supports. Without additional Federal support dedicated to
K-12 education in future supplemental appropriations legislation, it
may be difficult for states that are already strapped for funding in
several sectors to meet the critical needs to keep schools open.
I am concerned that the economic impact of the pandemic will result
in necessary and sustained cuts in my state's K-12 education funding to
exceed 20 percent while at the same time our costs of providing
multiple platforms for learning will increase the need for teaching
staff time. This is a perfect storm as we face increased needs and
decreased resources. Recovery in Nebraska will require expenditures to
address compensatory education for months of lost services which will
strain the already limited resources for special education services.
Additionally, I am very concerned that teachers on the front lines
of the pandemic will not have the proper protections for conditions
that they may experience. Protecting teachers from the effects of
COVID-19 will require addressing individual accommodations that will
also limit an already strained workforce. This will require additional
contract time for some teachers and educational staff. This goes across
several areas including maintenance, custodial, food service, nursing,
mental health counseling, and every support service imaginable.
Conclusion: I cannot imagine a more challenging time in our society
than we currently face. However, I am optimistic because what I find in
Nebraska is a spirit of collaboration and cooperation; a desire to work
together to address challenges and a sense of urgency to establish what
is ultimately best for students and families.
______
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Blomstedt.
Ms. Superintendent Cordova, welcome.
STATEMENT OF SUSANA CORDOVA, SUPERINTENDENT, DENVER PUBLIC
SCHOOLS, DENVER, CO
Ms. Cordova. Good morning. Thank you. Chairman Alexander,
Ranking Member Murray, and Senators, I want to thank you for
the opportunity to share the Denver public schools experience
with COVID-19 public health crisis. As I reflect on the events
in our city and country over the past 3 months, and
particularly over the past 2 weeks, it is increasingly clear
that our systems, education and policing, healthcare and
housing, are fraught with inequities and systemic racism. We
now have the unique opportunity, unlike any other in our
lifetimes, to address these inequities and create a better
solution for our students and our communities.
On March 20th, we closed our schools for what we thought
would be an extended spring break. We then began to get a clear
indication of how highly contagious and deadly COVID-19 is.
With only 2 weeks until school resumed, we immediately focused
on building a full-time remote learning program for 93,000
students and 15,000 employees. In addition to keeping our
students and teachers connected for academic and social
development, we also focused on providing wraparound supports,
including serving over 732,000 meals and distributing over
55,000 laptops to students who needed them for remote learning.
Given the number of low-income families in Denver, ensuring
equitable Internet access for remote learning continues to be
one of our biggest unmet challenges. We go into next school
year knowing that some of our highest priority students, those
who need extra instructional attention, are falling further
behind during this extended remote period. In mid-May, we put
together a working group of principals and teachers to help us
plan together for the new school year. We surveyed our families
and staff, asking them for their input to help focus our
planning. The message we heard from that survey was loud and
clear, prioritize health and wellness first, then get kids back
into class.
As a result, we partnered with our local health experts to
create guidelines that have served as the foundation for all of
our return to school planning. Based on the current health
guidance, we are planning for a mix of in person and remote
learning when the school year starts in August. We have shared
three draft options that offer a mix of in person and remote
learning with all students having a minimum of 40 percent in
person learning and each of our options priority learners.
Students with disabilities, English learners, students who
are not on track to graduate will receive a full additional day
of in-person instruction each week. This is an important equity
measure that will help mitigate the impact of lost learning
from remote time. I am incredibly proud of the hard work and
relentless focus on equity and serving our families and
community over the past 3 months. And we received invaluable
support from colleagues across Denver, Colorado and the Nation,
including Chiefs for Change the Council of Great City Schools
whose partnership and sharing plans ideas and advocacy has been
invaluable. Governor Jared Polis in Colorado and his health and
education teams have been especially valuable partners. They
recognize the immense challenges we faced in developing remote
learning programs amidst the anxiety and rapidly changing
conditions of the COVID crisis.
I know we could not reopen school without the help we have
received from the Federal Government through the CARES Act. We
are currently facing a $61 million budget shortfall due to the
economic impact of COVID. The CARES Act will provide some help
in recovering lost revenue and the additional costs related to
COVID but we still have a lot of work to do to balance our
budget and ensure we have the resources to educate all of
Denver students while maintaining our focus on equity. At a
time when our kids and our community need us the most for
education and all of the support that our schools provide, we
are having to make massive cuts.
I appreciate Congress's efforts to provide additional
Federal funding for education and I would like to stress that
while it is very helpful, we know that our students will face
incredible challenges over the coming years and will need
critical and required compensatory services that we will be
obligated to provide despite our budget challenges. Our
educators are working hard for our kids and our community
during these challenging times.
Additional funding will be essential to make sure that our
kids grow academically and come through this pandemic with a
great future still ahead of them. Additional funds will help us
provide Internet and counseling, therapies and tutoring,
training for our staff, and technology for our students. We
must double down for those who have been most impacted by the
COVID crisis if we are to deliver on the promise of education
to create a more equitable society. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Susana Cordova follows:]
prepared statement of susana cordova
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the challenges that our
community in Denver has come together to work through and adjust to the
COVID-19 public-health crisis.
On March 12, facing the clear signs that the virus was beginning to
spread more quickly and getting closer to our campuses, we made the
decision to close schools 2 weeks ahead of our scheduled spring break.
At that time, as strange as it seems now, we were planning on
returning to our regular school calendar and operations during the
first week of April.
On March 20, with an even clearer indication of how potent and
deadly COVID is, we came to the realization that it would be a long
time before we could resume in-person instruction.
Then, with roughly 2 weeks to go until school resumed after spring
break, we turned our full attention, resources, and collaboration to
putting together a remote-learning program for 93,000 students--
children from around the globe, with a wide range of socio-economic
status and access to technology, and speaking many different languages
at home.
Because of the varying needs, backgrounds, and resources among our
families, we built a remote-learning plan that gave our educators some
flexibility to decide how best to connect with their students.
That turned out to be an effective approach, as we feel like we had
a strong last 2 months of the school year as 100 percent remote
learning.
Throughout the final 8 weeks of the 2019-20 school year, we save
average attendance rates around 87 percent, which is just a few
percentage points below the previous year's.
In addition to working hard to ensure we kept our teachers and
students connected for academic growth, we also focused on providing as
much of the wrap-around support and service we could, even with our
buildings closed.
Over the past 3 months, we've distributed over 732,000 meals,
through our own Food Services Team and in partnership with the city and
our DPS Foundation and its philanthropic partners.
The city-run health centers that operate in our schools have
remained open for telehealth and in-person appointments throughout the
spring at three DPS locations, providing care for all students who need
it at no cost to families.
We sent a technology survey to our families to ask them what they
needed to help with remote learning, and we purchased an additional
9,000 laptop computers to help meet the need.
To support our families with remote learning, we ended up
distributing over 55,000 laptops and 2,700 wifi hotspots.
Given the number of low-income families in Denver, ensuring
equitable internet access for remote learning continues to be one of
our biggest unmet challenges.
We go into next school year knowing that some of our highest-
priority students--those who need extra instructional attention--have
fallen further behind, because of our buildings being closed and not
being able to assure internet access across the city.
In mid-May, we put together a Workgroup of educators--primarily
principals and teachers--to help us put together a plan for the new
school year.
To help ensure we put together a plan that was attentive to the
priorities and needs of our family and staff, we sent out a community-
wide survey asking them what they wanted us to focus our planning on.
The message to us from that survey was loud and clear: prioritize
health and wellness.
As a result, we partnered with the leadership of Denver Health and
the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment to put together
a set of health standards that served as the foundation for all of our
return-to-school planning.
Those health standards include:
Wellness screenings upon arrival.
Health measures enforced throughout the school day:
wearing of masks; frequent hand-washing; continuous, thorough
cleaning and disinfecting of the entire school facility.
Classroom occupancy limited to allow for a minimum of
6 feet of physical distancing.
Limited student movement in the school throughout the
day and no large gatherings.
On top of those measures, we will be creating policies that provide
an extra level of protection and care for the DPS Community.
That will include creating specific policies for staff and students
who are at higher medical risk, either because of their own health or
because they live with someone who is at a higher medical risk.
If there is the possibility of a resurgence of cases in a
classroom, due to a student or staff member testing positive, health
officials are advising that it is likely that classroom will stop in-
person instruction immediately and move to entirely remote learning for
at least 14 days.
To help our families understand and start to get comfortable with
how different school will look under these health guidelines, we put
together a video in multiple languages to show how schools will look
and operate when they reopen.
With health and safety as our highest-priority, we are planning at
this time for a mix of in-person and remote learning when the school
year starts in August.
As much as we'd like to have a full return to full-time in-person
learning, we remain committed to following the advice of our health
experts and keeping health and wellness as the overriding priority in
our plans.
On Friday, May 29, we shared with our community 3 scheduling
options for a mix of in-person and remote learning:
A 2-day block each week (Tuesday-Wednesday or
Thursday-Friday, for example) of in-person learning, with the
remaining 3 days offering remote learning.
An alternating 2-day schedule (Tuesday-Thursday or
Wednesday-Friday) of in-person learning each week, with the
remaining 3 days offering remote learning.
And an alternating-week scheduling option, which
would provide four continuous days of in-person instruction in
1 week, along with 1 day of remote learning, followed by a full
5-day week of remote learning the following week.
Option 1: 2-Day Block (AA/BB) Schedule for In-Person Learning.
Students will have remote learning the remainder of the week.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday * Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Additional In- Group A Group A Group B Group B
Person
Learning for
Priority
Students
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Option 2: Alternate-Day (AB/AB) Schedule for In-Person Learning.
Students will have remote learning the remainder of the week.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday * Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Additional In- Group A Group B Group A Group B
Person
Learning for
Priority
Students
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Option 3: Full-Week Rotating (AAAA/BBBB) Schedule for In-Person Learning
Students will have remote learning the remainder of the week.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday * Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Week 1 Additional In- Group A Group A Group A Group A
Person Learning
for Priority
Students
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Week 2 Additional In- Group B Group B Group B Group B
Person Learning
for Priority
Students
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The day that's set aside for additional in-person learning for priority students may be switched to a different
day of the week.
It's important to note that in each of those options, students who
we consider to be priority learners--those who need additional
attention--will receive a full, additional day of in-person instruction
each week.
Those priority students are students with disabilities and students
who are in the early stages of learning English.
And then each school will work on including as many additional
student groups as possible for the extra day of in-person learning,
including:
Students who are not on track to graduate
Students from historically underserved populations
Students from low-income households
We feel that this is an important equity measure that will help
mitigate the effects of learning loss from the switch to remote
learning at the end of last school year.
Overall, each option provides for every student to receive at least
40 percent of their overall learning through in-person instruction,
with priority students receiving up to 60 percent in-person
instruction.
To get feedback from our staff and community, we sent another
followup survey with the details of these options.
That survey closes on Friday, and we will review the feedback from
the survey and some targeted focus groups we're doing this week to help
us reach the best decision on the final plan for returning to school in
August.
I'm extremely proud of Team DPS's hard work and relentless focus on
equity in serving our families and our community over the past 3
months.
We've remained both steadfast in our values and nimble in our
execution. And we've received invaluable support and collaboration from
our partners across Denver and Colorado.
Governor Jared Polis and his health and education teams have been
especially valuable partners.
They have provided strong leadership on the priority of community
health and limiting the impact of the virus. And they have been
responsive to and understanding of the immense challenges we've faced
in developing remote learning programs amidst the anxiety and rapidly
changing conditions of the COVID crisis.
We are also grateful for the help we've received from the Federal
Government through the CARES Act.
We're currently facing a $61 million budget shortfall due to the
economic impact of the COVID crisis, and the CARES Act will provide
some help in covering lost revenue and additional costs related to
COVID.
But we still have a lot of work to do to balance our budget and
ensure we have the resources to devote to educating all of Denver's
students while maintaining our priority of health and wellness and our
focus on equity.
Under normal conditions, we are stretched thin on resources.
We've had to go to Denver's voters 4 times over the past 15 years
to ask for additional local tax revenue in order to meet the needs of
our schools and students.
We're now, despite the highest unemployment since the Great
Depression, very likely going to still have to go back to voters to ask
for more local taxes on this November's ballot.
At a time when our kids and our community needs us the most--for
education and all of the support our schools provide--we're having to
make massive cuts.
We're doing our best to tighten our belts and streamline
operations.
The last thing we want to do is have staff reductions. We just went
through that last year, and we need our people to be able to provide
the best schooling and backup support we can right now.
That's why we're so appreciative and supportive of Governor Polis's
efforts to bring in additional Federal funding for education, through
these two pieces of proposed legislation:
The Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund would provide
Colorado with $44 million for grants to help local educational agencies
(LEAs), institutions of higher education (IHEs), and other education-
related entities that have been most significantly impacted by COVID-
19.
The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund would
provide $121 million to school districts with a focus on equity and
prioritizing the school districts that serve students with the highest
needs.
Our schools and our educators are working so hard to step up for
our kids and our community during these challenging times.
Additional funding with flexibility is essential to us and to our
families to make sure their kids are continuing to grow academically
and come through this pandemic with a great future still ahead of them.
As we look to next year, it will be essential for us to prioritize
the dual imperatives of supporting the social emotional needs of our
students, many of whom have been highly impacted by COVID-19, as well
as their academic needs. We know that in Denver, 70 percent of the
people who have contracted COVID-19 have been LatinX , and as a
district serving 60 percent LatinX students, we anticipate that, when
our students return at the end of the summer, we will be on the front
lines of supporting them as they process their experiences from this
long period of remote learning.
Thank you.
______
[summary statement of susana cordova]
Since mid-March, Denver Public Schools has turned its full
attention, resources, and collaboration to designing a completely
revamped instructional model in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The
overriding priority in this work has been and continues to be the
health and wellness of our students and staff, coupled with meeting the
academic and social emotional needs of our students.
In roughly 2 weeks at the end of March, we built a new, 100 percent
remote-learning program for Denver's 93,000 students.
We now go into next school year knowing that some of our highest-
priority students--those who need extra instructional attention--have
fallen further behind. We have focused our efforts to create and share
with our community 3 scheduling options for a mix of in-person and
remote learning for the fall, but we all know that our students learn
best when they are in school full time.
It's important to note that in each of those options, students who
we consider to be priority learners--those who need additional
attention--will receive a full, additional day of in-person instruction
each week. Overall, each option provides for every student to receive
at least 40 percent of their overall learning through in-person
instruction, with priority students receiving up to 60 percent in-
person instruction.
At a time when our kids and our community needs us the most--for
education and all of the support our schools provide--we're having to
make massive cuts.
We're appreciative of the Federal Government's relief efforts to
date and urge you to allocate additional resources and support to help
our educators and families recover from the COVID-19 crisis so that we
can realize the promise that education offers to all.
Our schools and our educators are working so hard to step up for
our kids and our community during these challenging times.
As we look to next year, it will be essential for us to prioritize
the dual imperatives of supporting the social emotional needs of our
students, as well as their academic needs. We know that in Denver, 70
percent of the people who have contracted COVID-19 have been LatinX,
and as a district serving 60 percent LatinX students, we anticipate
that, when our students return at the end of the summer, we will be on
the front lines of supporting them as they process their experiences
from this long period of remote learning.
______
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Superintendent Cordova.
Welcome, Secretary King.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN B. KING, JR., PRESIDENT AND CEO, THE
EDUCATION TRUST, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. King. Thank you so much, Chairman Alexander, Ranking
Member Murray, and Members of the Committee. Thank you for the
opportunity to testify on how we can ensure students,
educators, school staffs and their families are prioritized as
we consider the safest, most equitable way to reopen our
Nation's schools in the mist of COVID-19. Before discussing
this in more detail, however, I am compelled to lift up that
when our students return to school buildings, they will need
additional support as they grapple with the continued reality
of racism in America and the legacy of over 400 years of anti-
Black--the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the
Ahmaud Arbery have once again sent the message to Black
students that their lives are devalued.
As schools reopen, our Nation's students of color and their
families also find themselves during a pandemic that
disproportionately impacts their health and safety mired in an
economic crisis that disproportionately affects their financial
well-being and living in a country that too often still
struggles to recognize their humanity. School closures due to
the pandemic, although unquestionably necessary to protect
public health, had a disparate impact on students of color,
students from low-income backgrounds, students with
disabilities and English learners.
Historically, underserved students have disproportionately
experienced less access to devices and to Internet service,
teachers with less support around online learning in under-
resourced districts, parents less able to telework and support
their learning during the day, and more so emotional stressors.
Despite the heroic efforts of many educators, many students and
families have not received the academic or social emotional
support they need. As we look together as a Nation toward the
2021 school year, we must ensure that all students, and
especially our most vulnerable, have the educational resources
they need. We urge Congress to take the following actions.
First, increase Federal investment in education. State and
local education budgets have been and will continue to be
devastated by the loss of tax revenue. Without Congressional
action, there will be no conceivable way to avoid layoffs and
hiring freezes disproportionately impacting educators and staff
in high poverty schools. And the public health requirements to
ensure safe reopening of schools won't be able to be met in too
many places. Over 70 stakeholders have called on Congress to
allocate at least $500 billion for state and local Governments,
including at least $175 billion for K-12 education.
Second, ensure states and districts do not walk away from
the students who have been hit hardest by the crisis. New
Federal stimulus funding should include a strong maintenance of
effort for vision and add a maintenance of equity provision to
apply to both states and districts. Together, these
requirements would maintain education spending at the same
percentage of state spending as before the pandemic and shield
the highest needs schools and districts from the worst cuts.
Third, ensure distance learning if possible for every
student. Before the pandemic, 79 percent of white households
had broadband access compared with only 66 percent of Black
families and 61 percent of Hispanic families. To ensure home
access to broadband for students as possible, Congress should
allocate at least $4 billion to the FCC's E-Rate program to
provide hotspots and access to bandwidth. Fourth, help schools
and teachers address the significant learning loss caused by
the pandemic.
Congress should allocate dedicated funds to help schools
add more learning time such as through summer school and
extended school day for school year or after school programs.
Fifth, address students' nutritional, social, emotional and
mental health needs. Congress must extend and expand the
pandemic EBT program to enable more children to receive meals
while not in school and ensure educators' social, emotional and
mental health needs are met through funding additional
counselors and mental health professionals.
Finally, Congress must not step back from its important
role in protecting students' civil rights. ESSA and IDEA exist
because the Federal Government wanted to ensure all students
have equitable access to a high quality education. That goal
has not changed even with the current crises. Permitting
blanket waivers to either law is dangerous and unnecessary. We
also urge Congress to ensure that the Department of Education
follows congressional intent in applying the Title I Equitable
Services provision of the CARES Act.
The Department's current interpretation would steer money
away from low income public school students and into the hands
of wealthier private schools, an idea rejected by several
states and one the Committee should reject as well. We have the
public health data to help drive decisionmaking on when
students return to school. Now, we need to target the
appropriate resources and supports to help students, educators,
and school staff recover and prevent any further widening of
inequities.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today, and
I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of John B. King Jr. follows:]
prepared statement of john b. king jr.
Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, and Members of the
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on how we can
ensure that students, educators, administrators and staff, and their
families are prioritized as we consider the safest, most equitable way
to reopen our Nation's schools in the midst of COVID-19.
Before discussing this in more detail, however, I'm compelled to
lift up that when our students return to school buildings, they will
need additional supports as they grapple with the continued reality of
racism in America and the legacy of over 400 years of anti-Blackness.
The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery have
once again sent the message to Black students that their lives are
devalued. Over the past several weeks, our Nation has viewed the
strength and message of the Black Lives Matter movement on full
display. Many of our Nation's kids have been on the forefront of this
movement in their communities and in their classrooms prior to this
pandemic. As schools reopen, we face more than keeping students and
staff safe during a pandemic--we face a moment where our Nation's
students of color and their families also find themselves enduring a
pandemic that disproportionately impacts their health, mired in an
economic crisis that disproportionately affects their financial well-
being, and living in a country that too often still struggles to
recognize their humanity.
While our Nation faces this pandemic together, it is important to
recognize that we do not confront it with an equitable distribution of
resources, and the impact of the virus does not impact all communities
and groups of people in the same way. Relatedly, we see the coronavirus
has only intensified inequities in education, in employment, in
healthcare, and in other areas that already disproportionately impact
people of color and low-income families.
From access to a strong and reliable internet connection, to the
more than 20 million students who depend on schools for access to
meals, we know how much our children rely on the resources and supports
that their schools and educators provide to them on a day-to-day basis.
The pandemic has crippled this vital structure as our kids know and
depend on it.
We also know that not everyone has the privilege to work from home
in accordance with social distancing or states' stay-at-home orders,
and that those who are deemed ``essential'' and are required to place
themselves at risk are disproportionately individuals of color or those
from working-class, low-income backgrounds. Only roughly 1 in 5 Black
workers and 1 in 6 Latino workers are able to work from home, compared
with nearly 1 in 3 White workers. Research shows that predominantly
Black counties account for over half of coronavirus cases in the United
States, and nearly 60 percent of total deaths. It also shows that
social determinants--including employment, access to health insurance
and medical care, and poor air and water quality--are more predictive
of infection and death from COVID-19 than are underlying health
conditions. In Chicago, while Black residents are about 30 percent of
the city's population, they account for nearly 70 percent of COVID-19
deaths.
The economic impact on communities of color has been substantial. A
new Associated Press poll finds that over 60 percent of Hispanic
Americans say they have experienced some household income loss as a
result of the pandemic, including job losses, unpaid leave, cuts in
pay, and fewer scheduled hours compared with 46 percent of Americans
overall. While 37 percent of Hispanic Americans and 27 percent of Black
Americans say they've been unable to pay at least one type of bill as a
result of the coronavirus outbreak, only 17 percent of White Americans
say the same.
Inequities do not exist in a vacuum. They are the result of racism
and bias baked into our institutions and our structures, from
employment to housing to the healthcare system to the education system.
We know, for example, that even prior to the pandemic, K-12 students
who attend high-need schools were already receiving less of everything
that research and experience show are vital: from access to qualified
teachers, to school counselors, to rigorous coursework, to other
supports necessary for their success. Across the Nation, we're seeing
schools that are struggling with the capacity to move to distance
learning, and teachers and administrators who may not have familiarity
with learning management tools. Parents and educators alike are
searching for promising practices related to online instruction, and
there are several schools and districts that lack large-scale
experience with education technology. This spring, we saw many high
school students take Advanced Placement tests from home with the hope
of using those tests for college, but not every student has the same
chance to take an AP course or test. Additionally, not every student
has a compatible device or access to high-speed internet to make online
learning viable. In states where schools are closed for months or even
longer, students' learning loss, particularly students who are already
vulnerable, will carry far into the future, unless directly addressed
through expanded learning opportunities.
Confronted with the uncertainty about the nature of COVID-19 and
how long it may prevent the full resumption of in-person learning,
parents and families are understandably concerned not only about their
children's health and well-being, but also about their education at
this unprecedented time. The Education Trust just conducted polls of
parents in New York, Washington, Texas, and California. These polls
show that nearly 90 percent of parents are worried that their children
will fall behind academically because of school closings. This is a
valid concern in the transition to distance education when we know that
before the pandemic, 79 percent of White households had broadband
access, while only 66 percent of Black families and 61 percent of
Hispanic families had home broadband service.
The Education Trust is grateful that many educators across the
country have made one important shift during this crisis--to show their
students even more clearly that they care, from asking about their
students' well-being and connecting families with resources to
providing some levity through fun virtual interactions with their
students. This relationship-building between teachers and students was
already happening in many places, but it was not happening nearly
enough in places that served a majority of students of color and
students from low-income backgrounds. That connection is essential. Ed
Trust's parent poll in New York revealed that 95 percent of parents
reported it would be helpful to have regular contact with or access to
their child's teacher, but only 52 percent said their child's school
has made that available. Our California poll revealed that Black
parents were less likely to have been contacted by their child's
teacher than parents of all other racial groups. We need to make sure
this is something that is cherished in places where students face the
most obstacles.
We have work to do and a responsibility to insist that the Federal
Government, state governments, local governments, and school districts
invest resources in mitigating the effects of this crisis and that they
do so with a focus on equity. Although the CARES Act (S. 3548)
allocated roughly $31 billion for education purposes, it will not be
enough to fully address the challenges that students, districts, and
schools are currently facing, and will continue to face.
More Federal Investments in Public Education Are Needed to Reopen
Schools Safely
States and localities--which provide the vast majority of K-12
education funding--are bracing for major budget cuts as revenues
continue to plummet. After the Great Recession in 2008, over 300,000
educators lost their jobs, and inflation adjusted state funding per
pupil was still lower in 2017 than 2008. The cuts this time may be even
larger. Our partners at the Learning Policy Institute estimate, based
on projected state revenue losses during the end of this fiscal year
and next, that K-12 systems might need as much as $230 billion to
stabilize their budgets. And those estimates are focused solely on
making districts whole; they do not incorporate the additional costs
districts face as a direct result of responding to COVID-19, including
sanitizing schools and providing devices and materials for distance
learning.
That is why over 70 education stakeholders have demanded Congress
allocate at least $500 billion for state and local stabilization, and
require that a proportional amount of these funds be directed toward K-
12 spending. As K-12 education makes up, on average, 35 percent of
state general funds, Congress should allocate at least $175 billion for
K-12 education.
These targeted Federal stabilization funds, as well as the
additional provisions below, are necessary to ensure that schools are
able to reopen safely by ensuring that states and districts can provide
all schools--particularly underfunded, high-poverty schools--with the
resources they need to implement the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
considerations or local health authority's guidance for keeping
students and staff safe (e.g., adequate testing and contact tracing,
use of PPE, protections for at-risk staff and students, social
distancing, etc.).
Ensure States and Districts Do Not Walk Away from the Students Who Have
Been Hit Hardest by This Crisis
This Federal stabilization money must be accompanied by strong
requirements to ensure that states maintain their investments in
education; to require that states and districts minimize cuts to their
highest need districts and schools; and to prevent the U.S. Department
of Education from steering funding away from low-income, public school
students.
Specifically, the Federal Government must include maintenance of
effort provisions that require state education spending to remain at
least the same percentage of the state's total spending, even if the
state's overall budget shrinks. Further, if spending cuts are
necessary, the Federal Government must protect our highest-need schools
by requiring both states and districts that receive additional Federal
funding to show that any necessary cuts are smaller per student in the
highest-need districts and schools than the rest of the state or
district.
Finally, we've already seen the U.S. Department of Education advise
states and school districts to steer Federal funding away from low-
income, public school students into the hands of wealthier private
schools. Therefore, we urge Congress to prevent forthcoming regulations
that would allow ED's misinterpretation of the Title I equitable
services provision within the CARES Act to be used to direct over $1.3
billion more to private schools, as forthcoming data from Learning
Policy Institute will show, regardless of whether those schools are
serving students from low-income backgrounds. Several states have
already rejected this approach. The Education Trust thanks the
committee leadership for expressing opposition to this idea and urges
action to prevent that outcome.
Ensure That Distance Learning is Possible for Every Student
Before the pandemic, 79 percent of White households had broadband
access, while only 66 percent of Black families and 61 percent of
Hispanic families had home broadband service. More than one-third of
all households with school-age children that earn less than $30,000
annually lack high-speed internet access. Additionally, Microsoft
estimates that as many as 163 million people do not use the internet at
broadband speeds, burdening students even further.
It is likely that distance learning will continue through the
summer, the beginning of next year, and intermittently if new cases of
the virus emerge. And the data we have from this spring is alarming.
For example, data from California showed that 38 percent of low-income
families and 29 percent of families of color are concerned about access
to distance learning because they don't have reliable internet at home,
and 50 percent of low-income and 42 percent of families of color lack
sufficient devices at home to access distance learning. Therefore,
states and districts must have a plan in place to ensure that all
students, including students from low-income backgrounds, have access
to reliable, high-speed internet and devices and IT support to connect
to virtual learning opportunities, and that educators have the support
they need to effectively teach, assess, and connect with their students
remotely. The lack of equitable access to broadband is not only a
distance learning issue, but also an emergency preparedness issue in
the event of further widespread closures.
Congress must allocate at least $4 billion through an Emergency
Connectivity Fund via the FCC's Federal E-Rate program to expand access
to broadband services, Waif hotspots, and devices to ensure all
students have the ability to access online learning at home in the
event of continued disruptions, and Congress should encourage districts
to implement multilingual digital learning platforms to be fully
inclusive. Congress should also encourage private companies to enable
home broadband access for the students in the communities they serve
during the pandemic at no cost.
Address Learning Loss Through Expanded Learning Opportunities
Students will likely return to classrooms with significant learning
loss, which schools and teachers must be prepared to assess and
address. Schools serving larger populations of students from low-income
backgrounds are far less likely to be able to provide online learning
opportunities for all students and, therefore, must find a way to make
up for lost instructional time.
The stabilization funding described above--meant to make districts
and schools whole--will not be sufficient to accelerate learning to
make up for the billions of hours of instructional time that students
lost this spring. That is why Congress should allocate dedicated funds
to help schools facilitate expanded learning time, including summer
school (online or in-person based on the most recent public health This
additional funding must be targeted to prioritize the equity gaps we
know have been exacerbated by COVID-19 and to prioritize students,
including students from low-income backgrounds, students with
disabilities, English learners, and students experiencing homelessness
or foster care, who have been most directly impacted by lost in-person
instructional time. Additionally, educators will need sufficient time
to prepare for the next school year and the substantially different
work environment that they will be faced with, including altered or
expanded school schedules, additional remote instruction, and
curricular changes. This professional learning and planning time comes
at a cost; Congress must allocate funding to cover these costs.
Address Students' and Educators' Social, Emotional, Mental, and
Physical Needs
All students are experiencing stress, anxiety, and learning
obstacles due to school closures and other COVID-19 related-stressors.
Every family is feeling the strain of ensuring students receive the
care, attention, and educational resources they need to thrive. Parents
and guardians are scrambling to maintain their own jobs, meet their
families' basic needs, identify childcare, and help engage their
students in meaningful online learning. And while these challenges may
be universal, they are even greater for some students, including
students from low-income backgrounds and students of color, who already
face steep economic and health inequities previously mentioned.
Therefore, in addition to academic learning, schools must prioritize
and center the social, emotional, mental, and physical health needs of
these historically underserved students upon return to school.
At a minimum, we must ensure students' basic needs are met,
including the more than 20 million students who depend on schools to
get meals every day. Congress can directly address food insecurity of
students and their families through the Pandemic Electronic Benefits
Transfer (P-EBT) program to ensure students' nutritional needs are met
throughout this summer and into the next school year. The program must
also be expanded to cover children under 5 years old who are not
currently included in this program due to the free-and-reduced-price
lunch eligibility metric.
Beyond these basic needs, we know that over 75 percent of students
rely on schools for mental health supports. In order to provide these
supports to students, schools must provide a positive and welcoming
school climate, as well as quality dropout prevention and re-engagement
programs--especially for the most vulnerable students. Therefore, it is
critical that Congress allocate additional Federal funding to support
school counselors, mental health workers, psychologists, and social
workers in the highest-need districts, and allocate resources to train
teachers to understand and address the negative impacts of COVID-19 on
students, especially those of color and from low-income backgrounds.
In addition to student health, it is critical to remember that we
must ensure the safety and well-being of administrators, educators, and
support personnel. Educators are experiencing greater stress and
anxiety during COVID-19. When educators were asked in a recent survey
conducted by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence about the most
frequent emotion they felt each day of remote learning, their top five
responses were: ``anxious, fearful, worried, overwhelmed and sad,''
with anxiety being the most mentioned emotion. These emotions can often
lead to teacher burnout. Therefore, we must support our educators by
providing them with emotional support and mental health resources.
Congress Must Protect Students' Civil Rights
Finally, it is important to note that during this hectic and
uncertain time, Congress must not step back from its important role in
protecting students' civil rights. Therefore, Congress must not provide
blanket waivers of critical requirements under the Every Student
Succeeds Act (ESSA) or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA) that protect all students' civil rights. ESSA and IDEA were
designed to ensure all students have equitable access to a high-quality
education. That goal has not changed even with the current crises this
country faces. Permitting blanket waivers to either law is dangerous
and unnecessary.
The existing waiver authority within ESSA provides sufficient
authority for the U.S. Department of Education to meet states' needs.
As ED has already acknowledged, the impact of COVID-19 will affect each
state differently; therefore, case-by-case consideration of each
state's needs remains the most appropriate path moving forward.
Conclusion
In closing, we cannot underestimate the impact that this crisis
will have--and has already had--on our children, particularly our
children of color and children from low-income backgrounds. They and
their families are already bearing the brunt of the crisis.
In a national survey by Hunger Free America, 37 percent of parents
reported cutting the size of meals or skipping meals for their children
because they did not have enough money for food between mid-March and
mid-April, when the survey was released.
More than 111,000 people in the United States have died of the
coronavirus, and more than 33 million Americans have filed for
unemployment during the pandemic. Both in terms of deaths and lost
jobs, people of color are disproportionately impacted.
When students do eventually return to brick-and-mortar buildings,
there will be students sitting next to each other with very different
progress in learning--one whose parents had the resources and
flexibility to help them continue to learn while school was closed, and
one whose parents had to work, possibly on the front lines, to make
ends meet during the crisis, who may not have had high-speed internet
or an appropriate device at home, and who could not focus on their
education because of other responsibilities they had to juggle at home.
If after this pandemic, we go back to ``normal''--obscuring the
inequities we know exist--we will have learned nothing. ``Normal''
should not be what we aim to return to--we have to provide the
resources and supports that ensure equity gaps are closed for good.
If we fail to educate and protect students of color and students
from low-income families, we have failed as a Nation. We can choose to
continue to shut out communities of color and low-income communities or
we can make changes to allow for a more inclusive America--one that
protects the most underserved and allows everyone to reach their full
potential.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
______
[summary statement of john b. king jr.]
Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, and members of the
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on how we can
ensure that students, educators, administrators and staff, and their
families are prioritized as we consider the safest, most equitable way
to reopen our Nation's schools in the midst of COVID-19.
This pandemic has intensified already existing gaps in access to
equitable education. As we approach the upcoming school year, we must
acknowledge the reality that not every school will be able to reopen
and operate as normal. There are massive challenges confronting schools
and families--severe looming cuts to education budgets nationwide, a
lack of consistent student broadband access to enable distance
learning, and substantial learning loss that must be measured to
understand how we can remedy it for our kids.
In response to these challenges, we urge Congress to take the
following actions:
First: Increase Federal investment in education. State and local
education budgets have been--and will continue to be--devastated by the
loss of tax revenue. Without congressional action, there will be no
conceivable way to avoid the same patterns we saw during the last
recession, including layoffs and hiring freezes disproportionately
impacting educators and staff at high-poverty schools, and the public
health requirements to ensure a safe re-opening of a school won't be
able to be met in too many places. The requirements to ensure a safe
re-opening of school--modified transportation, restructured school
schedules, personal protective equipment, regular deep cleaning, and
more--will also require additional resources. Over 70 stakeholders have
called on Congress to allocate at least $500 billion for state and
local governments, including at least $175 billion for K-12 education.
Second: Ensure states and districts do not walk away from the very
students who have been hit hardest by this crisis. New Federal stimulus
funding should include a strong maintenance of effort provision and add
a maintenance of equity provision to apply to both states and
districts. Together, these requirements would maintain education
spending at the same percentage of state spending as before the
pandemic and shield the highest need schools and districts from the
worst cuts.
Third: Ensure distance learning is possible for every student.
Before the pandemic, 79 percent of White households had broadband
access, compared with only 66 percent of Black families and 61 percent
of Hispanic families. The lack of equitable access to broadband is not
only an immediate distance learning issue and an obstacle to effective
implementation of hybrid models in the fall, but an emergency
preparedness issue in the event of further widespread closures. To
ensure home access to broadband for students is possible, Congress
should allocate at least $4 billion to the FCC's E-Rate program to
provide hotspots and devices for students who require them. Congress
should also encourage districts to implement multilingual digital
learning platforms to be fully inclusive, and encourage private
companies to enable home broadband access for the students in the
communities they serve during the pandemic at no cost. This investment
should also be partnered with professional development for educators so
they can effectively teach, assess, and connect with their students
remotely.
Fourth: Help schools and teachers address the significant learning
loss caused by the pandemic.
Congress should allocate dedicated funds to help schools add more
learning time, such as through summer school, an extended school day or
school year, or afterschool programming.
Fifth: Address students' nutritional, social, emotional, and mental
health needs. Congress must extend and expand the Pandemic EBT program
to enable more children to receive meals while not in school, and
ensure students' and educators' socioemotional and mental health needs
are met through funding additional counselors and other mental health
professionals in schools.
Finally: Congress must not step back from its important role in
protecting students' civil rights. ESSA and IDEA exist because the
Federal Government wanted to ensure all students have equitable access
to a high-quality education. That goal has not changed even with the
current crises. Permitting blanket waivers to either law is dangerous
and unnecessary. We also urge Congress to ensure that the Department of
Education follows congressional intent in applying the Title I
equitable services provision to the CARES Act. The Department's current
interpretation would steer money away from low-income public school
students and into the hands of wealthier private schools, an idea
rejected by several states and one the committee should reject as well.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I look
forward to taking your questions.
______
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. King, and thanks to all the
witnesses. We will now move to a round of questions from the
Senators. I would say to each of the Senators and the
witnesses, there is a small box in the bottom of your screen.
There is a time clock and has 5 minutes on it. If you would
stay as close to that as possible, then all the Senators will
have a chance to talk with the witnesses. Let me begin with you
Dr. Schwinn.
We talked about testing. Tennessee, as you said, has been a
leader in testing. It is in the top 12 or 13. Tennessee has
tested about more than 1.5 million Tennesseans for COVID-19.
But as we come up on the school year, we have 1 million
children going back to school. Governor Lee tells me that the
demand for COVID tests is down in Tennessee, maybe because it
is so available.
His motto is if in doubt, get a test, and people can get
one wherever they want one at their public health center. What
plans are you making for systemic--for systematic testing of
the 1 million children in Tennessee?
Ms. Schwinn. Thank you for the question and letting me
highlight I think the great work happening in Tennessee related
to testing. Yesterday we had one of the highest number of folks
come out and get testing and I think we have seen some
incredible efforts across the state. A couple things I would
love to highlight. So Tennessee has been in the top 12 in terms
of per capita testing and in the bottom 12 in terms of
positive----
The Chairman. I only have 5 minutes so what I am trying to
get--I have got several questions. What I am trying to get to
is what are you going to do about the 1 million students?
Ms. Schwinn. So having that testing available across the
state, we will continue will be able to work closely with
unified command and our Tennessee National Guard to be able to
make that available for staffs and students. And then we are
also working to partner to provide free PPE and thermometers to
any school district who wants them for all students and staff.
The Chairman. Okay. The--you and I talked yesterday about
your plan for what would take for each of your 1,800 schools to
go back to school safely. Have you figured out about what the
cost per school district would be for that?
Ms. Schwinn. Sure. So we have spent some time looking at
the variety. We have districts as small as a 130 and as big as
over 100,000. What we have found is that the per student cost
for hygiene, disinfecting materials including wipes, potential
face masks, etc., is anywhere from $100 to $150 per student
depending on the decisions at the local level. On top of that
you have nutrition, transportation services, and custodial
services, which will vary depending on whether districts have
their own bus fleet or contract out.
The same thing with custodial. What we are finding is that
for districts that are approximately 3,000 to 4,000 students,
early estimates, which are consistent with other national
organizations, is that it would be anywhere from one to $1 to
$1.75 million for a district for the year.
The Chairman. That is fairly consistent with what the
national study by the administrators is. So the total for
Tennessee, did you add that up what the total bill might be for
the state?
Ms. Schwinn. Yes, sir. So when we looked at that again
acknowledging the fluctuations based on local decisions and
contracts that they may or may not have, the cost of Tennessee
will be somewhere in the $100 million, $175--I am sorry, $100
million to $175 million. Certainly the CARES Act funding that
is coming to our districts will help to support some of that
but it is a significant need.
The Chairman. Well, would you do me a favor and I am going
to ask Dr. Blomstedt to do the same in his capacity as the
national head of the Chief State School Officers. Congress has
already appropriated $13.5 billion, $216 million came to
Tennessee for K through 12. The states have gotten $150
billion. Usually about a third of the state budget or more goes
for schools.
So what I am interested in is how much of the money we have
already given you can be used to help that $1.5 to $1.8 million
per school district and how much more is required? One more
question of you before I go to Dr. Blomstedt. Liability. What
do you need for the Federal Government to do about liability
for teachers or school, personnel. Let's say a kid takes off
his mask and coughs on a student, and the student comes down
with COVID, and the parent sues the teacher or the principal.
Does there need to be some sort of Governmental action for
liability protection?
Ms. Schwinn. Sir, so in Tennessee teachers are covered
under the tort liability per state law. Our legislature is
currently exploring legislation on expanded qualified immunity
specifically related to COVID so I think continuing to support
districts and feeling confident to welcome students back to
school is going to be incredibly important and I am incredibly
proud of our legislators for taking up that work.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Schwinn. Dr. Blomstedt, I am
out of time, but let me ask you if I may following, if your
organization would submit to our Committee about what you think
it would cost to help all the school districts go back to
school safely, just those specific things, and how much of that
can be covered by the $13 billion that we have already given
directly to K through 12 and $150 billion we have already given
to states? I think we would all agree that there is not much of
anything we could think of to do that would help all families,
all students, especially minority students, than to be able to
open school in August. And I want to make sure that the Federal
Government does its part. Senator Murray.
Senator Murray. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you to all of you for your testimony today. You know, due to
the continued impact and potential spread of COVID-19, it is
likely that some schools will need to keep their physical
buildings closed either fully or partially for all or some as
our states and districts and schools and educators move to
adjust quickly in the face of this unprecedented pandemic.
But we do have to acknowledge the support for quality of
distance education provided to students this spring varied
significantly across classrooms or schools or districts and
states, and some of the recent research and media reports
indicate that students facing some of the greatest challenges
during COVID-19 are low-income students, students of color,
students with disabilities, English learners, homeless, youth
in foster care, migrant children. Also received less access to
high-quality instruction in many instances.
Secretary King, let me ask you, what are the lessons we can
learn from the successes and failures of distance learning over
the past several months and what should states and districts be
doing now to plan for the likely need for distance learning
this fall?
Mr. King. I think what we have seen is that devices remain
a challenge--access to devices remain a challenge for families,
yet as you described you often have the situation where maybe
there is one device in the home, but there are multiple kids
and they need to be able to use devices simultaneously----
Senator Murray. Or parents, they need the device too.
Mr. King. Exactly, exactly. Bandwidth remains a challenge
and certainly Commissioner Schwinn pointed out the challenge in
rural communities. We also see in lots of high needs urban
communities a lack of bandwidth. We also see places where cable
companies won't allow the family to access Internet services if
they have an unpaid balance on their cable bill. The result is
those families are without Internet access.
Tackling the digital divide is essential. We also know that
teachers in under-resourced areas didn't have the professional
development and support they needed and so we need to make an
investment in teacher professional development this summer so
that we can prepare for the next school year effectively. I
think given the public health context and students with pre-
existing health conditions, it is almost certain that every
school district will need some degree of hybrid learning and so
we should prepare for that eventuality.
Senator Murray. Okay. You know, estimates show that
students in grades 3 to 8 could return to school this fall,
only retaining 70 percent of their reading progress from the
previous school year and lose anywhere from half to all of
their academic growth in math.
This brings closures and the inconsistent support for
distance learning programs are projected to cause achievement
gaps that existed before this pandemic to rise significantly.
Secretary King, let me have you speak to what policies can
states or districts and schools put in place now to measure
learning loss, whether schools are physically open or providing
distance learning, and what types of promising practices can
you talk about to help tailor academic intervention?
Mr. King. Well, we certainly need diagnostic assessments to
have a sense of where kids are and what ground they have lost.
And Commissioner Schwinn in Tennessee and Commissioner Muras in
Texas are making available state funds to support those
diagnostic assessments that will be very helpful to districts.
But once we know students are behind we have to do something
about it.
What some of our international peers have done is open
school early for the highest needs students, students with
disabilities, students who are significantly behind
academically. That may be a part of the strategy. Summer
distance learning may be a part of the strategy. Randi
Weingarten and I wrote an op-ed calling for a significant
investment by districts in summer learning.
We also know that next school year students will need more
time to make up for what they have lost and that will mean
adapting the school schedule to allow for extended learning
time. We also know intensive tutoring has a very strong
evidence-based. One of the reasons why I am very supportive of
efforts to expand Americorps to provide more tutors in schools
to support kids learning.
Senator Murray. Okay. Thank you. Finally, let me just start
this question by first saying thank you to all the educators
and support staff that have been navigating this crisis.
Surveys are showing that nearly two of every three educators
have health concerns about resuming in person instruction this
fall. 18 percent of educators, 27 percent of principles are
over the age of 55 and according to CDC the older adults are at
increased risk.
Many educators have pre-existing conditions. They are
worried about the health of their family members. They face
childcare and hardships related to the virus and I heard
someone suggested older educators, many of whom are very
passionate about their work, should retire early. Well that is
callous and unacceptable to me as an answer. So maybe Dr.
Schwinn or Dr. Blomstedt. I just have a few seconds left. I
will go with Dr. Blomstedt. What steps should school districts
and states take to make sure all educators feel safe and
secure?
Mr. Blomstedt. First of all, it is absolutely critical that
schools that are working on the reopening plans or working with
their teachers, we actually have kind of embedded safety
committees that include teachers so that is imperative. But
really working with each teacher. I really have a people first
strategy working with our agency. I have really tried to
promote that with our schools as well, that they are asking
each teacher about what their concerns are and making those
accommodations as best they possibly can to come back to the
school facility.
Senator Murray. I am out of time but maybe there are other
witnesses who could respond to me in writing and talk to me
about how schools are dealing with that.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Murray.
Senator Cassidy.
Senator Cassidy. Thank you. Thank you all for all you are
doing. I have always observed that children have the lowest
risk for significant complications of coronavirus but in terms
of opportunity cost, they are bearing the highest cost. You are
only five once to be able to understand a word without
definition and yet to know the definition--all our brains are
like that now but they are not. But those children are so thank
you for taking this on.
I am a physician and so I am kind of approaching this from
twofold. One, as a physician and talking about public health,
and second as someone who is trying to help a school reopen
back in Louisiana. Now, Ms. Cordova, one issue with your block
testing Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Monday and Friday--a lot
of parents work, that was part of the opening testimony. What
do you do for those kids whose parents work, but the child
would not be in school two to 3 days a week? Is there any
accommodation or is it just kind of the way it is working out?
Ms. Cordova. Yes, thank you for the question. It definitely
is one of the complexities that we are grappling with. We know
it is going to be important for kids to be in school for
parents to be able to go back to work. Right now our state is
under a safer at home order where businesses are only allowed
to have 50 percent of their working force in a building at a
time.
Our hope is that in addition to trying to partner with
childcare organizations that we can help sync up schedules for
families so that when families are working from home, their
children can also be at home. Obviously our goal is to try to
get as many kids into school as possible----
Senator Cassidy. So let me ask you--I have limited time,
let me ask you, I suspect many of your parents though cannot
work from home if it is a typical kind of public school
setting. And so to what--who is going to pay for their child
care, for example? Would that be the school's responsibility or
do parents have to do that?
Ms. Cordova. We are trying to work with local partners to
see how we can provide more childcare. We are really stymied by
the size of our buildings to be able to have the number of
students in our classrooms given the health----
Senator Cassidy. Got it. Mr. Blomstedt, or Dr. Blomstedt I
am sorry, you mentioned that there are some areas of Nebraska
in which there has not yet been a case. Is this to say that in
those areas that there would be no disruption at all to the
school? Because really what I read from the public health
experts, if you have an extremely low incidence, then you
actually continue life as normal, particularly when it is
returning to schooling. Is this the practice pattern that you
have taken?
Mr. Blomstedt. Yes. Across Nebraska we are working with our
local health officials and coming up with essentially a risk
dial. If there is evidence of spread that there will be at
certain levels of risk essentially a green, yellow, orange, red
type of risk dial.
If we see extensive spread, it is going to need additional
accommodations for health and safety. If there is very little,
there is more of an attention to the individual health and what
is happening in the school. So our intention is to be able to
balance that based on the conditions locally.
Senator Cassidy. But if locally there is no spread the
schools would open as it normally would open, correct?
Mr. Blomstedt. We actually have had those conversations.
Many of those places are doing that. We believe masks and other
accommodations are going to be necessary all the time just to
continue on that limited spread.
Senator Cassidy. I will tell you that is probably not what
your health expert would recommend but that is up for you and
your public health expert. I could ask this of any of you but I
will ask it maybe to you, Ms. Cordova. Senator Menendez and I
have put together something called the Smart Act which would
help state and local Governments restore tax dollars lost
because of the economic shutdown requested by the Federal
Government.
I am gathering with all this expense and with the economic
lockdown that you suggest is still going on in Denver that
without such aid, it will be difficult to rehire--excuse me, to
do these programs, but let me ask specifically, also I have
read that a lot of educators have been laid off. It is unclear
to me whether or not they have just been furloughed, they are
out for the summer, or no, you are laid off, we don't have any
money and we are not bringing you back.
The program that you outlined seems like it is going to
require more personal not less. Do you have the financial
capacity? And if there is time I ask this of the other
panelists as well.
Ms. Cordova. Absolutely. We do not have the financial
capacity to do everything that we would like to be able to do.
And in fact, we are looking at pretty significant cuts.
Senator Cassidy. Anybody else have a little bit of time?
Tennessee or Nebraska? Y'all's kind of experience?
Ms. Schwinn. So our state budget--our state budget
continues to fully fund our school funding formula that is a
commitment that was made by the Governor. And so we are very
grateful for that and we will continue to want to look for
investments as our economy bounces back.
Senator Cassidy. Okay. Well, thank you all. I appreciate
your testimony. I yield back.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cassidy.
Senator Casey.
Senator Casey. Mr. Chairman, thanks very much for this
opportunity. I want to thank our witnesses for their
appearance. My questions will be directed to Dr. King,
Secretary King and I wanted to thank the other witnesses as
well and they can certainly chime in if they have a response to
my questions. I will have two. One will focus on the question
of learning loss.
I know that Senator Murray asked a similar question. But I
wanted to start by noting what Secretary King just said in the
outset of his testimony with regard to what we have just been
through and I am quoting from his statement, I am glad that he
referred to this earlier, ``both the murders of George Floyd,
Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery have once again sent the
message to Black students that their lives are devalued, ``and
he also outlined the disparities and challenges that are faced
by communities of color in education and focused on what that
means in the midst of a pandemic mired in'' an economic crisis
that disproportionately affects the financial well-being of
these students living in a country that too often still
struggles to recognize their humanity.'' On all these issues we
have to bear in mind these inequities, these disparities which
should be the subject of action.
I wanted to focus as well on students with disabilities
because they face barriers as well. I just spoke last week, and
as I have done a number of times the last few weeks, with
parents of children with disabilities, students with
disabilities, and they shared with me that in Pennsylvania they
have been provided sometimes hundreds of pages of instructional
material that can be overwhelming for a parent. And now we have
to consider that if the outbreak or the virus itself rears its
ugly head again, another outbreak that lead to closures again.
Secretary King, I would ask, how can we minimize some of
the disparities, some of these many disparities in this context
of students with disabilities to ensure that these students who
have additional instructional needs can continue to be provided
with a high quality education by way of distance learning?
Mr. King. Such an important question, Senator Casey. We
have to start with getting the distance learning infrastructure
right. So we have to make sure that the low-income students
with disabilities have access to devices and Internet service
for starters. We have got to make sure that schools have the
resources to provide compensatory services for missed learning
this spring, no question. That we already had gaps, as you
pointed out.
The graduation rate for students with disabilities in high
school, for example, is some almost 20 points below that of
students in general education. So we have got to make sure that
we make up for the lost time this spring and then we have got
to have the resources for schools to provide additional
intervention.
There may be some opportunities with existing the CARES
Act, but our view is it is not sufficient to address the scale
of learning loss that we are seeing, particularly for students
with disabilities. They are going to need more time. Maybe
starting early, maybe a longer school day, and maybe a longer
school year in order to make up the ground.
Senator Casey. Thank you. We look forward to working with
you on this issue. I wanted to close with a question pertaining
to learning loss, and Senator Murray has mentioned and others
have in their testimony. We are told by the Center on
Reinventing Public Education that only 44 percent of districts
are both providing instruction online as well as monitoring
students attendance and their progress by way of distance
learning. Lack of funding plus lack of assistive technology
compounds in equities and exacerbates these achievement gaps
that we have been discussing today. How can we assess learning
loss and work to close these achievement gaps?
Mr. King. Well, we are certainly going to need diagnostic
assessment as students return to school to get a sense of where
they are. For students with disabilities in particular we are
going to need to assess their IDA goals and whether or not they
have made progress toward those goals and what it will take to
help them make progress. And I worry that there are some who
have called for setting aside the protections of IDA.
That strikes me as a mistake and potentially jeopardizing
the progress we have made over the last few decades in
supporting students with disabilities, particularly those who
are from low-income families or communities of color who are
most vulnerable. So we, I think, have to make sure that states
and school districts honor students IDAs. If they have missed
services, they need to get those when they come back to school.
Senator Casey. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Casey.
Senator Murkowski.
Senator Murkowski. Am I there now?
The Chairman. You are, welcome.
Senator Murkowski. Thank you. Thank you, and thank you to
the witnesses. Thank you for this hearing. I will tell you I
have so many worries and I am listening to you all sharing your
concerns, sharing your worries. I am thinking about kids that
really are going to need the assistance of our school nurses,
of our school counselors. I am worried about those kids who
were doing okay before COVID but now they are going to be
looking at a school year where they are part of the
homelessness group. There are families now that are homeless.
I think about our Anchorage school district, for instance,
where we have over 90 plus different languages that are the
home languages in the Anchorage school district alone. How
these non-English learners are going to be adapting to this. I
want to begin my question first and this is probably directed
to you, Dr. King.
Much of the success, if we are in a truncated school week
or school year, so much of what we have dealt with has relied
on the fact that our kids are able to take a laptop, have
access to their teachers through the Internet here. Well in my
state and in many rural states, Internet is spotty at best and
we can give the kids as many laptops as they want but if it
doesn't connect, if you will. It doesn't get them anywhere, and
we know that E-Rate, and I appreciate what you have raised Dr.
King, this is what provides this critical support to our school
districts in so many of our rural areas, but when school is
closed and the E-Rate program is limited to providing Internet
at the school, kids can't get access after that. They don't
have the connectivity that they need.
We have been pushing on this. We have been talking with
folks at the FCC. They have appropriately pushed to expand the
E-Rate program to reach the entire campus so kids can go to a
parking lot at school and log on but what we are told is that
without changes to statute, they can't provide support for
tele-education into students' homes.
This is really problematic for us in Alaska. I am sure it
is not the only obstacle that our school districts are dealing
with. Ours are getting really creative, putting literally a
dish up on top of the school buildings. We know that we have
seen great support from many of our telecom providers providing
her pre-Internet two families during this initial COVID launch,
but will they be there to provide that support in the fall if
this is indefinite.
I guess the question is whether or not there is any
integrated review of the issues that are going on to provide
some recommendations to this Committee for reforms in a future
bill? Because with the school's coming on in August, no answer
in sight for so many. I am just not sure how you make it happen
because it looks good on paper, but again, if you haven't
connected, these kids are left out. Dr. King?
Mr. King. You are exactly right about these School Health,
Libraries, Broadband Coalition has suggested a sort of
comprehensive strategy that would cost I think $5.25 billion to
try to make sure that every student has access to the Internet.
I think there is an important role for the FCC to play here
with the Internet service providers to try to make it as simple
as possible for folks to access Internet service and ideally to
make it possible for school districts to make bulk purchases of
Internet service for families.
I think about the Cleveland school district that has
committed over the next few years to work with their Internet
service providers to ensure that every household in Cleveland
has access to Internet service. And from the school districts
and point, it is a question of protecting kids' access to
distance learning, it is closing the homework gap so students
can use the Internet even if we are past COVID-19 to do their
homework.
But also today the Internet is foundational to accessing
post-secondary opportunities to accessing job opportunities.
And so we do need, I think you are exactly right, a
comprehensive solution here, and long-term particularly for our
rural areas that may mean also infrastructure investment.
Senator Murkowski. I think we recognize we are lacking. To
the Superintendent Cordova from Denver, I have a question that
I have of you as it relates to the homelessness and the
emergency needs that our families and youth in our communities
in the wake of COVID, the community partners inside and outside
of the schools can help stabilize these children and youth.
I have introduced a bill just today related specifically to
this. I am quite concerned that there is this gap in services
when it comes to our homeless kids, our homeless families. I am
out of time. I want to respect the Chairman's directive here.
Perhaps I could have a conversation offline with you if you
have any suggestions, but it is something that I would hope
that we have further discussion on, and I will submit that
question for the record, Mr. Chairman, as well as others. Thank
you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Murkowski.
Senator Baldwin.
Senator Baldwin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to begin
by associating myself with the remarks of Ranking Member
Murray, our witnesses, and colleagues who have acknowledged the
unquestionable call from people all over this country,
including so many young people, for racial justice, racial
equity, and the change that our country so desperately needs.
I hope this Committee, in fact I hope every committee in
the Senate will look for ways that we can move this
conversation forward and this cause forward, and especially for
us in the HELP Committee to look deeply within the jurisdiction
of this Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions to
see where we can do more. So I really think everyone who has
drawn attention on this very important hearing on how we can
safely reopen our schools and provide high-quality education to
all of our children.
We also have to, on this topic, consider how students can
safely go back to school but also ensure that these
environments are safe for faculty, for administrators, for
support staff. And I would note as others have that this
population are sometimes at higher risk for severe illness from
the COVID-19 disease. For example, according to Federal data,
nearly a third of all K through 12 teachers are over the age of
50. So I am confident that all of our school districts want to
reopen safely, but I believe that they need clear rules of the
road about how they must protect their employees and educators
so that they feel confident that they will be safe at work. It
is why I introduced the COVID-19 Every Worker Protection Act,
which requires the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration to issue emergency temporary standards that
covers all workers and requires workplaces to implement
infectious disease exposure control plans to keep workers safe.
I believe it is critical for the safety of educators as
well as the students they serve that an OSHA standard be in
place before schools begin to open in any fashion in the fall.
Now, this spring we saw schools across the country forced to
make an unprecedented shift to distance learning on an
extraordinarily tight timeline. Among other critical issues,
this shift underscored the need to help educators effectively
integrate a wide range of technologies into their teaching and
use them to educate those who may have quite wide range of
specific needs.
Dr. Blomstedt, you noted in your testimony that Nebraska
has identified professional development for teachers to support
remote learning as a priority for your use of the CARES Act
fund, and I would like to ask you to spend a little bit more
about how you identified this as a priority and what additional
Federal funding to support this type of professional
development, particularly with regard to distance learning
technologies, help you better ensure that the educators are
prepared to use these tools to help all students.
Mr. Blomstedt. Yes, I would be glad to and thanks also for
the question. The reality underneath what we have done
underneath Launch Nebraska, we really started thinking about we
need to find what our weaknesses are in the distance learning
environment. We knew some of it from technology standpoint, but
we didn't realize that many of our students in urban areas and
rural areas alike did not have adequate broadband at home. And
so we really looked at everything from infrastructure to
devices to the type of educational content that is available
that also needs to be addressing students with disabilities and
students with other types of challenges that they might have
relative to accessing that technology, and then ultimately
training teachers to be able to use that effectively, became
really critical.
We have actually had a series of professional learning, at
distance by the way, for our students--for our teachers, excuse
me, across the state and we have had, I think we are going to
be up to about 15 different trainings that we have done in
content areas and otherwise. And we also need to distribute
high quality content as well. And that has been a big part of
our conversation.
We find some of the content being used by schools does not
immediately translate to a digital environment so we are
looking actually the use CARES Act funding to make those
investments all the way through that important cycle.
Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Baldwin.
Senator Braun.
Senator Braun. Thank you, Chairman. I was on a school board
for 10 years from 2004 to 2014. And I must say that this is in
a category in and of itself, trying to imagine how we navigate
through it. I am anxious to get back with my friends, some of
them are still on the board, but I got several questions and I
am going to limit them to two. And the first is going to be for
Drs. Schwinn and Blomstedt, and Ms. Cordova, and it would in
regard to the issue of liability in terms of trying to reopen
schools.
I know that it has been a sensitive topic among business
owners in Indiana worried about if they want to robustly try to
get their businesses going as part of getting the economy
restarted and especially among the conference, the Republican
conference, that is a concern. Would each of you give me your
opinion on, is that something that is tangible, measurably
being discussed as a concern and trying to do something that
looks like it is going to have a lot of acrobatics to it, a lot
of guidelines.
Indiana, by the way, just released a 37 page guideline for
reopening in the classroom. Came out on June 5th and paging
through it, it looks very comprehensive if any of you choose to
look at it. But give me a comment on whether you think that is
a concern or whether that is something that has not been on
your minds.
Mr. Blomstedt. So from my perspective, in Nebraska we
certainly have had those conversations with school board
members and administrators and those types of concerns. Here is
my concern that we can't have individuals waving their rights
to general liability concerns. We have actually had some
conversations in the state on that front. I don't have a great
answer on how we would go and provide some type of umbrella
protections for these environments, but I do believe that is a
worthy and worthwhile conversation.
Ms. Schwinn. In Tennessee, our two priorities are to ensure
that we keep people safe and we keep kids educated. That is
what this is about. And so for us, we know that our teachers
are covered for tort liability through state law. We are
currently having ongoing conversations, but we want to make
sure is that when educators are in the classroom, that they are
focused on keeping their kids safe and that teaching and
learning can take place.
Certainly we want to make sure there are enough protections
that they are not so over focused on some of the whether or not
little Johnny has his mask on in a kindergarten classroom, that
they are able to really focus on teaching literacy and
Mathematics and supporting the whole child. And so that is
where our focus is going to be.
Ms. Cordova. Speaking from a school district lens, this is
definitely something that we have been discussing both in terms
of how we can implement the health guidance around entering
into our school buildings and our workplaces as well as
thinking about some of the needs that we have to require
compensatory services, which is less on the health side, but
certainly is a very large liability that we are very concerned
about.
Senator Braun. Thank you. And Dr. King, there have been
recent developments in understanding the disease itself. The
fact that the World Health Organization just came out with the
kind of fine-tuning of transmissibility. We do know that
probably in the equation, protecting the teachers and staff
that are going to fit into that category that have been ravaged
by the disease itself.
With what we have learned recently about what we may need
to do to fight this peculiar challenge off in general, have you
found--have you come across anything that you do differently
now with what we have learned recently and also discuss a
little bit about what we can do to protect teachers and staff
that fit into that category of being most susceptible to the
disease.
Mr. King. Yes, certainly I think looking back as a country,
we ought to have moved more quickly in response to the pandemic
and certainly move more quickly to put in place testing and
contact tracing which is really foundational to any public
health effort around a pandemic. And we still need to do that
work.
There are still places in the country where testing remains
inaccessible and we don't yet have the contact tracing
infrastructure we need and that is going to be foundational. I
think we know now from public health expertise, some of the
things that schools can do structurally from ensuring physical
distance and to the use of masks to improving cleaning to
having a strategy to physically isolate a student who becomes
ill until they can be picked up, needing to follow-up with
contact tracing within the school building.
Some of our international peers are using temperature
checks as a way to identify students who may be asymptomatic.
But all of those steps, as we talked about earlier, are going
to require additional resources and school districts are going
to have to do this in close consultation with local public
health experts.
I also should note that there are kids, in addition to
having staff who are particularly vulnerable because of pre-
existing conditions, there are also kids who have pre-existing
conditions that might make them more vulnerable. And certainly
kids who are living in homes with family members who may have
conditions that make them particularly vulnerable.
Senator Braun. Thank you. I yield.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Braun.
Senator Murphy.
Senator Murphy. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks
to our panelists. Let me join in Senator Murray's request to
have the Secretary of Education appear before our Committee. I
think that is absolutely essential given all of the questions
that we are raising today. We need the Nation's top education
official before us.
Second, let me express alarm at the prospect of leaving for
a 2-week recess in July without appropriating additional
funding for schools. The CARES Act put in about as much money
for the airline industry as it did for the entire American
public school system. Now, the airline industry is important,
but it is not more important than all of the schools in the
Nation and we got a letter back in May from about 62 school
superintendents of major cities forecasting that they are going
to be looking at 15 to 25 percent cuts in school funding even
with the CARES Act funding, because when you spread that money
around, it just doesn't get as far as the need.
We need, we need to get additional funding to states and,
or to school districts before the July recess because the
planning that is going to need to be done in order to make sure
that schools can reopen safely is going to be done this summer.
And that leads to my first question and I will direct it to
Secretary King.
There was a question raised by Senator Casey about how
schools get ready for students with learning disabilities and I
am panicked about this because many of them have not been able
to engage in any distance learning because they can't learn
without support services--so talk to me about the need for
schools to be able to plan and hire now in order to be able to
set up the support services that they are going to need around
these students. And what is the impact of a 25 percent cut in
funds for a school district on students with disabilities when
they return?
Mr. King. Well, Senator Murphy, I think this is exactly the
right question. Unfortunately, what we are seeing in a lot of
places is a degree of paralysis, because if you are
anticipating a 20 to 30 percent cut in state aid, that will be
devastated. That will mean layoffs, program elimination, and so
districts are in a sense stuck waiting to see if Congress will
help states with state stabilization dollars that might prevent
those kinds of cuts. So even as people are doing that scenario
planning, they are hampered in that work because of fear of
cuts.
There is no question that students with disabilities will
need particularly intensive support when they return. They may
be well served by returning earlier, but that would be in very
small groups. Those teachers will need a tremendous amount of
support to plan for how they make up for the loss learning
time. And then, many of the students have not only disabilities
that might affect learning needs but they also have at times
disabilities that affect their social and emotional needs.
We already know that schools have too few counselors, too
few mental health resources. That will be critical to
supporting students with disabilities and their families, many
of whom have really struggled because as you note, over these
over these several months, without access to school and the
support that school often provides.
Senator Murphy. I would just--this as an example, Laurence
Township in New Jersey where they have already laid off 80 of
their school aids. Many of those agents are those that serve
the existing population and they are gone and likely not coming
back. Let me switch gears and direct a question to you, Ms.
Cordova, because I saw an announcement regarding a vote that is
perhaps upcoming to remove police officers from schools in
Denver.
When we think about how to create safe schools, we are
obviously talking about making sure that students don't get
infected with the virus. But we are also talking about making
sure that students aren't targeted because of their race. And
the reality is that while police officers have made a lot of
students feel safe, they have frankly made a lot of other
students feel unsafe. In Virginia for instance, Black students
are about 40 percent of the state student population, but they
are 75 percent of arrests.
In my state, the basic same statistics hold. And so I am
intrigued by the decision that you have made. I think security
officers are appropriate but police officers often end up
targeting students of color for discipline and arrest. Just
talk me through your decision.
Ms. Cordova. Thank you, Senator Murphy. So our school board
is taking this up in fact tomorrow to determine if they will
end our contract with the police and I think it aligns with the
values that they have for making the statement about the need
to create environments where students feel, safe, nurtured,
welcomed, affirmed for their identities, while still
recognizing the important need to create safe spaces with the
kind of security that we know is important in this day and age.
Senator Murphy. Thank you. I am over my time. Thank you,
Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Murphy.
Senator Loeffler.
Senator Loeffler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
all for being here today. One of the challenges that quickly
became apparent during the pandemic was the need to provide
food to students that are--many of whom are dependent on the
school meal programs. And as students begin to return to school
in the fall, many may only attend a few days a week, and I know
and thank the USDA for providing certain waivers and
flexibility to school lunch and EBT programs.
Based on the experiences that you have had in recent weeks,
how are your states and districts preparing to support the
nutritional needs of students when they are not able to be on
campus going on certain days? And I know for a fact that in our
State of Georgia, our farmers have stood ready to help provide
resources. I would love to hear from you on this important
topic.
Ms. Schwinn. So in Tennessee, we know that some of the most
important work that has to be done is around school nutrition.
Kids rely on schools to be fed breakfast, lunch, snack and
sometimes supper. And so we led in terms of the number of ways
or waivers and how quickly we submitted waivers. We put up a
website, schoolmealfinder.com, so that families could put in
their addresses and get the closest meal possible.
But something I do want to highlight is that we are giving
out fewer meals because of school closures, because of the
expenses and costs of distributing that food, staff costs,
etc., maintains stability. So some of the CARES Act funding
will go toward that but it is certainly something that I think
our districts are bringing up, but our commitment stands firm
that kids need to be fed. It is incredibly important and the
State of Tennessee will continue to do so going into next year.
Mr. Blomstedt. In Nebraska it is very similar. We have
really worked with our community partners to understand food
security at a community level. We have worked with a
partnership that we call them Nebraska Children and Families
Foundation and Bring Up Nebraska to really regionalize the
state. And leverage what we are doing in schools with private
providers as well to ensure that we can find some ways to do
this. And so this has really been--our initial effort was
critical and it has continued to take place statewide and we
know it needs to stay in place for food security for our needy
families.
Ms. Cordova. Speaking from the school district lens, we
will continue to provide food even on the days when students
aren't in school, when they are engaging in remote learning
because we know how critical that is. We have been able to
reach about half as many students as typically eat on a school
day and that is with tremendous effort to try to get it to get
it to kids. I talked with families who say even having it in
the neighborhood with distribution routes, but they simply
don't have the gas money to go pick it up.
Mr. King. Just quickly that the electronic benefits
transfer card through pandemic EBT I think has the potential to
be very useful here, but it will be important to extend that
into the summer and next school year, particularly as school
districts consider hybrid schedules where students will be away
from school some days, that the pandemic EBT card will be even
more important to make sure that kids have access to it.
Senator Loeffler. Right. Well that concludes all--I yield
my time. Thank you, each of you, for your attention to this
really important matter, and I think as we learn going forward,
continuing to share that information about how to address this
would be great. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Kaine is not available.
Senator Hassan.
Senator Hassan. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you
and the Ranking Member for holding this hearing. Thank you to
all the witnesses for your work to meet the current
unprecedented challenges that our Nation's children and
educators are facing. And just before my questions, I also want
to associate myself with the remarks of our Ranking Member
about the ongoing work we need to do to address issues of
institutional racism throughout our country and how important
our education system is as part of that effort. Dr. King, I
want to direct my first question to you.
As Congress has worked to respond to COVID-19, I have
advocated for additional funding and flexibility for state and
local Governments to help backfill your budget shortfalls. And
budget shortfalls have been mentioned by all the witnesses
here. We know that some of the greatest implications of these
shortfalls will be on school budgets at a time when schools are
being asked to completely rework education delivery and address
student learning loss.
Dr. King, do you agree that Congress should prioritize
getting states and local Governments to support that they need
so that educators have the necessary tools to meet students'
needs at this critical time?
Mr. King. It is absolutely essential, Senator, that
Congress put additional resources toward state stabilization
dedicated to education. We have called for at least $175
billion just to make sure that districts don't have to make
devastating cuts to personnel and programs. You need additional
funds on top of that to address learning loss and social and
emotional needs, but those state stabilization dollars are
vital. We saw this during the Great Recession that districts
all over the country lost personnel, lost programs, and the
consequences were worse for the students who are most
vulnerable, for low-income students.
Senator Hassan. Thank you. And, certainly. I simply hope
that we have bipartisan effort, as Senator Cassidy was talking
about it as well, to do just that. I also want to talk to you
about another particular group of students that face unique
challenges during this crisis and really following up on
Senators Casey and Murphy on this issue.
At a time when we have to meet the needs of all of our
students who have struggled to access a quality education
during remote learning, students who experience disabilities
have been disproportionately impacted by changes to education
delivery necessitated by COVID-19. And you have spoken about
that. Under the IDA, students who experience disabilities have
a right to access the same educational opportunities as their
peers. And that has been particularly difficult as schools have
shifted in person to remote learning.
In many cases, these disruptions will result in students
with disabilities experiencing learning loss and missing the
education goals outlined in their individualized education
plans. Dr. King, as schools experience increased demands to
respond to COVID-19, can you please speak to the value of
Congress providing additional dedicated funding to the IDA?
Mr. King. Yes. We already know that for many school
districts, they are not getting nearly their level of ideal
funding they need to provide services and they are very reliant
on local dollars. And as states deal with budget cuts, it will
be even more challenging for them to ensure that they are
serving students well. Some of the things they will need, we
know assistive technology will be vital for some students be
able to access distance learning.
We know that in some cases additional staff will be needed
in order to be able to potentially provide services at home to
students in a socially distant way that might get supports to
those students. Parents need additional support. In many cases
parents are very reliant on school to help them support
students, particularly those with the most significant
disabilities, and they will need more support, social and
emotional support as well as the instructional support for
their kids.
This is a critical area. We got to make up for what
students have lost and we have got to be in a position to
support students in what may be a distance learning or hybrid
learning environment into the school year.
Senator Hassan. Well, thank you for that. And I wanted to
ask Commissioner Schwinn and Blomstedt a question as well. We
have talked about all the different things that we are going to
need to do to get our schools ready for students to return
there physically, but we know that even in places where public
health officials believe that schools can safely reopen, some
families have faced increased health risks at home.
They feel uncomfortable with their child going back to
school until there is a COVID-19 vaccine. So, can you share how
your own state school reopening plans address the needs of
students who may request to continue remote learning due to
ongoing health concerns?
Mr. Blomstedt. Yes, and actually it has been a very
important conversation across the state that, again I kind of
go back to my people first approach, right, that when students
are asking and families are feeling that it is not safe, we
want to make sure that there are protocols in place. If they
can't feel safe in that environment or they have real medical
conditions that are a big concern for that family, especially
students with disabilities that we know have medical
vulnerabilities on top of this.
We want schools to be accommodating for all of those
different settings. We want to find unique ways. We are asking
schools to find those unique ways and work with parents on IEP
plans and work with them relative to each plan and each
individual concern that parents may have. And so we see that
taking place across the state.
There is a lot more to do and we will probably have
challenges yet like we always may experience. But from my
perspective and from our philosophy at the state, we need to be
working with each of them on those concerns.
Senator Hassan. Thank you. Commissioner Schwinn, do you
have anything to add? I know I am over time.
Ms. Schwinn. Yes, I will be brief. I think we have
prioritized this work in Tennessee. We put out a 60 plus page
LEA guide and we are putting out 20-plus toolkits over the next
7 days specifically on issues like this. But we have
prioritized children with disabilities of $5 million
compensatory education fund for our districts, $1 million in
assistive technology, and $3 million plus an innovative grants
so districts get supports they need specifically for students
who are unable to return to school.
Senator Hassan. Thank you very much. Thank you all and
thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Hassan.
Senator Smith.
Senator Smith. Thank you, Chair Alexander and Ranking
Member Murray, and all of our panelists for being here today. I
want to start out by addressing the issues that our Ranking
Member raised early on in this hearing. You know, Mr. George
Floyd was a constituent of mine. He was murdered by Minneapolis
police officers. It is my hometown. His death is a tragedy and
it never should have happened and we cannot look away from the
deep injustice it represents. It reveals a systemic racism and
inequity that exists throughout our society, including in
policing.
What is happening in my state and around the country, I
believe, is that people are rising up to demand justice for Mr.
Floyd and his family, but they are also marching in the streets
because they are demanding more. They are demanding that we
address the systemic inequities that we see in every part of
our community. My constituents are demanding that we address
this everywhere and I want to think about what this means for
education. I want to talk about what is difficult to talk about
in my state.
Over the past 20 years, Minnesota schools have grown more
not less segregated. My state has over 200 schools where
students of color make up 90 percent of the enrollment, the
bulk of those schools are in the Twin Cities area. The Black-
White achievement gap in Minnesota remains unacceptably large,
regularly 30 points or more in Math and English proficiency
tests. This dynamic is so bad that it has been given a name,
the Minnesota Paradox by a professor at the University of
Minnesota Humphrey school.
Colleagues, these disparities exist in my state and they
are shameful, but they exist in every one of our states. I
believe so strongly that in this moment we all have a moral
responsibility to not look away from this but to grapple with
it and deal with it really directly. So I want to address my
questions in the time that I have here on this issue today and
especially as we think about how to safely reopen our schools.
Secretary King, let me ask you about this. One particular
area that I would welcome your thoughts in the whole area. You
know, we know that the COVID-19 epidemic has created such
significant stress on families and we also know that it is not
the great equalizer. That it disproportionately affects
families and kids of color, indigenous communities, and Black
families.
That this is a burden on top of this sort of trauma and
inequity and under investment in these communities. We have all
of these kids who we need to figure out how to bring safely
back to and I am thinking about the mental health challenges
that these children have been grappling with on top of
everything else that has been happening.
It feels to me like the scale and the scope that we are
thinking about for this is just completely missing the need.
Secretary King, could you address this and talk a little bit
about how we need to be urgent about this as our schools are
trying right now to figure out how to safely reopen?
Mr. King. Yes. I mean, I worry tremendously about this. You
know, you think about kids from the relationship with adults
and peers at school is the thing that gives them a sense of
hope and stability. Now that they have been without that for
months, think about kids who are in families where there may be
addictions or domestic violence or where their families are
going through an economic trauma because of COVID-19 or their
families are affected by the disparate health impact COVID-19.
There is a lot that kids are carrying and we will need to
address when kids return to school. And we know that even
though the American School Counselor Association says we should
have a ratio of 1 counselor to every 250 students, we have
states where the ratio is more like 1 to 400, 1 to 500, 1 to
600. There is no way--there is no way that counselors can
provide adequate support.
We also know we have done polls of parents around the
country and one of the things we are seeing is skyrocketing
stress amongst parents. So I am very worried about parents and
their need for social and emotional supports and access to
mental health services. So that is a vital area. I think of
additional investment that schools will need to make. Again,
that will be very difficult in a context where they are facing
significant cuts.
Senator Smith. So even before COVID-19, we have had a
disinvestment in counselors and mental health services in
schools. Schools right now are actually looking at cutting
rather than investing. And where do they cut? They typically
tend to cut not in classrooms because that raises alarm bells
for everyone.
They tend to cut in other places. This is my great worry
that in a moment when we should be investing, we are going to
be seeing cuts because Congress apparently feels no urgency in
addressing this issue as schools are trying to get ready for
what is arguably the most important beginning of a school year
that will happen in the lifetimes of these children. Thank you,
Mr. Chair.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Smith. Senator Jones. I
think he is still in another committee hearing. Senator Rosen.
We have Senator Kaine and Senator Jones are in another hearing.
I think we are ready to conclude the hearing. Senator Murray.
Do you have some additional remarks or questions before we
close the hearing?
Senator Murray. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have
one question and then some closing comments. Secretary King, I
did want to ask you, there are over 1.5 million students who
are experiencing homelessness enrolled in our public schools.
And this number is going to grow because of the increase in
unemployment and other financial stresses on families right
now.
I am really concerned that due to inequitable Internet and
device access, we have just talked about school budget cuts
that are coming, staggered school schedules, ongoing distance
education, the schools are going to find it really difficult to
prioritize the needs of students who are experiencing
homelessness.
Dr. Blomstedt and Dr. Schwinn, maybe I will direct this to
you, what actions did you take to make sure schools in your
state were in regular touch with students and families who are
experiencing homelessness, and what are schools doing in your
state now to make sure they have the capacity to provide high
quality instructional services to these students?
Dr. Blomstedt, let me start with you and then Dr. Schwinn.
Ms. Blomstedt. Yes. Thanks for the question. And we have
been very concerned about our homeless students. Our systems
are involved in students right now. And at this moment in time,
many of our schools really worked hard to contact each family
and started to find ways that they were able to do that. I was
very impressed to see teachers really, even though they might
have been teaching remotely, doing evening phone calls, making
those close contact type of connections, making sure folks are
all right.
We did food drops and as part of that was trying to ensure
that those families were being recognized. Our homeless
population is obviously a huge, huge concern and so I don't
know that we have every strategy down, but I know there was an
intentional effort by schools to check in on every single
student on their rolls. And then in some cases there were some
concerns where we couldn't find necessarily what might have
happened, and really some intentional efforts to track down
students if they weren't being responsive to the schools.
Senator Murray. Dr. Schwinn.
Ms. Schwinn. Yes, ma'am. So to start out, Governor Lee
announced the child well-being task force with the specific
intent of considering the full needs of our students when
school buildings are closed. That continues through the summer
and we are continuing that through this coming school year
understanding the challenges. When I think about other things
that we have done, we put out the tool kit specifically for
highly mobile students who might be homeless and in foster
care, etc. so that we can have additional supports for those
kids who need it the most.
Frankly, I think about places like Shelby County in
Memphis, Nashville, and our first Tennessee region in the far
East, and when I think about what those districts are doing,
they are making sure that they are doing calls every day. We
are setting up and working closely with our state board of
education to ensure that learning plans for next year require
and support that level of contact with our kids because we have
to make sure that whatever school looks like and whatever
community of those locally driven decisions, that we are able
to focus on the two most important things, our kids are safe
and healthy and they are getting a high quality education.
Senator Murray. Thank you. Superintendent Cordova, does
Denver have Mckinney-Vento liaison in place with the capacity
to make sure students who experience homelessness get equitable
access to education?
Ms. Cordova. We do but I do want to really stress the
intensive effort that our teachers and support staff have to go
into during this time of remote learning. Our students who are
experiencing homelessness were definitely some of the hardest
to reach students. There were students who lacked consistent
access to Internet. There were families that were experiencing
multiple issues and at very high risk of infection. And so we
know that it was an intensive effort. And sometimes successful,
sometimes very challenging to keep those students engaged in
school.
Senator Murray. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you to all of
our witnesses today. And as students and families and educators
and staff across the country wrap up this school year and begin
to look to the next one, there are a lot more questions than
there are answers. I know that schools and districts are not
only grappling with how to provide students with the high
quality public education, whether in person or virtually, but
they are also grappling with some of the biggest cuts to state
and local revenue that we have seen in a very long time.
Schools and school districts shouldn't be on their own.
They need support and resources from the Federal Government.
They need in-depth, actionable public health guidance on best
practices to ensure the safety of students and educators and
school staff and the broader community, and they need a massive
investment in our public school system so schools have the
resources they need to implement public health protocols, to
measure and address learning loss among their students, and to
offset the declines that we are going to be seeing in state and
local funding.
What they don't need is Secretary DeVos using this crisis
to push your privatization agenda and compound the difficulties
they are facing. So before I close, I just wanted to emphasize
once again how crucial it is that this Committee and the
American people actually hear from the Administration and from
Secretary DeVos so as students and educators prepare for the
incredibly challenging school year ahead, they deserve to know
that all of us, including Secretary DeVos, are doing everything
we can to support them. So thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you
for the hearing.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Murray, and thank you to
all our Senators and the witnesses and to the staff for
creating this virtual environment. Just a couple of areas I
would like to comment on. It would be, especially at a time
when the whole nation is focused on racial discrimination and
disparity in trying to understand what in terms of laws or
change in behavior we can do about that, I think this hearing
has emphasized that it would be hard to think of anything we
could do to both help the country move back toward normalcy and
to help minority children and children who are disadvantaged or
who are from single-parent families, hard to think of anything
more we could do than to help them get back to school safely.
Any teacher can tell us and all of our witnesses have
reminded us of the emotional, intellectual and physical damage
to children if the schools aren't open, and of the difficulty
it creates for families. So this has been a very important
hearing. One thing I would ask of each of our witnesses, and I
mentioned it to all of them, it would be helpful to me and I
think to other Senators if you could provide some specifics to
the Committee about exactly what it would take in terms of
financial support to open our schools safely.
Now, as Dr. Schwinn said, there are two goals here, one is
to open safely and then there are all the questions that have
to do with how the students thrive and how they learn. I think
the National Administrators Association did us a favor, the
American Federation of Teachers did the same, when they tried
to estimate the cost per district of just the basic things that
would take to help schools to open because of administrators
are reluctant to take a risk to open a schools.
That means a child is going to be left at home and suffer
all those disadvantages. So Dr. Schwinn said that in Tennessee,
she thought that the cost might be about $1.5 to $1.7 million
for an average school district. The AFT mentioned $1.8. I think
was the figure. So that would be very helpful to have,
especially from the Council of Chief State School Officers, Dr.
Blomstedt, if you can provide that to us.
Then second, I would like to see some analysis, if you can
give it, of why the money we have already appropriated can't be
used for some of that. For example, $213.5 billion was
appropriated just for kindergarten through the 12th grade on
March the 27th. Tennessee, for example, got $260 million of
that. I would assume some of that could be used to prepare to
open the school safely at the end of the summer and in the
fall. We appropriated $25 billion for testing. If you spent $3
or $4 billion of that on hiring contact tracers, you could hire
100,000 of them.
I would--so I would assume some of that could be used. Then
there is $150 billion that has been given to the states. About
a third of the state budget or more goes for education. So I
would assume some of that could be used and one of the
complications we may have is that money was restricted, the
statute restricted the way states could spend the money.
It would be helpful to me to hear from the Council of Chief
State School Officers. Do you think that changing the law to
give states more flexibility in using the money to help
children go back safely to school would be one way to help? So
all of that would be helpful and it would be most helpful if
you could segregate going back to school safely from all the
other things that many people suggest we should be doing help
children learn. And the other thing is testing.
I had a conversation with Dr. Schwinn about testing. I am
intrigued--I have been very focused on diagnostic testing. I
think we need to do everything we can. I think it is important
for the country to know that the current plans are to have $40
to $50 million tests available by about the time school starts,
and that every month, states are submitting their plans to the
Federal Government about what their testing needs are. And if
they can't meet them, the Federal Government is helping them
meet those tests. And in addition, there is an effort at the
National Institutes of Health to create new ways to create
diagnostic tests, which can be given frequently and if
necessary.
I think all that is important not just to contain the
disease, but to build confidence among parents and teachers and
students that it is safe to go back to school. So what I am
getting around to saying is I hope that you will convey to your
100,000 schools and all the school districts, they should be a
part of their state plan for testing so that as they look
toward July, August and September, if they need x number of
tests and they don't have the capacity for that, that they can
get some help in finding those tests because they should be
available for systematic testing.
This has been a very helpful hearing. I thank the
witnesses, Dr. Schwinn, Dr. Blomstedt, Ms. Cordova, Secretary
King, I thank you for taking time from your demanding schedules
and busy days to giving us your opinion. The record will remain
open for 10 days. Members may submit additional information for
the record within that time if they would like.
The Chairman. Our Committee will meet again next Wednesday,
June 17th. At that time we are going to focus on telehealth,
lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. We have crammed about 10
years of experience into 3 months in terms of telework,
telelearning and telehealth. And next Wednesday, we are going
to focus on the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on telehealth
and what we should be doing as a result of it. The Committee
will stand adjourned.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
american federation of teachers
A Plan to Safely Reopen America's Schools and Communities
Guidance for imagining a new normal for public education, public
health, and our economy in the age of COVID-19
Summary
People across the United States are eager to return to some
semblance of ``normal.'' To do so, we must meet a Herculean challenge:
remaking our society and the places in our lives we hold dear--public
schools and colleges, places of worship, workplaces, restaurants and
more--in ways that hold paramount our ultimate priorities: the safety
and well-being of our children, families and communities; the safety of
our members and every frontline worker; and the health of our economy
and economic well-being of working families.
Physical distancing efforts have slowed the rate of COVID-19
infections, but no expert believes we will eradicate this virus without
a vaccine. Reopening prematurely by relaxing stay-in-place restrictions
and resuming large public gatherings runs the risk of undoing the work
of the last 2 months. A premature return to full commercial activity
risks a second surge of infections and second lockdown as is happening
in Singapore right now. Even once public health officials deem it safe
to reopen, doing so without the necessary precautions could be deadly.
This document provides a roadmap for navigating the next steps. It
provides specific guidance for transitioning from lockdowns to other
public health tools to limit the transmission of COVID-19. It focuses
on reopening school buildings in particular, because the safe reopening
of public school buildings means students can go to school, and
parents, who work outside the home, can go to work. That is key to the
reopening of the broader economy. \1\
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\1\ School systems have been operating throughout this pandemic.
By reopening schools, we mean having regularized access to school
buildings and other physical learning and service delivery locations.
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We expect the plan to evolve and adapt over time. It rests on five
pillars that draw on the best available science and public health
guidance, and the expertise of educators and health practitioners.
Gradually, responsibly and safely reopening society requires:
1. Maintaining physical distancing until the number of new
cases declines for at least 14 consecutive days. Reducing the
number of new cases is a prerequisite for transitioning to
reopening plans on a community-by-community basis.
2. Putting in place the infrastructure and resources to test,
trace and isolate new cases. Transitioning from community-
focused physical distancing and stay-in-place orders to case-
specific interventions requires ramping up the capacity to
test, trace and isolate each and every new case.
3. Deploying the public health tools that prevent the virus'
spread and aligning them with education strategies that meet
the needs of students.
4. Involving workers, unions, parents and communities in all
planning. Each workplace and community faces unique challenges
related to COVID-19. To ensure that reopening plans address
those challenges, broad worker and community involvement is
necessary. They must be engaged, educated and empowered.
5. Investing in recovery: Do not abandon America's
communities or forfeit America's future. These interventions
will require more--not less--investments in public health and
in our schools, universities, hospitals, and local and state
governments. Strengthening communities should be a priority in
the recovery.
The AFT held its first press conference on COVID-19 on Feb. 1A\2\.
Our union has worked to ensure the safety and well-being of our
communities and our members, and we've been particularly fixated on the
frontline workers who are risking their lives to combat this pandemic.
Early on, we worked to alert our members and allies of the risks of an
impending pandemic; unfortunately, the Trump administration gave little
and often conflicting guidance. We have remained steadfast in our
efforts to keep people safe, while also fighting to keep our public
schools and universities functioning, and for economic security for
workers.
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\2\ Caitlin Rivers et al., ``Public Health Principles for a Phased
Reopening During COVID-19: Guidance for Governors,'' Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health, April 17, 2020, https://
www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/publications/public-health-
principles-for-a-phased-reopening-during-covid-19-guidance-for-
Governors.
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There are no magic elixirs to simply reopen. Reopening demands
comprehensive, transparent action and forthright communication by
Federal and state authorities, and will take the dedication, voice and
forethought of frontline providers and educators and their unions,
school districts, hospitals, local governments and communities. The
alignment in every school and workplace of public health, instruction
and operations is absolutely imperative.
COVID-19 has exacerbated the deep inequalities in our society and
underscored the need for additional public investments to combat this
inequity. As we face growing recessionary forces, we can't simply limp
out of this crisis or revert to a status quo. We need a renewed sense
of national urgency to reimagine a better America and a pathway to a
better life for all.
The challenges facing us should not be underestimated. For example,
even as Governors relax physical distancing requirements (after
observing a reduction in the number of new cases), some communities may
not reflect the statewide trend. Moreover, each workplace faces a
unique set of challenges for preventing the spread of the virus.
Additionally, we must consider the possibility of a resurgence of the
virus in the fall. Communities must be engaged, educated and empowered
to exist under this pre-vaccine new normal.
No one knows our public schools, universities and hospitals better
than AFT members, many of whom will face great risks in carrying out
their jobs. That is why our members and leaders must be at the table in
envisioning and implementing plans to reopen our society at the local
level.
Our commonsense approach requires real partnerships with employers
and community stakeholders on state and local levels. School districts,
universities and hospitals should look to unions and the collective
bargaining process as opportunities to provide genuine participation,
communication and buy-in from the workers ultimately responsible for
ensuring the health and safety of our students, patients and those we
serve. In the absence of collective bargaining, other consultation
processes must be established. There is no substitute for eyes and ears
on the ground in the case of public health and safety.
1. Maintaining physical distancing until the number of new cases
declines for at least 14 consecutive days.
While projections vary, we are likely at least a year away from a
widely available vaccine. Adherence to physical distancing protocols
has flattened the curve, showing early signs of reducing the number of
new cases. Flattening the curve is not a panacea; it does not mean no
additional cases. Its goal is to reduce the number of new cases, to
reduce illness and to ensure the healthcare system is not overwhelmed
by critically ill patients.
Unless and until we have adequate testing capacity, there is simply
no way to know whether we have sufficiently reduced the number of new
cases to consider reopening society. Once we have reduced the number of
cases for at least 14 days with adequate testing in place, reopening
plans can go into effect on a community-by-community basis.
Decisions to phase in less stringent physical distancing
requirements and to begin expanding allowable activities should be
based on established criteria such as a sustained decline of infections
combined with protocols for protecting high-risk populations. This must
be coupled with a robust public health infrastructure with the capacity
for effective disease surveillance, tracing, isolation of those
infected and quarantine.
While most physical distancing requirements come from state
authorities, local decisionmaking has a critical role to play. Even if
a state determines that it can ease or altogether lift physical
distancing requirements based on the 14-day trigger, the number of new
cases in a specific community may not reflect the statewide trend. That
is why it is critical for unions to be in regular contact with their
employers, and with their local and state authorities, as well the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to assess their particular
situation. Unions and employers need to determine whether there is (a)
adequate testing in their community, given the number of confirmed
cases, and (b) then, once there is adequate testing capacity, a
reduction in the number of new cases for at least 14 consecutive days
to make a decision to transition to reopening. This information must be
transparent and available.
Active surveillance of new cases that develop once reopening has
started will identify clusters of disease. Prompt action must be taken
to prevent the widespread resurgence of COVID-19 in a community. It may
be necessary to resume sheltering in place for shorter periods of time
in communities where there is disease resurgence, and plans must be in
place so schools and other workplaces are prepared if they must close
again.
2. Putting in place the infrastructure and resources to test, trace
and isolate new cases.
Transitioning from community intervention to case intervention
requires the capacity to test, trace and isolate new cases as they
emerge. As Governors and public health experts have repeatedly said,
this capacity to test, trace and isolate every new case of COVID-19
must be built now. People with confirmed infection should quarantine
for at least 14 days (or based on the latest CDC guidance). Anyone in
contact with confirmed cases should be traced and tested. Since there
is ample evidence of both asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread, it
is necessary to test contacts to ensure the virus is contained. In
addition, anyone who exhibits symptoms consistent with COVID-19 should
be tested immediately.
Serological testing--a test that looks at people's blood for trace
evidence of whether they have come into contact with the virus--also
provides some hope. With serological testing, we may be able to
identify people who have developed immunity and may be less vulnerable
to infection. Concerns about reliability, privacy and government
oversight warrant close consideration by unions in determining whether
and how serological testing is appropriate for the workforces we
represent.
Public health departments are leading testing and tracing efforts,
but they have been defunded for years and are stretched thin for
resources. Estimates suggest that the United States needs to deploy
somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 contact tracers to adequately
move from community intervention to case intervention.
However, local communities cannot hold their breath for a day that
may never come or the scale that we need. Unions, in partnership with
employers and state and local authorities can help public health
departments in their efforts to test, trace and isolate new cases. And
to contribute to this effort, unions, working with employers and
others, should also consider creating and training in-house contact
tracers and rapid response resource coordinators. These roles would
serve to help people with confirmed diagnoses, and provide available
health and financial supports and resources during quarantine, to
mitigate the isolating and other effects of the experience.
Again, alignment of strategies, logistics and operations is
essential. What we are facing is complicated and unprecedented.
Testing, tracing and isolation must be done in conjunction with other
public health tools and interventions like physical distancing, proper
hand-washing, the use of personal protective equipment like masks, and
other supports and services (for example, food and mental health
services) that communities need.
3. Deploying the public health tools that prevent the virus' spread
and aligning them with education strategies that meet the needs of
students.
Reopening society and the economy hinges on successfully reopening
schools. While there is general guidance on how each community should
respond to mitigate the risk of spreading the virus, public education,
higher education and our healthcare system each face unique challenges.
We must take every precaution to ensure that students, teachers and
support staff are safe at school and not transmitting the virus. This
requires: adopting evidence-based public health measures at every
school and workplace; aligning those measures with necessary
instructional and well-being strategies that meet the needs of students
and staff; and recognizing that this may be a rollercoaster because it
may be necessary to resume physical distancing at certain times and on
a rolling basis, to address community-specific outbreaks. Even without
COVID-19, there are many programmatic considerations for educators as
they plan for every school year. Elementary schools program far
differently from high schools, so incorporating public health measures
takes planning and resources. The alignment of logistics, educational
strategies and public health tools really matter, which is why the eyes
and ears of frontline workers must be respected.
The following framework for assessing methods for controlling
exposure to hazards in the workplace was initially developed by the
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and later
modified by Johns Hopkins University in response to the COVID-19
pandemic. It is a good starting point.
Physical distancing--Allowing people to work from
home and/or restructuring work to minimize the number of
workers physically present in a workspace.
Screening--Utilizing screening measures at work and
school sites. This could include temperature-taking, if still
recommended as an effective screening measure by the CDC.
School-based programming and organization--Among many
things discussed below, redistributing work responsibilities to
reduce contact between people.
Personal protective equipment and sanitization--
Providing medical-grade masks for health professionals and
nonmedical-grade masks for all others, and disinfecting schools
on a regular basis, in addition to providing hand-washing and
sanitizing stations.
A. Reopening Our Schools
First and foremost, we must do all we can to ensure students,
teachers and support staff are safe at school and are not unknowingly
transmitting or contracting the virus. This will require a number of
steps that anyone who has consumed any news has heard repeatedly:
screening and testing, contact tracing, and isolation and quarantine
measures, as well as ongoing prevention measures like frequent hand-
washing and some degree of physical distancing. There won't be a one-
size-fits-all process, or a hard open where every school in every
district immediately turns the lights on; we may be opening and closing
for a number of months while we secure these measures and develop ways
to keep everyone safe. In addition to the immediate public health tools
and interventions, we must plan for a curriculum-based academic year,
and for the panoply of appropriate educational and social-emotional
supports our students need. We must be prepared for the trauma, the
transition and the many instructional issues--including the effects of
learning loss and the digital divide.
Revisiting the community school model is a way to do all of the
above. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, community schools created a
community hub where students and families could get access to health
services, where marginalized communities received support, and where
necessary services were available in one place. This model is needed
even more now, given the effects of the pandemic--from the inequalities
that have been exacerbated, to the need for care before and after
school so that essential workers can continue to work and other parents
can return to work.
If experts deem it safe, summer may be a way to start planning a
community school model that incorporates the collaborative partnerships
and community resources families have used, including meals and medical
care, while schools were closed. \3\ Summer is a way to try things
other countries are doing, including Denmark, Germany, Israel and
Norway, which are bringing in small groups of students who need
instruction first, including students with special needs whose needs
were hardest to meet during closure.
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\3\ John King and Randi Weingarten, ``What Comes Next for Public
Education?'', The Hill, April 24, 2020, https://thehill.com/opinion/
education/494521-what-comes-next-for-public-schooling.
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A voluntary multiweek summer session could provide enrichment and
``catch-up'' time. It also would enable trying, on a smaller scale,
protocols that may work when schools open more broadly, including
staggered scheduling, increased hand-washing, and nightly school
cleaning. And summer can be an opportunity to expand grab-and-go
nutrition programs, as food insecurity remains a pressing issue for far
too many students.
Now is the time for unions and employers to work on all issues for
returning to school. This includes programming, space, operations,
logistics, calendar, and aligning all the public health interventions
with all the schooling interventions: ensuring students' healthy
social, emotional and academic development; nurturing productive
relationships; building resilience; supporting diversity and inclusion;
and rebuilding the school community.
While COVID-19 has upended much of our lives, it has reinforced the
value and importance of public schooling. Teachers and school staff
across this country continue their heroic efforts to make distance
learning work and support their students--with many parents working
valiantly to support them as well. This experience has made clear that
there is no substitute for a safe and welcoming neighborhood school.
And while our public schools have been woefully under-resourced,
and we must continue the fight to change that, this next 2 years is an
opportunity to visualize what schooling looks like in a post-pandemic
era, to ensure every child has the opportunity to thrive.
i. School-Based Public Health Interventions
Even after shelter-in-place orders are lifted, physical
distancing--including limiting the number of people who can be in a
school, a hall, an auditorium or a classroom--will play an important
role in school safety. Physical distancing measures are the most
effective intervention but also the most disruptive. It is a real
possibility that even after schools open, targeted building closures
could happen around the country in response to community outbreaks.
That is why, even though online education is not a substitute for the
in-person learning and socialization that happens in schools, schools
must prepare for hybrid measures: both in-school and remote education.
Handling emergent cases:
Districts, in partnership with unions, will need to develop
protocols for the referral, tracing and isolation of students and staff
who are exhibiting COVID-19-related symptoms or with confirmed
diagnoses. Any plan should, at minimum, include:
Entry process/screening:
Hand-washing on entry to all schools, with soap and
water or hand sanitizer;
Screening for symptoms in children and staff,
including temperature-taking if recommended by the CDC;
An isolation room;
Clear protocols for communicating with students,
parents and staff who have come into close/sustained contact
with confirmed cases;
Limiting access to the nurse's office and creating a
secondary area for triage for other student illnesses or
injuries;
An ability to transfer healthcare staff to sites with
more cases, without diminishing support available to students
elsewhere in the district; and
Communicating directly and immediately with parents
and community regarding cases and how the district responded.
Protections for at-risk staff and at-risk students: COVID-19
disproportionately affects people 65 and older and those with
underlying chronic health conditions. Reopening plans should consider
providing these workers with the option to deliver instruction remotely
while students are in the building, with students under the supervision
of qualified staff. At-risk students should have a similar option to
learn remotely while their teachers and peers are in school.
ii. School-Based Public Health Reorganization
Prolonged physical distancing practices may prove impossible for
certain populations. Schools serve diverse populations, from very young
children, to students with severe behavioral issues, to others with
physical limitations that may make strict adherence to a six-foot
distancing standard difficult. This will require efforts to reorganize
the school day and school operations to maintain health and safety
standards.[3]
It is critical to recognize that different schools, different
districts and even different rooms will require tailored solutions.
Smaller class sizes. One of the most important
measures districts can take is to reduce class sizes. Class
sizes of 25 or more students in a small classroom pose obvious
risks to student health and safety. Class sizes of 12-15
students will, in most circumstances, make it possible to
maintain physical distancing protocols.
Split scheduling. Alternating days of the week or
times of the day may offer schools a way of limiting the number
of students physically present in the building at any given
time. Knowing that split scheduling may cause disruption for
parents and guardians, schools should consider putting in place
after-school care with safety protocols for students and
families most in need.
Monitoring access to school facilities. Schools
should closely monitor access to school facilities and limit
the number of visitors granted access to school facilities.
Transportation. Districts should consider modifying
transportation to provide staggered arrival times and multiple
arrival locations to limit large gatherings of students.
Staggered lunch and meal times. Meals should be
staggered throughout the day, and schools should consider
having students eat in classrooms with appropriate protocols to
keep the classroom clean.
Special student populations. Additional
considerations and planning will be needed for students with
disabilities, underlying health conditions, asthma or
respiratory illness, and special education requirements.
Training for staff, students and parents. Districts
should consider providing up-to-date education and training on
COVID-19 risk factors and protective behaviors.
Alternative plans for after-school programs, sports,
recreation and physical fitness. These activities may need to
be adjusted using the above protocols.
Space and time considerations. This includes the need
for portable classrooms or additional space if schools are
overcrowded.
Additional supports. This includes professional
development, small-group instruction, and all the other social-
emotional and academic programmatic supports necessary during
this transition.
iii. PPE and Sanitization
Availability of and training on how to effectively
use PPE. Educators and support staff need appropriate PPE and
training on how to properly put on, use, take off and dispose
of it.
Hand-washing stations and protocol. Schools should
set up hand-washing stations upon entry to school buildings.
Hand-washing recesses can be integrated into the schedule
throughout the day for all students and staff.
Daily sanitizing. School facilities should be
thoroughly sanitized on a daily basis to prevent transmission
of the virus, increasing staff as necessary.
iv. Mental Health Supports for Students
Our collective response to COVID-19 requires much more than
limiting the spread of the virus. Prolonged physical distancing, death
and illness in our families and communities, and economic dislocations,
will leave many students and faculty with ongoing trauma and mental
health issues, and it is incumbent on us to meet their needs now more
than ever. We know from brain science that lack of psychological safety
and the impact of adverse childhood experiences impede and even prevent
learning. These impacts will be widespread. This will require
additional staff with expertise in mental health, to provide trauma and
sensitivity training for all staff, students and parents. All staff
should be trained on how to identify students struggling with trauma
and refer them to mental health professionals for additional support.
v. High-Quality Instruction
Teachers and school support staff have responded to the crisis with
verve and creativity, creating an entirely new educational delivery
system remotely with no advanced notice and little, if any, training.
If anything, the pandemic has proven that teachers, when given the
freedom to teach, will rise to the occasion to deliver high-quality
instruction to their students.
Blended in-person and distance learning models. When
school attendance is not possible or is limited, districts
could consider a temporary blended model that distributes
educational time between in-person learning and distance
learning or fully remote instruction. Recognizing the dangers
of excessive time on devices, especially for young students,
districts should develop age-appropriate student learning
schedules with teacher input.
Expanded access to broadband and technology to close
the digital divide. Districts should identify students and
educators who lack sufficient access to the internet and the
hardware that has become critical to distance learning, and
determine solutions for equal access to learning opportunities
for those who are unable to connect with the school digitally.
Professional development. Professional development
and collaboration time for teachers--before the school year
begins, and ongoing--will be more important than ever. This
should include not only relevant content, but should address
teaching in the new instructional environment, and trauma-
informed practices.
Rethinking student assessments. An extensive review
of all assessment programs to limit the loss of learning time
to excessive testing, and to prioritize assessments that
provide teachers critical information. Special effort will be
needed for appropriate diagnosis of students' learning levels
and needs given the truncated traditional school year. These
diagnostics should be teacher-friendly and accompanied by
access to relevant instructional resources and supports to fill
gaps.
Performance evaluation. Districts should put formal
evaluations on hold during the reopening period until they
develop new expectations for the possibility of instruction
that alternates between in-person learning and distance
learning. Informal evaluation focused on helpful feedback
should continue.
Role of data. Beyond refocusing schools on the
fundamental values of public schooling--a focus that has been
lost over the years--it is also time we repurpose the role of
information and data in our schools. For too long officials
have used school and student data solely for accountability
purposes. As we reopen our schools, we need to primarily use
these data to guide instruction, identify and share best
practices, and help collectively solve mutual problems.
Teaching and learning. The considerations laid out
above must be placed in the context of the overall
instructional program as well as supplemental services and co-
curriculums--all of which will require significant adjustment.
Consideration of the needs of students--particularly students
with disabilities and special needs, economically disadvantaged
students, and English language learners--will help ensure that
the program works for all.
As the CDC guidance suggests, schools can be information hubs and
places to practice key protocols to help stop the spread of the virus.
We are facing a new normal, and at least in the near future, schools
will not be the same. In the short term, this new normal requires more,
not fewer, resources--nurses, mental health professionals, and
additional instructional and other support. This crisis provides an
opportunity to reimagine America's public schools as inclusive and
welcoming places for all children to thrive and learn.
Perhaps, out of crisis, we will put our children's and their
educators' well-being first. That means, just as we must listen to the
healthcare experts to help ensure everyone's safety through this
outbreak, we must listen to frontline educators, staff and
administrators to ensure children's new normal is one that meets their
needs.
B. Reopening Our Colleges and Universities
Institutions of higher education have been essential to our defense
against this pandemic, and they will be essential to economic recovery
in the new era. American colleges and universities have produced many
of the people who have helped us through this crisis--physicians,
nurses and other frontline medical professionals, as well as supply
chain logisticians, information technology personnel, materials science
engineers and innovators, and more, who will be urgently needed at
every step of what is to come.
College campuses are, historically, exceptionally open physical
environments, with most spaces, including buildings, accessible to the
public virtually all day, and with a wide range of students, faculty,
staff, community members, vendors, outside organizations and other
people--all of whom are potential COVID-19 vectors--moving in and
through the work site, and to off-campus locations both near and far.
The extended duration of daily campus operations--7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
daily is not at all uncommon--allows minimal or no window for deep-
cleaning procedures.
All of this means that the dislocations caused by the COVID-19
crisis pose a unique existential challenge to American higher
education. Because of decades of disinvestment, many institutions--
public and private--are revenue-dependent, and are currently not
situated to survive even a 10 percent or 20 percent decline in
enrollment, or the closure of campus housing for a semester or two.
While prospective students at elite institutions consider taking ``gap
years,'' the students who would and should attend public colleges and
universities are in danger of dropping out of college entirely. And
college and university workers rightly fear that this confluence of
factors will combine with an aggressive transition to online modes of
instruction to result in institutional collapse.
It is critical to remember that the higher education workforce
skews older than average, and is, by the CDC's definition, at
heightened risk from coronavirus. And they are, in the majority,
struggling financially. Most teachers in higher education are gig
workers. Seventy-five percent are employed 1 year or semester at a
time. One-third of them are making less than $25,000 per year, one-
quarter of them are food-insecure, and 43 percent of them have put off
seeing a doctor for financial reasons in the past year.
To keep these institutions afloat, and to grow the educational
infrastructure we will need in order to come back as a nation from the
coronavirus, a program of investment similar to the grant program that
has helped to stabilize small businesses in this time is needed. We
must invest in our institutions of higher education like never before,
with the college equivalent of Title I: $50 billion in funding to
public institutions of higher education and minority-serving
institutions. This money should flow through states with a formula that
emphasizes enrollments of low-income individuals, and encourages
greater support for institutions that derive larger shares of their
operating budgets from state and local sources.
Specific recommendations for our colleges and universities include:
i. Physical Distancing
Faculty must decide whether and how online
instruction is possible and, with the guidance of campus and
public health officials, how any in-person or hybrid
instruction can be conducted safely.
As much as possible, college and university staff--
both professional and classified--must be afforded the
opportunity to continue telework.
To encourage the greatest extent of physical
distancing, institutions must do everything possible to close
the digital divide for faculty, staff and students, thereby
lessening the need for anyone to be in shared space in order to
access the internet.
Residential colleges and universities must implement
physical distancing measures for both residents and staff in
campus housing, dining facilities and other common areas
including libraries, if they remain open. Institutions should
consult with, or employ, public health specialists to advise in
an ongoing way about how to accomplish this.
To prevent fear pushing faculty or students into
physical proximity when physical distancing could and should be
maintained, institutional leaders must expeditiously work with
institutional accrediting agencies, programmatic accreditors,
and union and employer sponsors of workforce training programs,
to assure students and faculty that the responsible movement of
instruction into remote/online and hybrid space will not be
penalized.
Create and utilize campus public health teams to
evaluate and recommend action on potential problem areas on
campus, and to assess and improve the institution's capacity
for testing, tracing and isolation.
ii. Campus-Based Solutions
Flexible graduation requirements. Be flexible about
program and graduation requirements, course timelines and
sequences, requirements for professional certification, and
other areas of historic stringency that may conflict with the
need for physical distancing. Consider adjusting upper-level
courses to account for changes in the preparedness of students
who have taken lower-level courses online during this interval.
Protections for academic freedom. Attend to academic
freedom and student/faculty privacy in a remote learning
environment. The safety of open discussion in a contained
classroom could be compromised by the possibility of recordings
that get widely circulated.
Data security. Establish rules, including contract
language, that reassure faculty and students that corporate
education vendors will not be using this crisis to enhance
their data mining and in turn appropriate that data to expand
prefabricated curriculum.
Prepare for ongoing disruption. To the extent an
institution is reopening, make and propagate plans for
disruptions to in-person instruction caused by surges in COVID-
19 cases.
Protections for at-risk populations. Create and
enforce policy and practices to prevent replicating and
worsening the virus's disproportionate impact on older people
and people with underlying health conditions that place them at
greater risk. Be especially attuned to the needs of older
faculty and staff, or those with underlying health conditions
or with household members who have underlying health
conditions, to be able to work out of proximity to others.
Adjust compensation for additional instructional
time. To maximize educational value and ensure compliance with
physical distancing, plan to pay teachers, particularly adjunct
teachers and graduate assistants, for the time they are asked
to spend meeting either in person or virtually with smaller
groups of students than had met in the past.
iii. PPE and Sanitization
Identify and provide appropriate PPE for employees
and students.
Establish cleaning regimens; properly protect and
train the custodial staff who conduct the cleaning.
Appropriately and regularly sanitize public
buildings, especially campus residential and dining facilities.
iv. Physical and Mental Health Considerations
Community health liaisons. Add trained nurses and
counselors to oversee the handling of identified cases of
illness in the college or university community, and to direct
those in need of resources.
Protocol for new cases. Expand campus health
resources, including isolation rooms for students identified
with COVID-19 symptoms. Establish criteria for when residential
students with COVID-19 symptoms, or who are diagnosed as COVID-
19 positive, will be excluded from regular campus activities,
and identify the procedure that will be followed to relocate
the student either on or off campus.
Resources for degree completion. Strengthen and
expand existing programs to help students maintain continuous
enrollment and progress toward degrees--e.g., small-dollar
grant programs, transportation and child care assistance.
C. Readying Our Hospitals and Health Systems
The lessons of this pandemic demonstrate the dangerous consequences
of being ill-prepared. The inability of our decimated public health
infrastructure to handle a pandemic puts the problems with our
corporatized healthcare system on full display. In the absence of
widespread immunity to COVID-19, new infections could surge once
shelter-in-place orders are lifted and society begins to reopen.
Experts additionally talk about a possible second wave of outbreaks in
the fall. Without a robust public health infrastructure, and absent
enforcement of strong protective guidelines and a supportive response
plan by the Federal Government, union leaders in the health sector must
engage in meaningful ways of holding employers accountable.
The gap between our public health system and private healthcare
corporations must be addressed. A lack of transparency and a funding
model that has starved resources from the public health system not only
reward pharmaceutical and large healthcare corporations. They also
establish a power imbalance that minimizes the voices of patients and
workers in setting standards of care and in helping shape how care
should be delivered. Notwithstanding the challenges with our current
system, evidence-based practices, enactment and enforcement of
protective regulatory standards, and collectively bargained terms are
necessary to ensure healthcare workers can care for patients without
fear of harm to themselves and their family, should a resurgence of the
virus occur.
Worker safety is patient safety. Our healthcare workforce has borne
the brunt of workplace infections and deaths related to COVID-19, owing
in large part to the crisis rationing of PPE and the diminution of
Federal standards and guidelines that conform with the highest
standards of patient safety. It is imperative that nurses and other
health professionals are at the table during employer debriefs and when
preparedness plans are evaluated and modified, to ensure our healthcare
workforce is not working in hazardous conditions. Health and safety
issues must be addressed before another surge in infections occurs. PPE
supplies must be adequate in number and quality, and all staff should
be fit-tested and fully trained for use of PPE.
State reopening plans phasing in the return of elective medical
procedures and routine care require a hard look at where we have failed
to keep our patients and healthcare workforce safe. With COVID-19,
nurses and healthcare professionals are working in conditions where
protective measures of infection control have failed and their
expertise and training have been overlooked. Infection control measures
in patient care environments have necessarily been adjusted during the
pandemic and will require ongoing adjustment as reopening occurs.
Factors like patient flow, room setup, and visitor policies will
influence the ability to limit transmission in clinical settings. And
union leaders will need to press healthcare employers to ensure they
are ready to quickly implement preparedness plans in the event of a
resurgence.
There is a need to stabilize the healthcare workforce, as areas
hard-hit by the virus have seen an increased need for critical care
nurses, but a decrease in need for other nurse specialties. Resulting
layoffs and substantial job loss in healthcare contribute to the
overall unemployment rates, prompting the need for effective deployment
of our healthcare workforce; this is a key component of reopening and
preparation for a second surge in infections. Nurses on medical floors
with low patient counts, for example, could be trained to augment
staffing in critical care areas where staffing numbers are low due to
infection rates among clinicians. Rather than tactics like recruitment
from abroad, we should first implement retraining to redeploy existing
staff based on patient needs.
Mending well-being and emotional resilience among the healthcare
workforce will also be a necessity. Stressors abound for healthcare
workers caring for acutely ill COVID-19 patients in isolation in
hospitals and other healthcare settings. Whether related to stressors
like employment of strict biosecurity measures, the isolation from
family and friends, the heightened workload demands, or even the risk
of disease, our healthcare workforce will require a period of
reintegration--even though most of their facilities have remained open.
The systematic failure of employers and the Federal Government to
prepare for a pandemic resulted in an extraordinary level of
unnecessary trauma across the healthcare workforce, and those things
must be addressed.
4. Involving workers, unions, parents and communities in all planning.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this crisis. Rebuilding
community after a complex public health and economic crisis necessarily
involves thousands of people navigating recovery who are as new to the
experience as the average person; thus, the effectiveness of our
collective response depends on the collective action of each community.
Communities and workers must be educated, engaged and empowered. This
is an unprecedented situation; the eyes and ears of practitioners are
essential to ensure that the public health, instruction and logistics
of reopening are operationalized as seamlessly as possible.
Schools, colleges, hospitals, and local and state governments will
need to engage workers and community stakeholders at every level of the
decisionmaking process to ensure that the mitigation strategies
embedded in reopening plans are responsive to the specific
vulnerabilities of each workplace and that there is regular and open
communication regarding the policies and procedures to keep everyone
safe. Without transparency and joint decisionmaking, there is a real
risk of distrust, the spread of misinformation, and a lack of
compliance with reopening plans.
Collective bargaining is the best way to ensure that workers are
represented in decisionmaking and that health and safety standards are
enforced to the benefit of workers and the communities they serve. In
the absence of collective bargaining, workers and employers can use
meet-and-confer arrangements to formalize reopening plans and ensure
accountability.
Protections for Workers and Community
Strong, clear and enforceable workplace health and safety standards
must be in place to protect workers' voices during the reopening
process. Employers and joint bodies administering the phased reopening
plans need to know where there are faults in the plan and noncompliance
issues. In addition to OSHA protections available in some states,
workplaces and other authorities should develop policies to protect
workers who speak up about health and safety issues, as healthcare
professionals are frequently subject to gag orders, and many have lost
their jobs for speaking up about safety concerns. \4\
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\4\ Theresa Brown, ''The Reason Hospitals Won't Let Doctors and
Nurses Speak Out,'' New York Times, April 21, 2020, https://
www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/opinion/coronavirus-doctors-nurses-
hospitals.html.
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To ensure that health and safety measures are implemented, workers
who voice concerns publicly should be protected from employer
retaliation that could result in their discipline or dismissal. Workers
must have the right to refuse work if they fear exposure to the virus
because they have not been provided proper protections or training to
do their jobs safely. The surest way to protect workers in these
instances is to put these protections into collective bargaining
agreements. Workers have and will face great risks in transitioning to
reopening, and their voices should be treated as a public health
resource, not a liability.
In general, unions and employers, consulting with diverse community
stakeholders, should treat the collective bargaining process as an
opportunity to solve problems facing school districts, universities and
hospitals as they plan for and manage reopening. Consultation
provisions can be built into the agreement to ensure that all parties
are regularly discussing and solving problems as they arise.
Collective bargaining can also be used to fight for the resources
workers and communities need. AFT affiliates from across the country
have been fighting for smaller class sizes, more nurses and counselors,
safe patient staffing, resources for community schools, and other
supports for students. Public schools should continue to be reimagined
as community hubs--places where students and families can get access to
community health services, be regularly educated about how to stay
healthy, and learn where to go to receive testing and treatment. Strong
community and family engagement has been a cornerstone of transforming
struggling schools to support students. When practitioners and school
administrators work together to support these efforts the results are
even stronger and more sustainable.
This kind of investment around a whole-community approach is what
will not only mitigate the disproportionate harm this crisis has caused
the most vulnerable communities, but help reverse the inequality that
existed long before this pandemic.
A Seat at the Table
All community members are struggling with the fear and anxiety of
reopening before a vaccine is widely available. In order for
communities to trust reopening plans, they need a seat at the table to
make decisions, and to feel engaged and empowered to help their
community implement them.
Reopening plans need to address specific challenges in each
community. Some schools have a network of healthcare providers that
deliver services to students and the school community, and others
don't. Some universities have student populations with no home to
return to in the event campus is closed. African Americans face higher
rates of infection and death. Older workers and those with chronic or
underlying conditions are at higher risk of having life-threatening
cases of COVID-19.
To address these issues, state and local unions should start
planning committees now, for the next school year, and use a needs
assessment tool to map out the risks of reopening. These committees can
also help align the resources available across sectors--education,
public health and public safety--to mitigate those risks. The guidance
on the available public health tools and strategies for preserving
high-quality instruction discussed in section three is a good starting
point, as is any overture to invite parents and community groups to
join you.
The plans that come out of needs assessments not only should
provide guidance to employers, but also should become official policy
upon adoption by school boards and other governing bodies and/or
included in collective bargaining agreements to ensure compliance and
accountability. Workers and community stakeholders need the power and
voice to enforce these reopening plans, and to make sure they work to
fulfill health, safety and educational goals.
Effective communication depends on a high degree of trust. Without
the trust of workers and community stakeholders, workplaces will be
challenged to ensure compliance with reopening plans. Communication
before and during phased reopening must be transparent about the
stakeholders involved in the decisionmaking process, the factors used
to make decisions, and the nature of the decisionmaking process itself.
We must remember that our communities are eager to return to a sense of
normalcy, as they are feeling the grief of lost loved ones, economic
insecurity due to lost jobs and incomes, and prolonged isolation.
Perhaps most importantly, communication needs to be clear about the
actions people can and must take to protect themselves and others from
COVID-19. Employers may simply not have the ability to effectively
communicate those actions to workers and the community at large, and
they will need to call on the help of union and community stakeholders
to deliver the message into the community. A ``whole school-whole
community'' approach has been the most effective at limiting the spread
of the virus and keeping panic at bay. The AFT has worked tirelessly to
ensure our members and communities are properly informed.
Invest in recovery. Do not abandon America's communities or forfeit
America's future.
The paired crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting
economic devastation make reopening the public square especially
complex. We know we must reignite the economy, and a safe reopening of
schools and other workplaces is a necessary step toward recovery. While
we are eager to put people back to work, send children back to school,
and repair the damage done to the economy and our families' well-being,
to rush this process or fail to put in place the safeguards advised by
public health experts will risk both a second surge of infection and an
even deeper economic downturn.
The toll this has taken on America's working families and our
communities is incalculable, and the hole gets deeper with each passing
day. This particular moment requires our Federal Government, in
particular, to respond appropriately. In addition to what has already
been done, a substantial and immediate Federal investment in our
states, cities and towns is critical to ensure that we are continuing
to respond to the pandemic, clearing the way for a safe reopening, and
supporting our families and communities.
A Plan to Support State and Local Governments and Other Critical
Services: Public Schools, Public Safety, Public Health, the U.S. Postal
Service and More
Businesses large and small have shut down operations, and more than
26 million workers have filed for unemployment in recent weeks,
threatening to crater tax revenue for state and local governments. Even
with the $2 trillion CARES Act rescue package passed in March, the
White House predicts 20 percent of Americans will be unemployed by
June. Governors from all 50 states have issued emergency declarations
and taken steps to reallocate their budgets. Now, these Governors,
Democrats and Republicans alike, are calling for the next COVID-19
relief bill to include another $500 billion to stabilize their states
and prevent another wave of layoffs, because they're desperate to avoid
the cuts to public services like schools, healthcare centers and public
safety. More will be necessary to provide for a safe reopening and
address new needs created by this crisis.
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested that Congress
should let state and local governments go bankrupt, putting teachers,
nurses, bus drivers, firefighters, EMTs and other public employees out
of work, plundering pensions and retirement security, and plunging even
more families and seniors into poverty. His plan would gut public
education, Medicaid, public health services and mental health
treatment--the essential public services that never recovered fully
from the austerity measures imposed after the Great Recession of 2008.
We cannot forfeit our future or abandon our communities. To survive
as a Nation, we must help our public schools, universities, hospitals,
state and local government, and the Postal Service provide services
that will be more needed than ever; this will require an immediate,
massive reinvestment in public services. The CARES Act and related
legislation provided an important first step in a Federal response, but
more is needed. Congress should, in the next iteration of its response,
do at least the following:
Support the National Governors Association's call for
$500 billion in additional funds to meet the states' budgetary
shortfalls that have resulted from this unprecedented public
health crisis.
Provide at least $175 billion for the Education
Stabilization Fund distributed directly to local education
agencies and institutions of higher education, with minimal
state set-asides, in an equitable and targeted fashion. Also
provide $50 billion in direct funding for public colleges and
universities and minority-serving institutions. Given
anticipated loss of tax revenues, they will need substantially
more Federal support to deliver crucial public services, such
as educating our Nation's public school students, sustaining
public higher education and maintaining a public service
workforce.
Invest in voluntary summer school, after-school
programs and community schools that will make up for the
instructional time lost during the 2019-20 school year, by
providing significant additional funding for Title I and the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as
additional funding for high-quality, voluntary summer school
and extended learning time. While the full extent of the
current crisis continues to evolve, we already know that,
despite their best efforts to support students and families,
our schools will be faced with students who have experienced
extended months of learning loss, significant poverty, trauma
and unmet social-emotional needs.
Increase investment to close the digital divide.
High-speed broadband, reliable mobile service, modern
technology and hardware are no longer optional. They are now
core infrastructure needs of businesses, schools and homes. \5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Congressional Budget Office, ``CBO's Current Projection of
Output, Employment, and Interest Rates and a Preliminary Look at
Federal Deficits for 2020 and 2021,'' April 24, 2020, https://
www.cbo.gov/publication/56335.
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Substantially increase Medicaid funding, provide free
COVID-19 testing and treatment for all regardless of
immigration or insurance status, and increase support for
providers assisting underserved populations. \6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ American Federation of Teachers, ``A Decade of Neglect: Public
Education Funding in the Aftermath of the Great Recession,'' https://
www.aft.org/sites/default/files/decade-of-neglect-2018.pdf; Trust for
America's Health, ``Pain in the Nation Update: Deaths from Alcohol,
Drugs and Suicide Reach the Highest Levels Ever Recorded,'' February
2018, https://www.tfah.org/article/new-report-funding-for-public-
health-has-declined-significantly since-the-great-recession/.
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Provide for the personal protective equipment,
cleaning supplies and other materials necessary to help our
public institutions reopen safely.
Cover 100 percent of COBRA health insurance premiums
for those workers now unemployed through no fault of their own,
or who lost health insurance due to the death of the carrier.
Ensure resources are available, and that proper testing and
safety provisions can be in place, before schools reopen.
Permanently expand eligibility for unemployment
benefits to many previously uncovered workers (including the
self-employed, independent contractors and gig workers), and
extend unemployment benefits for an additional 13 weeks.
Boost SNAP maximum benefits by 15 percent and
increase the SNAP minimum payment from $16 to $30. This will
help provide adequate nutrition assistance to meet the overall
need and spur economic recovery. Every day there is new
evidence of the depth of food hardship and economic
dislocation. Each $1 of Federal SNAP benefits during a downturn
generates between $1.50 and $1.80 in economic activity.
Increase by a minimum of 15-percentage points the
Federal Medical Assistance Percentages, which determines
Medicaid spending. This increase should be added to the 6.2
percentage-point increase adopted in the Families First
Coronavirus Response Act, and increases should be retroactive
to Jan. 1, 2020, and should last until at least Dec. 31, 2021.
Cancel student debt. As a Nation, we are now paying
the price for our decades of neglect of the systems through
which collective effort once enabled us to take on Herculean
challenges. This includes our neglect of our system of higher
education, which has produced fewer essential professionals
than we need and has, in shifting the burden of its costs to
individual students and families, effectively demanded lifetime
personal indenture of those who undertake college, graduate and
professional education. In the economic catastrophe we now
face, for its stimulative effect alone, it is time to free
people who have attended college of the burden of student loan
debt.
Given these needs, Congress should make at least a $750 billion
investment in state and local government to stabilize public services,
which will help put us on a path to reopen safely and allow for a real
recovery for all our communities. This administration spent trillions
on a corporate tax cut in 2017; it must be prepared to invest a
comparable amount on the anchoring institutions that have been key to
fighting the virus and are central to any recovery plan: Public
schools, universities, hospitals, state and local governments and the
U.S. Postal Service provide services that will be more needed than
ever, and we need a massive investment in them right now.
In partnership with the AFL-CIO and partner unions, we developed
five economic essentials to address the stark realities now faced by
workers across all sectors:
Keep America healthy--protect and expand health
insurance for all workers;
Keep frontline workers safe and secure;
Keep workers employed, and protect earned pension
checks;
Keep state and local governments, our public schools
and the U.S. Postal Service solvent and working; and
Keep America competitive--hire people to build
infrastructure and make long-overdue investments in this key
pillar of the economy.
We have all watched harrowing reports of abusive and unsafe
conditions for essential workers in meatpacking plants \7\ and
warehouses \8\ across the country. On April 28, AFT-affiliated nurses
and healthcare professionals in 10 states filed 24 separate OSHA
complaints \9\ for lack of necessary personal protective equipment
despite their ongoing exposure to COVID-19 patients as part of their
jobs. The president must use the power of the office to protect workers
with the aggressive enforcement of Defense Production Act and OSHA
standards. He must cease using the power of the presidency, his public
press conferences and his Twitter account to endanger the lives of
working people.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Ken Anderson, ``Trump Orders Meatpacking Plans to Remain
Open,'' Brownfield AG News, April 28, 2020, https://
brownfieldagnews.com/news/trump-orders-meatpacking-plants-to-remain-
open/.
\8\ Alina Selyukh, ``Amazon Warehouse Safety `Inadequate,' N.Y.
Attorney General Office Says,'' NPR, April 27, 2020, https://
www.npr.org/2020/04/27/846438983/amazon-warehouse-safety-inadequate-n-
y-attorney-general-s-office-says.
\9\ Olivia Messer, ``OSHA Complaints Flood in from COVID-19
Frontline Health Workers,'' Daily Beast, April 28, 2020, https://
www.thedailybeast.com/osha-complaints-flood-in-from-covid-19-frontline-
health-workers.
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A Progressive Economic Agenda
With interest rates and inflation at historic lows, the Federal
Government should continue to borrow to fulfill its role and to support
state and local government services. It is not the time to be concerned
about deficits. And the Federal Government should be prepared to raise
taxes. We are trying to both save lives and ensure the quality and
dignity of those lives. It is completely appropriate to ask our future
selves to help pay for that. We must fund our future if we want our
children to inherit the potential to fulfill the promise of the
American dream.
States also will have an important role. In Illinois and
California, there are initiatives on the ballot this fall to raise
revenues by asking those who have more to pay more. These are the right
policies to pursue at the moment, and more states should look to
emulate these efforts in the coming days. While there is an argument
that raising taxes in a recession has an economic cost, the economic
and social costs of cutting services and creating further suffering are
far greater. We can afford to make these investments, we cannot afford
to fail.
Conclusion: a Living Document
This plan to reopen our society is a living document, guided by
constantly evolving expert advice about how best to keep our children,
our workers and our communities safe from the continued spread of
COVID-19 and what resources are needed to put communities back on the
road to recovery.
It rests on the fundamental belief that without a vaccine, we must
take specific steps to map out our new normal, which must include: some
elements of physical distancing; infrastructure for testing, tracing
and isolation; deploying public health interventions in our schools and
workplaces and aligning them with the necessary educational supports;
involvement of workers and community in the development of reopening
plans; and significant investments in states, localities, schools,
healthcare and the Postal Service--the essential systems that have
carried us through this crisis and will need continued support.
Together, as the people on the frontlines of carrying our country
through this crisis, we will work to carry our communities through the
recovery that follows.
______
National Education Association,
June 9, 2020,
Washington, DC 20036.
Hon. Lamar Alexander, Chairman
Hon. Patty Murray, Ranking Member
U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
455 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC 20510.
Dear Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray:
On behalf of our 3 million members and the 50 million students they
serve, we would like to submit for the record the following comments in
connection with the June 10 hearing, ``Going Back to School Safely.''
Physically opening schools at the beginning of the 2020--21 school
year is the goal of most districts and states, but the decision to
reopen must be rooted in health and safety--not driven by an arbitrary
start date. To reopen schools safely, we will need to provide personal
protective equipment (PPE) for students and educators; modify
classrooms, cafeterias, and school buses to permit social distancing;
intensify instruction and support for students traumatized by the
impact of the coronavirus on their families and communities; and more.
Doing so will require significant investments at a time when schools
are facing budget cuts that are expected to far exceed those during the
Great Recession.
Looming state budget shortfalls
America officially entered a recession in February, according to
the National Bureau of Economic Research. More than 40 million
Americans are jobless. The unemployment rate is nearly 14 percent, the
highest since the Great Depression. States and localities are
struggling to fund public education in the face of dramatically rising
costs and sharply declining tax revenues as consumers dial back
spending on virtually everything except groceries and Netflix
subscriptions.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 500,000 public
education jobs have already been lost. If the economic damage wrought
by the coronavirus pandemic goes unchecked, nearly 2 million
educators--one-fifth of the workforce--could lose their jobs over the
next 3 years, according to a new analysis by the National Education
Association.
These job losses would profoundly impact the 50 million students
who attend public schools, their families, and communities--especially
low-income students whose schools rely on Title I funding to lower
class sizes, hire specialists, and offer a rich curriculum. By
comparison, 300,000 education jobs were lost during the Great
Recession. In other words, the COVID-19 recession could be more than
six times as bad for education as the 2008 financial crisis.
Students need more--not less
The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on a hard truth that
our members across the country already knew: Not all students have
access to the educators, resources, and tools they need. It has also
fully revealed the long-standing digital divide and exacerbated
inequities like the homework gap--the inability to do schoolwork at
home due to lack of internet access. Nationwide, as many as 12 million
students are affected--roughly 1 in 5--and a disproportionate share are
African American, Hispanic, live in rural areas, or come from low-
income families.
To help contain the spread of COVID-19, public schools in nearly
every state shut down and abruptly switched to online instruction,
putting students without access to the internet at even greater risk of
falling behind their peers. Taking into account all these factors,
McKinsey & Company estimates that African American students could lose
the equivalent of 10 months of learning, Hispanic students 9 months of
learning, and low-income students more than a full year of learning due
the COVID-19 pandemic.
Instead of addressing these issues, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos
has used resources provided by the CARES Act to push her failed
privatization agenda, which has been repeatedly rejected by Congress.
``Microgrants,'' her latest scheme, are just another name for vouchers
that divert taxpayer dollars from public to private and religious
schools.
Next Steps
Decisions about reopening America's schools should be grounded in
health experts' findings and recommendations, input from educators,
access to protection, and equity--treating racial and social justice as
an imperative, not an expendable aspiration.
The HEROES Act recognizes this is the right approach. It includes
$915 billion in direct relief for state and local governments that can
be used to pay vital workers such as educators and $90 billion in
additional education funding that could save more than 800,000
education jobs at all levels from kindergarten to postsecondary. The
HEROES Act would also ensure that taxpayer dollars go where Congress
intended: to the public schools that educate 9 out of 10 students.
To help reopen schools safely, NEA urges Congress to provide at
least $175 billion more for the Education Stabilization Fund, at least
$56 million in directed funding for protective equipment, and at least
$4 billion to create a special fund, administered by the successful E-
Rate program, to equip students with hot spots and devices to help
narrow the digital divide and close the homework gap.
We thank you for the opportunity to submit these comments and stand
ready to work with Congress to reopen America's schools safely.
Sincerely,
Brian Stann,
Director of Government Relations
______
National Association of School Nurses (NASN),
Silver Spring, MD 20910,
June 30, 2020.
Hon. Lamar Alexander, Chairman
Hon. Patty Murray, Ranking Member
U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
428 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC 20510.
Dear Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray:
On behalf of the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) we
appreciate the hearing that you held on ``Going Back to School Safely''
on June 10, 2020. As you remarked in your opening statement, school re-
entry will bring many challenges for students as they resume classes in
school year 2020-2021. Students will experience mental and behavioral
health concerns that may present as physical health issues; they will
need support from school nurses. On behalf of the 56.6 million pre-
kindergarten, elementary and high school students in the United States
and their families, the National Association of School Nurses (NASN)
asks that you fund 10,000 school nurses for the upcoming school year as
this country begins to open schools in the recovery phase of the COVID-
19 pandemic.
School re-entry is crucial for parents to go back to work; having
children at home and out of the classroom has caused undue economic and
mental stress for families. Placing additional school nurses in schools
across the country provides a key solution to help parents resume full
work capacity and re-opening of the economy. There will be multiple
challenges for students as they resume in person classes in school year
2020-2021. For schools to address the ongoing impact of the COVID-19
pandemic, school nurses need to be in place when schools re-open and
are central to discussions of safe procedures for 2020-2021 school
year.
School nurses are front line health care providers serving as the
bridge between the health care and education systems. Whether they are
hired by school districts, health departments, or hospitals, school
nurses look after the physical and mental health of students in
schools. School nurses, as public health sentinels, engage school
communities, parents, families, and healthcare providers to promote
wellness and improve health outcomes for children. School nurses are
essential in infectious disease surveillance, identification and
intervention for student physical and mental health concerns, health
screenings, school located vaccinations and immunization compliance
efforts. Historically children have been the first to show signs of an
epidemic and the school nurse has been a bell weather of illness. As we
look at the 2020-2021 school year that will also coincide with the next
influenza season, the need for new school nurses is paramount. School
nurses support the academic success of students by making sure they are
healthy, safe, and ready to learn.
For many children living in or near poverty, the school nurse may
be the only health care professional they access regularly.
Additionally, children today face more chronic and complex health
conditions than ever before. Access to a school nurse is a student
equity issue. As schools prepare to reopen, school nurses provide
crucial input for school preparedness, prevention, and response to
infectious diseases.
As the current financial recession deepens, there will be less
funds for schools to be able to retain a school nurse. Currently, only
39 percent of public schools have a school nurse all day, every day,
while another 35 percent of schools have a school nurse who works part
time in one or more schools. This leaves 25 percent of schools without
a full-time school nurse. This fall, it is imperative that schools have
school nurses to provide for the safety and well-being of all students,
especially with the ongoing presence of COVID-19 and the upcoming flu
season.
School nurses serve students and families in schools and in
communities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, school nurses continue to
work by to checking in on students with chronic conditions, either by
phone or through telehealth; others provide home visits. Some school
nurses collaborate with school staff to ensure that children receive
needed meals in a manner that protects the health of students,
families, and staff. Other school nurses serve at COVID-19 testing
centers and as contact tracers to support local and state public health
departments.
As you and other congressional leaders negotiate stimulus packages
centered on the COVID-19, keep in mind that 25 percent of the Nation's
schools have no school nurse. Therefore, it is essential during this
pandemic to add 10,000 new school nurses for the upcoming school year.
Healthy students learn better. When a school nurse is present to meet
student healthcare needs, parents and school administrators know that
children and youth can focus on learning.
Thank you for your consideration to address the health, safety, and
learning readiness of students by increasing school nurse positions in
U.S. schools. Please don't hesitate to contact me if I can be of
assistance or put you in touch with NASN members from your local
communities. Additionally, you can contact NASN's Director of
Government Affairs, Piper Largent at [email protected] if you have any
questions.
Sincerely,
Laurie Combe, MN, RN, NCSN
President
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Responses by Penny Schwinn to Questions of Senator Scott, Senator
Murkowski, Senator Sanders, and Senator Warren
senator scott
Question 1. As our Country continues to grapple with the
devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, parents, educators,
school leaders, and students are faced with the difficulty of juggling
persistent responsibilities of working from home and school. To
compound this, the unemployment rate is currently 13.3 percent,
indicating millions of Americans are still out of work or facing
revenue declines as small business owners. Many private schools, which
serve about 5.7 million of the Nation's children, are in a crisis and
potentially face disruptions to their education. Enrollment and tuition
revenues are plunging as family incomes decline, along with
philanthropic donations and church collections that help some religious
schools operate.
Many of these schools serve low-income students. About 30 percent
of the families they serve have annual incomes below $75,000, and those
families are most at-risk without Federal aid. Under current Federal
education law, school districts are required to use Federal funding
intended for their poorest students to provide ``equitable services,''
such as tutoring and transportation, for low-income students attending
private schools in their districts. Beyond private schools offering
more choices and competition for students and families, many private
schools work as significant economic engines in their communities.
Question (a). Do you believe in your professional opinion that we
ought to use COVID-19 Federal funds to support private schools
reopening in the fall for all their students, especially the most
financially vulnerable?
Answer. As a department, our responsibility is to Tennessee
students, regardless of the educational option pursued by those
students and their families.
While funding mechanisms, statutory requirements, and regulatory
structures may vary from public schools to private schools, our belief
that all students deserve a high-quality education is unchanging. This
commitment to our students in non-public schools takes shape in various
forms; regarding Federal education funding, this is most often
exemplified through the provision of equitable services. Just as our
private schools have the opportunity to further support their students
through various equitable services provisions on other Federal funds,
we believe that our financially vulnerable students deserved to be
supported across all types of school settings.
Under new guidance from the U.S. Department of Education, local
education agencies (LEAs) will be able to make decisions based off
their local community's needs. This could entail using ESSER funds to
serve all public school students, with a proportionate share given to
private schools within the community to serve all of their students, or
LEAs could focus their efforts exclusively on those students
experiencing poverty, in both public and private schools. While
decisions may vary across the state, the department is focused on
providing the strategies and supports that all districts will need to
ensure CARES Act funding is used to drive meaningful and equitable
outcomes for each and every child.
Question (b). Engage by EdChoice predicts if 30 percent of the
private school population transitions back to public school, it would
cost Nebraska $63,131,338 for the state to absorb the cost of these
students and $94,263,287 for the State of South Carolina. Does your
state education budget have capacity to support these students and
maintain providing high quality education? What suggestions or
potential solutions to ensure the education of private school students
is not disrupted?
Answer. Should Tennessee experience a large transition of students
from private schools to public schools, the state currently has two
paths to ensure proper funding follows students. First, while the
state's education funding formula generally operates based on prior
year data, the budget also includes a growth fund to capture within-
year increases in enrollment. This provides flexibility to fund rapidly
expanding enrollments in public school districts within the year the
growth is experienced. Second, the state may also consider requesting
supplemental budget funds from the Tennessee General Assembly during
the year to account for enrollment expansion beyond the standing growth
fund. Regardless of the path, the expanded enrollment and subsequent
funding would become part of the state's proposed budget for the
upcoming fiscal year. Tennessee has always fully funded its education
funding formula and would expect to continue to do so in the future.
Private schools are an inherent part of the educational landscape
in Tennessee, providing choice to students and families across the
state. To ensure public health standards are supported in schools no
matter their type, Tennessee has maintained and will continue its
commitment to ensure private schools have access to the same Personal
Protective Equipment supports, including noncontact thermometers, which
are being provided to public schools.
senator murkowski
Question 1. Do your states and districts have enough school nurses
and counselors to meet your students' needs when schools reopen? If
not, what steps are you taking to identify the professionals who can
provide those services?
Answer. School nurses and counselors are critically important
supports to students in public schools, and districts have historically
faced funding challenges in staffing these positions for their schools.
In the Tennessee Department of Education's 2018-19 Coordinated School
Health annual report, 99 percent of districts met the goal of one
certified counselor per 500 students, but only 58 percent of schools
employed a full-time nurse. Only 20 percent of districts report meeting
the goal of one certified social worker for every 1,500 students.
Recognizing that students' needs have and will continue to evolve
throughout the pandemic and the launch of a new school year, Tennessee
Governor Bill Lee charged Commissioner Penny Schwinn to convene the
Child Well-being Task Force, a collective of 38 leaders representing
the East, Middle, and West regions of our state and various fields,
including but not limited to mental health, telehealth, education,
interfaith, non-profit, healthcare, and law enforcement. The goal of
this task force is to support the whole child needs of Tennessee
children by empowering local implementation--identifying local
infrastructure, relationships, and resources to develop, connect, and
promote supports for students and families. Also, as schools approach
reopening for the new school year, the department will continue to
build awareness with state and local elected officials of the need for
these critical supports for students and schools. Collectively,
Tennessee will continue to partner at the state and local level to both
identify need areas and develop solutions to ensure Tennessee children
are supported in their academic, physical, emotional, and mental
health.
senator sanders
Question 1. In a recent Politico survey, a majority of American
voters now say they're concerned about sending kids back to elementary
and high schools this fall. In addition, during a recent hearing of the
House Energy and Commerce Committee on the Administration's response to
the COVID-19 pandemic, witnesses for the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services testified that ``COVID-19 activity will likely continue
for some time.'' The health officials also warned of a difficult fall
and winter because the U.S. health-care system will probably battle two
highly contagious, respiratory viruses then: the novel coronavirus and
the seasonal flu. How will you assure parents that your state will
provide sufficient resources to strengthen public schools and ensure
that schools are safe for students, faculty and staff? How will you
ensure that schools will be regularly sanitized, and that personal
protective equipment will be provided, as needed?
Answer. The priority of the Tennessee Department of Education,
Commissioner Schwinn, and Governor Lee will always be the health and
wellness of students, teachers, leaders, and staff across the state of
Tennessee. The most significant commitment to this end is that the
Tennessee maintained full funding for its education funding formula in
its state budget, including a requirement in state law through which
counties must maintain funding to their respective school district(s)
year over year.
Additionally, Tennessee has ensured that all state agency are
working collaboratively to support a safe return to school, including
significant collaboration with the Tennessee Emergency Management
Agency (TEMA) and the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH). In working
with local school districts and county emergency management offices,
TEMA was able to offer four cloth masks per school employee, and if
requested, four cloth masks or 40 disposable masks per student, and
non-contact thermometers to all schools across the state. Additionally,
the Tennessee Department of Education developed a series of over 20
reopening toolkits to support districts in developing their reopening
plans, including toolkits exclusively focused on physical health and
environments, based on recommendations from the Tennessee Department of
Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As
districts move to reopen schools, the state will continue to gauge
needs to ensure safe and healthy school environments.
Tennessee has also implemented Continuous Learning Plans (CLPs) in
which districts define remote learning instructional strategies in case
school buildings need to be closed temporarily or indefinitely. These
plans ensure that districts have strategies in place to continue
instruction in a robust manner, even if they need to transition to
asynchronous instructional models. Many districts in Tennessee are
planning to employ these remote learning strategies into their regular
instructional operations to maximize social distancing and limit
building occupancy for students and high-risk populations.
Question 2. Earlier in June, U.S. News and World Reports stated
that estimates of statewide budget cuts will likely decrease school
budgets by 10 percent to 25 percent for the upcoming academic year and
cuts may go as high as 35 percent for the 2021-22 school year.
According to the American Federation of Teachers, it is estimated that
at a minimum an average school district will need to spend $2 million
or an additional $490 per student to adhere to CDC guidelines. How are
school districts in your state preparing for these additional costs?
With the loss of income and budget cuts, how will your state prioritize
safety and provide adequate staffing as campuses reopen? How will your
state ensure that every student, regardless of financial status,
students with disabilities, LGBQT+ students, students with unsafe
homes, students of color and students from low-income families will
have free access to testing and a vaccine, when available?
Answer. Due to the leadership of Governor Lee and the Tennessee
General Assembly, state and county budgets are set to maintain funding
levels compared to prior years. School districts are still faced with
additional costs to meet the unique needs posed by the pandemic. This
intentional focus on education as a funding priority ensures students
are supported in their new academic year. Tennessee has also ensured
that Federal funds in response to the pandemic are prioritized for
education. In addition to the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency
Relief (ESSER) and Governor's Emergency Education Relief (GEER) funds,
Tennessee is prioritizing education needs in planning activities for
the Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF). Governor Lee has committed a
significant amount of CRF funds to education. Beyond funding, the state
has moved to provide supports at the state level to help alleviate
local costs, including through resources such as interim assessments
and through statewide procurements. These strategies, while supporting
all districts, also uniquely allow smaller, rural districts to better
utilize local funds for essential needs by leveraging the economies of
scale of the state.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee also committed that anyone who wants to
be tested could be tested for free. With over 900,000 tests conducted,
Tennessee is conducting, on average, upwards of 8,500 tests per day and
was listed by the Harvard Global Health Institute as one of seven
states to reach a benchmark for COVID-19 testing. The state remains
committed to ensuring any Tennessean who wants a test has access to a
free and readily available test.
senator warren
Question 1. The School Superintendents Association (AASA) has
estimated that an average school district will need to spend $2 million
or an additional $490 per student to adhere to CDC guidelines. At the
same time, statewide budget cuts are expected to decrease school
budgets by 10 percent to 25 percent for the upcoming academic year, and
cuts could rise to 35 percent for the 2021-22 school year.
Question (a). Based on current projections in your state, how will
funding for education in the 2020-21 school year compare with funding
in the past school year?
Answer 1, (a). Tennessee's education budget for the 2020-21 school
year fully funds the state's education funding formula, meaning that
school districts in Tennessee will continue to receive the same level
of funding they did in the prior academic year (including accounting
for potential student enrollment growth). Tennessee law also requires
counties to maintain funding to their respective school district(s)
year over year. Collectively, these funding implications mean that
education funding to school districts will be consistent with the prior
academic year.
Question (b). If you project a cut to the education budget, how
large will this cut be?
Answer (b). While the state is reviewing opportunities to
streamline its state education agency and programs, the primary
education funding formula will remain consistent from the prior fiscal
year.
Question (c)1. Data from the 2008 recession showed that schools
that relied more heavily on state funding, which tend to be located in
low-income communities, were more likely to be negatively impacted by
budget cuts and layoffs. What will be the impact of these cuts on the
lowest-income districts in your state?
Answer (c). The state's education funding formula includes a fiscal
capacity indicator to level set the balance of state and local funding
composition, but regardless of whether a district has a high or low
fiscal capacity, the maintenance of effort law ensures ongoing budgeted
funds to support schools. The law requires a local maintenance of
effort on education funding as counties must fund their respective
school system(s) at the same amount or more than the prior fiscal year.
This law signals that, even in times of economic hardships, education
must remain a fiscal priority for Tennesseans.
Question (d). Taking into consideration CARES Act funds already
received, how much funding from the Federal Government would be needed
to reverse these cuts and meet the increased costs of providing
additional instructional, emotional, and health supports for students
and teachers in the 2020-21 school year?
Answer (d). As noted above, while Tennessee school districts will
not experience reductions in their state and required local funding,
the state also recognizes that there are additional needs during this
unique pandemic response such as for personal protective equipment or
to reconfigure schools. Additionally, a significant barrier to high-
quality remote learning is access to robust broadband. Governor Lee has
prioritized Coronavirus Relief Funds (CRF) to support improving student
device access, recognizing the importance of technology in learning
experience. However, connectivity remains a challenge for many
districts across the state, and funding for broadband access should be
considered a priority for any future additional Federal funding.
Question 2. The COVID-19 pandemic and recent protests following the
police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis have highlighted the
systemic racism that students of color face. Recently, 14 education and
civil rights organizations including the Alliance for Excellent
Education, EdTrust, National Urban League, and UnidosUS issued a
comprehensive set of recommendations for prioritizing equity in the
response to COVID-19, which include equity in fiscal policies,
addressing students' academic, social, and emotional needs, and much
more. Please provide several specific examples of what specific actions
you are taking to address equity gaps as a part of your strategy to
reopen schools.
Answer. Recognizing that students' needs have and will continue to
evolve throughout the pandemic and the launch of a new school year,
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee charged Commissioner Penny Schwinn to
convene the Child Well-being Task Force, a collective of 38 leaders
representing the East, Middle, and West regions of our state and
various fields, including but not limited to mental health, telehealth,
education, interfaith, non-profit, healthcare, and law enforcement. The
goal of this task force is to support the whole child needs of
Tennessee children by empowering local implementation--identifying
local infrastructure, relationships, and resources to develop, connect,
and promote supports for students and families. Additionally, the
department has made available $7 million dollars in grant funds to
districts to support students with special needs, including $5 million
to support needs for compensatory services; $1 million to support
implementing innovative ways to remediate for the loss of instruction
during school closures for students with disabilities; and $1 million
for assistive technology needs as a result of COVID-19 school closures.
As schools approach reopening and the new school year, the department
will continue to prioritize supporting districts to support all
students.
Question 3. How have you considered the health and safety of school
employees and contractors, including support staff, in your reopening
plans? Please describe the role that representatives of teachers and
support staff have played in your planning process.
Answer. The Tennessee Department of Education developed a series of
over 20 reopening toolkits to support districts in developing their
reopening plans, including a toolkit focused exclusively on staffing
considerations. This toolkit lays out considerations related to human
resources, staffing decisions and ideas to create an inclusive
environment for all school and district staff. Further, the Tennessee
Department of Education is working with the Tennessee Emergency
Management Agency to provide districts with supplies and Personal
Protective Equipment, including thermometers and four cloth face masks
per employee, to support their plans for school reopening. The
department has also engaged with former Tennessee teachers of the year
as well as other teachers across the state and superintendent
engagement groups to discuss reopening plans and hear their ideas and
feedback to inform department strategy, and this feedback is reflected
in the toolkits and other guidance that the department has developed.
Question 4. In your state, does the testing capacity currently
exist to regularly test every student and school staff member who will
be present in school buildings in the fall? If not, how are you
prioritizing who will receive tests?
Answer. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee also committed that anyone who
wants to be tested could be tested for free. With over 900,000 tests
conducted, Tennessee is conducting, on average, upwards of 8,500 tests
per day and was listed by the Harvard Global Health Institute as one of
seven states to reach a benchmark for COVID-19 testing. The state
remains committed to ensuring any Tennessean who wants a test has
access to a free and readily available test.
______
Responses by Matthew Blomstedt to Questions of Senator Scott, Senator
Murkowski, Senator Warren, and Senator Sanders
senator scott
Question 1. The term, ``homework gap'', has been jostled recently
in numerous conversations as stakeholders engage in coronavirus
response discussions. As I understand, the ``homework gap'' refers to
the amount of students that can access the internet to complete their
studies at home, versus the amount of students that are unable to
complete their studies through an online platform at home. Students who
lack stable and sufficient internet access are unable to perform as
well on their studies. This inequity is now exacerbated by the COVID-19
pandemic and the expansion of remote learning. Currently, broadband
access remains a major hurdle for far too many students, particularly
in rural areas. According to a 2015 FCC report, 53 percent of Americans
living in rural areas could not reach 25 mega-bites-per-second download
speed, which is the minimal benchmark for broadband speed set by the
FCC. I think, the key to a successful reopening this fall for all our
K-12 schools is bolstering the technological infrastructure for our
most vulnerable students.
A) Dr. Blomstedt, as a leader in a rural state, such as the one I
represent, what are some cost effective ways for us to expand rural
broadband access in states like Nebraska and South Carolina in an
effort to close the homework gap?
Answer. Broadband access and the homework gap exist in at least two
distinct ways in Nebraska. The first is simply the technical
connectivity issue where broadband service is not sufficiently
available for remote-or sparsely populated areas of the state. Nebraska
tends to have strong broadband in Nebraska schools but outlying
residential service in small communities and remote households is a
barrier. The second barrier is one of income and cost to individual
households. In areas where service by wireless or wired home access is
technically possible we still have an income hurdle preventing families
from being able to afford the broadband service necessary to meet the
needs of remote learning on a regular basis.
On the technology side, I would implore the FCC and Congress to
consider options to allow for unique applications of the Education
Broadband Spectrum (EBS) for both remote households and small
communities to make better use of the fiber connections to schools for
the benefit of educators and students. We have Nebraska examples of the
EBS efforts that work with our Tribal Nations who were allowed access
to the existing network through a public investment in wireless
technology.
Additionally, I would suggest we re-examine e-rate or similar
programs to ensure educational broadband to households would qualify as
a support to educators and students working from home. I believe
Nebraska has developed a system where public and private interests work
well together to serve this need and can take advantage of existing
public infrastructure to expand access to broadband most effectively.
senator murkowski
Question 1. Do your states and districts have enough school nurses
and counselors to meet your students' needs when schools reopen? If
not, what steps are you taking to identify the professionals who can
provide those services?
Answer. Frankly, we had a shortage of necessary nurses and
counselors prior to the pandemic. We are unable to properly address
behavioral and mental health needs in schools and communities. Nebraska
had developed several partnerships to address the concerns by working
closely with the Department of Education, Department of Health and
Human Services, post-secondary institutions including the University of
Nebraska Medical Center, private non-profits, and schools, as well as
intermediate education agencies. Among the many efforts there continues
to be a partnership (grant funded) to build a ``System of Care''
collaborative. A System of Care is a framework which helps state
agencies and private providers work in partnership to design and
deliver mental health services and supports. The System of Care
connects and coordinates the work of state child-serving agencies,
nonprofits and local governments, behavioral health care providers, and
patient advocates and it empowers individuals to fully participate in
their care plan. It creates a preventative approach to treatment so
that life's challenges can be addressed prior to the need for a higher
level of care and helps individuals function better at home, in school,
in the community, and throughout life.
During the pandemic we have continued to meet community-level needs
through a partnership of existing public and non-profit partners.
Included in this partnership is the Nebraska Children and Families
Foundation who has been a key convener in identifying areas of concern
and leveraging the network of professionals who can provide additional
assistance. Longer term, there is a need to improve services through
this partnership but anticipate that we will continue to use the
network to assist schools and communities through the pandemic and
beyond.
senator warren
Question 1. The School Superintendents Association (AASA) has
estimated that an average school district will need to spend $2 million
or an additional $490 per student to adhere to CDC guidelines. At the
same time, statewide budget cuts are expected to decrease school
budgets by 10 percent to 25 percent for the upcoming academic year, and
cuts could rise to 35 percent for the 2021-22 school year.
Question (a). Based on current projections in your state, how will
funding for education in the 2020-21 school year compare with funding
in the past school year?
Answer. Funding for the 2020-2021 school year for public schools is
mostly established based on the state's biennium budget and
appropriation process. At this point do not anticipate a reduction in
the current year. However, changes are being proposed and considered as
the Nebraska Legislature has not yet completed the session that was
interrupted by COVID-19 this spring. Out years are my primary concern
as Nebraska, like many states, may expect an economic downturn that
will impact general revenue sources and the agricultural economy that
is already experiencing downturns. Nebraska has a strong reliance on
the property tax base for funding schools with a finance system
designed to equalize tax burdens and address wealth gaps. However, as
state resource projections are potentially further limited and with
calls to address property tax burden, I believe funding over the next
couple years is a concern.
Question (b). If you project a cut to the education budget, how
large will this cut be?
Answer. Nebraska has a biennium budget process and I anticipate
that we will have to project possible cuts for future years and schools
are likely experiencing increased costs in the current year due to the
pandemic. Increased costs in some areas will lead to budget cuts to
transition funding. Typically in down years the Nebraska Department of
Education has been asked (per state budget projections) to address the
potential for cuts. I anticipate that we will project cuts of at least
10 percent for each of the next 2 years in the biennium unless revenue
projections are more positive than expected.
Question (c). Data from the 2008 recession showed that schools that
relied more heavily on state funding, which tend to be located in low-
income communities, were more likely to be negatively impacted by
budget cuts and layoffs. What will be the impact of these cuts on the
lowest-income districts in your state?
Answer. Nebraska weathered the 2008 downturn fairly effectively as
agricultural income helped to balance other sectors of the economy.
School spending and state funding supplemented by the ARRA funds at the
time helped sustain schools across the state and mitigate negative
impact. Currently I am concerned that the combined effects of economic
sectors most impacting low-income children and families coupled with
concerns about agricultural income will create a structural imbalance
for the state which will not allow state resources to address. Service
jobs and family incomes are likely to take a hit and schools will be
addressing consequences for children and families. Various Nebraska
agencies are working together through Bring Up Nebraska and the
Nebraska Children and Families Foundation to leverage resources to
address key needs for food security, housing, and other economic
supports.
Question (d). Taking into consideration CARES Act funds already
received, how much funding from the Federal Government would be needed
to reverse these cuts and meet the increased costs of providing
additional instructional, emotional, and health supports for students
and teachers in the 2020-21 school year?
Answer. Nebraska has not completed a study of needs but have
started to estimate costs of $500 per student on average. Roughly, that
is $150 Million across the state with the CARES Act Funds accounting
for about $65-80 million largely expended to address technology and
contingency plans. However, this does not account for addressing
unfinished learning, compensatory education under IDEA, and the
increasing costs of managing the pandemic while possibly depleting
reserves. I remain concerned that the full impacts on students and
families are not yet realized. I also believe that the costs of fully
implementing the mitigation necessary as outbreaks take place or
schools have to be fitted with other possible strategies for addressing
challenges yet unknown. I believe a prolonged pandemic will require
large-scale changes in the development of curriculum and instructional
materials that is more suitable for remote learning and professional
development and extra duty pay for teachers who are now going to be
required to be multi-modal with preparations both for remote and in-
person instruction. This is the ``perfect storm'' I referenced in
previous testimony as I see a number of challenges to address the
pandemic while, at the same point, states and schools are likely to see
a downturn in other revenues. Estimates for this over the next 2 years
are difficult to pin down specifically but an overarching 20 percent of
current budget impact (again, over the next couple years) would
approach a billion dollars. Even without a cut in state or local
resources the increased costs to districts will be substantial. The
challenge will be addressing potential cuts while also shifting other
funds to pandemic priorities. The opportunity cost for this transaction
will have lasting impacts on the ability to recover. I believe it is
important to return to school safely and with the necessary precautions
so that schools are able to sustain their role in the public health
crisis as well as the economic recovery. However, without precautions
in place I am concerned about waves of closures that will further
disrupt the recovery. I am also concerned about the liability exposure
for schools as has been discussed in the higher education arena and
believe there is a need for a better understanding of the likely
expenditures to address this pandemic challenges.
Question 2. The COVID-19 pandemic and recent protests following the
police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis have highlighted the
systemic racism that students of color face.
Recently, 14 education and civil rights organizations including the
Alliance for Excellent Education, EdTrust, National Urban League, and
UnidosUS issued a comprehensive set of recommendations for prioritizing
equity in the response to COVID-19, which include equity in fiscal
policies, addressing students' academic, social, and emotional needs,
and much more. Please provide several specific examples of what
specific actions you are taking to address equity gaps as a part of
your strategy to reopen schools.
Answer. In part, the Nebraska Department of Education has been
addressing the issue of inequity with commitments to address all such
fronts and that work continues. Additionally I shared a public letter
to superintendents across the state that concluded with ``The Nebraska
Department of Education (NDE) is committed to leading and supporting
all Nebraskans in learning, earning, and living. This starts with an
unabashed commitment to action for racial justice. Here's how we plan
to do that in the education space: 1. Engage students, educators,
families, and communities who are historically marginalized. 2. Promote
active anti-racist teaching and leading and commit to culturally
relevant standards, pedagogy, and materials. 3. Provide resources to
support productive conversations and safe and welcoming environments at
the classroom level. 4. Emphasize future investments to address trauma-
informed care and restorative justice. 5. Continue to insist upon
accountability for student group performance, and supporting schools in
tailoring services for student groups. 6. Address the goal of racial
parity at NDE and in the educator workforce statewide.'' As we reopen
schools it has been with an understanding that bringing students back
to school must address the gaps that persist and are made more obvious
in the current pandemic.
Question 3. How have you considered the health and safety of school
employees and contractors, including support staff, in your reopening
plans? Please describe the role that representatives of teachers and
support staff have played in your planning process.
Answer. Nebraska's approach convenes partners and schools to build
plans locally and provide support from the state. The NDE's Launch
Nebraska website has included professional development as well as model
plans that encourage local engagement of all stakeholders including
staff. We also continue to address concerns to protect the school
workforce, as it will be critical to maintain the school environment.
Specifically, schools are looking to address issues with physical
distancing, enhanced cleaning, and specific accommodations for teachers
and workforce in the schools that protect from widespread contagion.
Schools are also now working with local health officials to understand
how to best accommodate for staff that become sick and manage contact
tracing and quarantine procedures. We are also in ongoing discussions
about maintaining safe conditions for certified and non-certified staff
and accommodating employees with vulnerabilities.
Question 4. In your state, does the testing capacity currently
exist to regularly test every student and school staff member who will
be present in school buildings in the fall?
Question (a). If not, how are you prioritizing who will receive
tests?
Answer. There is not enough capacity to test every student and
state and local health officials are working with schools on necessary
testing, contact tracing, and response to positive cases. Both state
and local efforts to provide testing exist including Governor Rickett's
efforts for Test Nebraska to help alleviate the national shortage of
available tests. Ideally, we would have testing that could ensure that
students and staff are free of the virus to provide confidence for
education settings. Short of that, local health officials are helping
schools establish screening protocols to work with families and staff
to further prioritize for testing and minimize risk of spread in
schools.
senator sanders
Question 1. In a recent Politico survey, a majority of American
voters now say they're concerned about sending kids back to elementary
and high schools this fall. In addition, during a recent hearing of the
House Energy and Commerce Committee on the Administration's response to
the COVID-19 pandemic, witnesses for the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services testified that ``COVID-19 activity will likely continue
for some time.'' The health officials also warned of a difficult fall
and winter because the U.S. health-care system will probably battle two
highly contagious, respiratory viruses then: the novel coronavirus and
the seasonal flu. How will you assure parents that your state will
provide sufficient resources to strengthen public schools and ensure
that schools are safe for students, faculty and staff? How will you
ensure that schools will be regularly sanitized and that personal
protective equipment will be provided, as needed?
Answer. The work to address conditions for learning includes health
guidance for schools as they build their local plans and communicate
those efforts to parents and the community at large. The Nebraska
Department of Education continues to develop, maintain, and enhance
Launch Nebraska (www.launchne.com) to manage guidance and best
practices to address the pandemic in schools. Local school and health
officials are also collaborating across all levels and agencies. I
believe filling voids is necessary from state and Federal partners but
driving the response for the local level is critical. For instance,
Nebraska is working with state partners to identify local needs and
then gathering resources to disperse such items as masks and hand
sanitizer to each school that requests resources. This will continue to
be the model to address the supply chain needs as well as listen to the
local needs. Although early in the process, I believe this will be the
persistent approach to address local needs.
Question 2. Earlier in June, U.S. News and World Reports stated
that estimates of statewide budget cuts will likely decrease school
budgets by 10 percent to 25 percent for the upcoming academic year and
cuts may go as high as 35 percent for the 2021-22 school year.
According to the American Federation of Teachers, it is estimated that
at a minimum an average school district will need to spend $2 million
or an additional $490 per student to adhere to CDC guidelines. How are
school districts in your state preparing for these additional costs?
With the loss of income and budget cuts, how will your state prioritize
safety and provide adequate staffing as campuses reopen? How will your
state ensure that every student, regardless of financial status,
students with disabilities, LGBQT+ students, students with unsafe
homes, students of color and students from low-income families will
have free access to testing and a vaccine, when available?
Answer. At this point I would concur with the concerns of the
combined impacts of cuts and the need to deploy resources differently
that will impact school budgets. I am most concerned about the out
years and the likely impacts in 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 as we
anticipate economic impacts in multiple sectors. Schools are also
scrambling to address immediate needs, which will provide a barrier to
addressing the need to build reserves for potential future cuts, or the
need to freeze resources while incurring increased costs. That is the
``perfect storm'' I anticipate. I have said many times that our first
mission is now one of public health and I am proud that local school
officials are playing a significant role in addressing student,
employee, family, and community health. Yet, this has always been part
of the need in schools. Additionally, operating schools has proven
critical for family and community communication about the importance of
ensuring all of our students needs are met. I continue to meet
regularly with state and local health officials to offer Department
support in addressing testing. I am especially concerned about broad
vaccination against seasonal flu as a strategy to prepare for any
eventual vaccine that becomes available for COVID-19. I am not
currently privy to the state strategy on vaccine distribution but do
hope that the intervening time will allow schools to assist with the
equitable access to both tests and possible vaccinations.
______
Responses by John B. King Jr. to Questions of Senator Murkowski,
Senator Sanders, and Senator Warren
senator murkowski
Question 1. I noted in your testimony that you talked about the
inequity experienced by Black and Hispanic students and their families.
You were right to do so--those inequities have lasted for decades in a
variety of forms, from access to good housing, good schools, internet
connectivity, nutritious food, and many other aspects of life that are
important for children to grow strong, confident, and safe. But I noted
that you left out Native Americans in your testimony. In Alaska, as
well as in many other parts of the country, Alaska Natives, American
Indians and Native Hawaiians are also beset by inequality that can be
deadly. Communities that have no running water for handwashing.
Incredible distances to travel to purchase healthy food. No broadband
whatsoever. Overcrowded, substandard housing. Schools with high teacher
turnover and low measures of student success that have not understood
the Native ways of knowing and learning so important to Native
students' success. I could go on and on. What is The Education Trust
doing under your leadership to understand and advocate for our Nation's
first peoples?
Answer. The challenges facing Native students in our Nation's
education system are just as daunting as those facing Black and Latino
students. For example, school districts with the most Black, Latino,
and American Indian students receive roughly $1,800, or 13 percent,
less per student in state and local funding than those serving mostly
White students. It is also worrisome that rates of high school degree
attainment for students who are Black, Latino, American Indian, and
Alaska Native are all lower than the national average. Furthermore, a
majority of American Indian and Alaska Native families live in child
care deserts; American Indian and Alaska Native children
disproportionately lack access to home internet when compared to their
peer groups; and Native students are more likely to be suspended,
expelled, and arrested at school. For example, Native girls were 3
times more likely to be suspended from school than their White peers.
The Education Trust has highlighted disparities in higher education
through our analysis of the college degree attainment rates of Native
American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian students and made
recommendations to address that issue; shared the voices and policy
recommendations of a Native American student and a former educator who
is Native American; and published a full issue brief examining the
state of education for Native students. This work has informed the
policy recommendations contained in our testimony, specifically the
need for improved, disaggregated data collection, due to the challenges
of properly measuring Native student success, increasing investments in
early childhood education and the Pell Grant, and investing in
broadband expansion to ensure that Native students have access to
online learning during the pandemic and beyond. We recognize the urgent
need to address the challenges facing Native students prior to, during,
and after them pandemic has run its course. As an organization, we
appreciate Sen. Murkowski's leadership and look forward to working with
her office to close equity gaps for Native students.
senator sanders
Question 1. In a recent Politico survey, a majority of American
voters say they're concerned about sending kids back to schools this
fall. In addition, during a recent hearing of the House Committee on
Energy and Commerce about the Administration's response to the COVID-19
pandemic, witnesses for the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services testified that ``COVID-19 activity will likely continue for
some time.'' The health officials also warned of a difficult fall and
winter because the U.S. health-care system will probably battle two
highly contagious, respiratory viruses then: the novel coronavirus and
the seasonal flu. Your experience in education and your recent
testimony focused on ensuring that states address gaps in access to
equitable education. Other than providing full funding to address
budget cuts due to the pandemic, what else should Congress do to
strengthen public schools and ensure that schools are safe for
students, faculty and staff? How should states assure parents that
schools will prioritize safety and that every student, regardless of
financial status, students with disabilities, LGBQT+ students, students
with unsafe homes, students of color and students from low-income
families will have free access to testing and a vaccine, when
available?
Answer. In addition to providing the necessary funds to allow
schools to reopen safely either in part or in whole, Congress should
take additional steps to strengthen public schools in the face of this
pandemic:
First: Funds that are allocated by Congress to help states and
school districts should be accompanied by strong maintenance of effort
and maintenance of equity provisions to ensure we do not repeat the job
losses and funding cuts seen in the wake of the Great Recession.
Together, these requirements would maintain education spending at the
same percentage of state spending as before the pandemic and shield the
highest need schools and districts from the worst cuts.
Providing all schools--particularly underfunded, high-poverty
schools--with the resources they need to implement the Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) considerations or their local health authority's
guidance for keeping students and staff safe (e.g., adequate testing
and contact tracing, use of personal protective equipment (PPE),
protections for at-risk staff and students, social distancing, etc.)
can help mitigate the harm caused by the pandemic and create the
possibility of allowing some schools to fully reopen, but that decision
ultimately will rest with individual states and districts.
Recommendations sourced from stakeholders like the American Federation
of Teachers, the National Education Association, the Council of Chief
State School Officers, and the AASA, The School Superintendents
Association are all valuable guidelines to help local officials create
their own reopening plans. It is also essential that provisions that
extended health coverage to individuals within the CARES Act are
extended to ensure individual access to testing and eventual treatments
and a vaccine.
Second: Congress should act to ensure that online learning is
possible for every student. Before the pandemic, 79 percent of White
households had broadband access, compared with only 66 percent of Black
families and 61 percent of Hispanic families. The lack of equitable
access to broadband is not only an immediate distance learning issue
and an obstacle to effective implementation of hybrid models in the
fall, but an emergency preparedness issue in the event of further
widespread closures. To ensure that students have home access to
broadband, Congress should allocate at least $4 billion to the Federal
Communications Commission's E-Rate program to provide hotspots and
devices for students who need them. In the interest of inclusivity,
Congress should also encourage districts to implement multilingual
digital learning platforms and provide professional development
opportunities for educators, so they can effectively teach, assess, and
connect with their students remotely. Congress should also encourage
private companies to provide free home broadband access to students
that would not otherwise have it during the pandemic.
Third: Congress should help schools offset the significant learning
loss caused by the pandemic.
Congress should allocate dedicated funds to help schools facilitate
expanded learning time, via summer school (online or in-person, based
on the most recent public health guidance available), extended day or
year initiatives, intensive tutoring or other evidence-based approaches
that support students in completing unfinished learning and
accelerating new learning.
This additional funding must be targeted toward closing the equity
gaps that have been exacerbated by COVID-19 and should prioritize
students, especially students from low-income backgrounds, students
with disabilities, English learners, and students experiencing
homelessness or in foster care, who have been most directly impacted by
lost in-person instructional time. Additionally, educators will need
sufficient time to prepare for the next school year and the
substantially different work environment that they will face, which may
include altered or expanded school schedules, additional remote
instruction, and curricular changes. This professional learning and
planning time comes at a cost; Congress must allocate funding to pay
for it.
Finally: Congress must extend and expand the Pandemic EBT program
to enable more children to receive meals while not in school, and
ensure that students' and educators' socioemotional and mental health
needs are met by providing additional funding for counselors and other
mental health professionals in schools.
Twenty million students depend on schools for meals every day.
Congress can reduce food insecurity for students and their families
through the Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) program,
which can help ensure that students' nutritional needs are met
throughout this summer and into the next school year. The program must
also be expanded to cover children under 5, who do not qualify for this
program under the current free-and-reduced-price lunch eligibility
metric.
Beyond these basic needs, we know that over 75 percent of students
who receive mental health services rely on schools to provide these
supports. In order to provide these supports to students, schools must
have a positive and welcoming school climate, as well as quality
dropout prevention and re-engagement programs--especially for the most
vulnerable students. Therefore, it is critical that Congress allocate
additional Federal funding to support school counselors, mental health
workers, psychologists, and social workers in the highest-need
districts, and allocate resources to train teachers to understand and
help mitigate the negative impacts of COVID-19 on students, especially
those of color and from low-income backgrounds.
In addition to student health, it is critical to remember that we
must ensure the safety and well-being of administrators, educators,
support personnel, and parents. Educators are experiencing greater
stress and anxiety during COVID-19, and almost half of parents of
children under 18 reported having high stress levels. We must also help
our educators and parents by providing them with emotional support and
mental health resources.
Question 1. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly
500,000 public education jobs have already been lost. If the economic
damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic goes unchecked, nearly 2
million educators--one-fifth of the workforce--could lose their jobs
over the next 3 years, according to a new analysis by the National
Education Association. If Congress is unable to provide the additional
funding that schools need to keep students, teachers and school staff
safe, how should schools prioritize their needs: maintenance of equity,
distance learning, address students' learning loss or protect students'
nutritional, social, emotional, and mental health needs?
Answer. As a former teacher and school leader, I am acutely aware
of the challenges that educators, school administrators, and staff will
face in providing services and supports to meet students' needs,
especially if Congress fails to provide additional funding. While all
of those policy needs are essential, which ones are prioritized will
ultimately depend on the given context--that is, which needs are most
acute at the state and district levels. For example, over 75 percent of
teachers in Tennessee cited technology and internet access as their
greatest needs to keep teaching through the pandemic, and the largest
portion of state CARES Act funds were allocated to address that need.
Ed Trust helping advocates to ensure that states and Governors deploy
CARES Act dollars in the most effective and equitable ways possible.
senator warren
Question 1. You've spoken about the ways that this crisis has
exacerbated educational inequality. A new study estimated that the
average student will fall 7 months behind academically as a result of
this year's school closures, which rises to 9 months for Latinx
students and 10 months for Black students. What will the long-term
effects of this crisis be for low-income students and students of
color?
Answer. The long-term effects of this crisis could be incredibly
detrimental for low-income students and students of color, who, as
noted in the study above, are at greater risk of learning loss, thanks
to the digital divide and socioeconomic inequities that can leave some
parents with less time and fewer resources to put toward students'
academic success. Though all students are at risk of falling behind
amid the pandemic, we're seeing troubling trends in real time: A recent
survey of teachers found that student learning time generally has
dropped to 3 hours a day since schools closed, down from six
previously, and that lower-income students are down to 2 hours a day. A
study of online math participation showed that student progress in math
through late April decreased by about half in classrooms located in
low-income ZIP codes, by a third in classrooms in middle-income ZIP
codes, and not at all in classrooms in high-income ZIP codes. Statewide
polls in California, Texas, Washington, and New York revealed that
nearly 90 percent of parents there are worried that their children will
fall behind because of school closures. There is no doubt that pre-
existing inequities in education are being amplified by the pandemic.
That is why Congress should allocate dedicated funds to help
schools facilitate expanded learning time, via summer school (online or
in-person, based on the most recent public health guidance available),
extended day or year-long initiatives, intensive tutoring, or other
evidence-based approaches that support students in completing
unfinished learning and accelerating new learning. This funding should
prioritize closing the equity gaps we know have been exacerbated by
COVID-19 and prioritize students, especially students from low-income
backgrounds, students with disabilities, English learners, and students
experiencing homelessness or in foster care, who have been most
directly impacted by lost in-person instructional time.
Learning loss is also exacerbated by teacher layoffs, since a
student's connection with their teacher is central to learning.
Unfortunately, students of color are at higher risk of losing their
teachers, as we learned during the last downturn. While funding cuts to
education were widespread following the Great Recession, an analysis of
layoffs in Los Angeles found that Latino elementary students were 26
percent more likely than their White peers to have their teacher laid
off; Black elementary students were 72 percent more likely to have
their teacher laid off. If we ignore the lessons of the last economic
slowdown, students of color and students from low-income backgrounds
will bear the brunt of cuts to public education that are looming on the
horizon. Parents are concerned. An Ed Trust poll of New York parents
revealed that 95 percent of them want regular contact with or access to
their child's teacher, though only 52 percent said their child's school
has made that available. Our California poll revealed that Black
parents were less likely than parents of all other racial groups to
have been contacted by their child's teacher. Research shows that
teachers are the single greatest in-school factor influencing student
success, so preventing further disruption for students over the long
term means keeping teachers in the classroom.
Question 2. What will the long-term effects of this crisis be for
students with special needs?
Answer. The inequities outlined above, which tend to be
disproportionately borne by students from low-income backgrounds and
students of color, may hurt many students with disabilities as well.
Before the pandemic, students with disabilities were already twice as
likely to live in poverty, more likely to experience homelessness, more
likely to experience anxiety and depression, and less likely to
graduate than their peers without disabilities. All of these
disparities may become worse during this crisis. Distance learning has
been particularly difficult for many students with disabilities. Only
20 percent of parents of children with disabilities reported that their
children were receiving special education services guaranteed to them
under IDEA, and 39 percent said their children were receiving no
support at all. Parents were also twice as likely to report having
increased concerns about the mental health of their children with
disabilities, and reported significantly higher stress, anxiety, and
depression themselves during the pandemic compared to parents of
children without disabilities. The impact of limited special education
services could extend into students' adulthoods, as employment training
and work experiences during high school are critical factors in
successful postsecondary transitions for students with disabilities,
and have become much more difficult to provide during the pandemic. We
need robust supports to ensure these risks don't increase and to uphold
IDEA and Section 504 [of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973] to protect
students' rights to a free and appropriate education.
Question 3. In an op-ed in the Hill with AFT President Randi
Weingarten, you proposed a ``bridge program'' this summer. How would
this proposal support at-risk students?
Answer. Some of our most vulnerable students--including students of
color; students from low-income backgrounds; students with
disabilities; English learners; and students experiencing homelessness,
in foster care, or who are impacted by the juvenile justice system--are
likely to be disproportionally impacted by school closures during the
coronavirus pandemic. Given this reality, districts and schools should
be looking for ways to provide students with extended learning
opportunities through summer learning experiences, bridge programs, or
by beginning school earlier to make up lost instructional time. Given
what we know about learning loss, these opportunities must be made
available, even if they are offered remotely throughout the summer.
When brick-and-mortar schools are back in session, school leaders
should look to add hours to the school day or year, as a way to boost
student achievement--particularly for students who are most at risk of
failing--since this would provide opportunities for students to
accelerate their learning in subjects in which they are struggling.
Additionally, as we prepare for the upcoming school year, district
and school leaders should consider other ways to deliver additional
learning time to students who are most impacted, such as:
Meaningfully extending the school day or year;
Scheduling twice as much time for subjects that
students are struggling in--also known as ``double-blocking;''
Significantly reducing class and group sizes (e.g.,
reductions of 8 to 15 students per class), particularly for
students in grades K-3, since this may enable teachers to
provide more individualized attention to students; and
Using more targeted interventions, including
intervention blocks, within-class groups, or one-on-one
tutoring.
Beyond those direct academic interventions, district and school
leaders should also consider how they will reach out to families about
these additional supports; assign mentors to returning students; and
partner with national and/or community-based organizations that have a
proven record of success, offering systematic, coordinated services to
meet students' social-emotional, physical, and mental health needs.
The impact of closures will vary widely, but, at a minimum, the
result will be billions of hours of lost learning time. Initial
estimates from NWEA suggest that students will return to school in the
fall with ``roughly 70 percent of the learning gains in reading and
less than 50 percent of the normal learning gains in math relative to a
typical school year.'' This learning loss will be felt most inequitably
by students with higher needs and students of color. We are confident
that dedicated Federal investments to provide extended learning
opportunities and summer bridge programs as a means to assess and
address learning loss can help get our Nation's most vulnerable
students back on track.
Question 4. What mental health supports do you believe will be
needed for students when schools reopen?
Answer. There was already tremendous student need for mental health
services in schools before the pandemic: We know that over 75 percent
of students who receive mental health supports rely on schools to
provide those supports. Students will need even more support now that
families are under increased economic strain, freedom of movement has
been restricted for months, and anxiety about the health of loved ones
has taken a toll. Therefore, it is all the more important that schools
provide a positive and welcoming climate, as well as quality dropout
prevention and re-engagement programs--especially for the most
vulnerable students. Therefore, it is critical that Congress allocate
additional Federal funding to support school counselors, mental health
workers, psychologists, and social workers in the highest-need
districts, and allocate resources to train teachers to understand and
address the negative impacts of COVID-19 on students, especially those
of color and from low-income backgrounds.
Question 5. What is your estimate of the additional funding that
would be required for these and other efforts to support low-income and
at-risk students?
Answer. While Congress took initial action to provide critical
resources and supports to states, schools and districts, and higher-
education institutions through the CARES Act, it is clear that this
investment is not enough to meet the needs of schools, especially those
serving students with the greatest need, which are facing many new
costs associated with safely reopening schools this fall amid a still
ongoing pandemic. Safety measures like providing personal protective
equipment (PPE), altering school day operations, making available
additional support staff to address students' social, emotional, and
mental needs do not come cheap. Current estimates for reopening range
from $2 million per district (which could easily add up to at least $30
billion) to $116.5 billion. The Council of Chief State School Officers
(CCSSO) has recently projected that schools might need as much as $245
billion to reopen this fall.
As I outlined in my testimony before the Committee, Ed Trust, along
with 70 other organizations, urge Congress to provide at least $500
billion total in additional state stabilization funds, including at
least $175 billion for K-12 schools, in recognition of both the cost
increases and revenue reductions facing states, schools and districts
during this time. That money should also be allocated in an equitable
manner. Specifically, the Federal Government must include maintenance
of effort provisions that require state education spending levels to
remain constant (i.e., at least at the same percentage of the state's
total spending), even if the state's overall budget shrinks.
Furthermore, if spending cuts are necessary, the Federal Government
must use a maintenance of equity provision to protect our highest-need
schools by requiring both states and districts that receive additional
Federal funding to show that any necessary cuts are smaller per student
in the highest-need districts and schools than the rest of the state or
district. Congress should also prevent the U.S. Department of Education
(ED) from steering funding away from low-income, public school students
through its interpretation of the equitable services provision.
Question 6. What is your estimate of the Federal funding needed to
avoid cuts to education budgets and fund these needed additional
supports?
Answer. As mentioned above, it is clear that additional Federal
funds are needed to account for both the decreases in state revenue
that support schools and districts, as well as the increases in the
cost of operating schools this fall. In 2008, we learned a great deal
about what happens at the state level when a recession occurs--state
budgets are cut and those cuts disproportionally impact schools and
districts serving students from low-income backgrounds and students of
color. In order to prevent that from happening in the wake of the
economic damage caused by COVID-19, Ed Trust encourages lawmakers to
ensure that any additional Federal dollars include maintenance of
effort and maintenance of equity requirements to protect students in
high-needs schools and districts from cuts. As an organization
committed to educational equity, we would like to underscore the urgent
need for Congress to both allocate additional resources, as well as
ensure that states do not abdicate their responsibility to provide more
resources and supports for our highest-need students during this
uncertain time.
______
[Whereupon, at 11:58 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]