Thurston schools can slowly reopen to in-person learning, county Health Officer says
About two months after recommending distance learning for the fall term due to a spike in local COVID-19 cases, Thurston County Health Officer Dr. Dimyana Abdelmalek is now recommending local schools gradually resume in-person learning, prioritizing high-need students.
At least two local districts were already taking steps in that direction.
On Monday, North Thurston Public Schools announced that, after starting the school year 100 percent remote, it would start bringing small groups of students on-site next week for in-person instruction. Similarly, Olympia School District planned to begin in-person instruction this week for small groups of students with special needs.
North Thurston Superintendent Debra Clemens said in a prepared statement that Abdelmalek’s latest recommendation means the district will be able to expand existing plans.
“Our goal has always been to bring students back to the classrooms for face-to-face learning as long as we can do so safely following public health recommendations,” Clemens said. “It is good to see that all of our efforts to mitigate the transmission of COVID-19 in our immediate community are working.
“We already planned to start bringing small groups of students back as early as next week. The new guidance backs up this plan and allows us to expand the number of students moving forward, starting with our youngest learners and those who need services that cannot successfully be delivered remotely.”
Labor Day weekend had local public health officials on high alert for increased case numbers due to holiday-related gatherings, similar to what followed the Fourth of July. But case counts have instead been steadily declining.
“Thank you for your diligence in heeding my recommendation and providing your students with distance learning models for the beginning of the school year,” Abdelmalek wrote in a letter to local superintendents and K-12 educators.
“As I have watched the case counts decrease and Thurston County residents taking action to slow the spread, I am now recommending a slow, careful, phased approach to resume in-person learning, prioritizing high-need students.”
Leading up to her previous recommendation, the number of new cases per 100,000 people over a two-week period rose from fewer than 25 early in the month to 60.5 on July 29, according to Abdelmalek’s letter. That trend put the county on track to reach the “high community transmission range” of more than 75 cases per 100,000 over 14 days, she wrote.
The metric has since stayed in the “moderate” risk category of 25 to 75 cases per 100,000, according to Abdelmalek. As of Sept. 19, the number was 30.8 cases per 100,000 people. And the morning of the latest announcement, Sept. 23, the state risk-assessment dashboard showed Thurston County’s rate had dropped to 22.4 new cases per 100,000 over the prior 14 days.
“This data gives me the confidence to allow a slow, careful, phased approach to resume in-person learning,” Abdelmalek wrote in her letter to educators
In a letter to the community, Abdelmalek wrote that schools should follow guidance and a decision tree from the state Department of Health, along with guidance from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and CDC.
“Each of our schools and districts across our county is different and this gradual reopening may look different depending on the specific needs of the communities being served,” Abdelmalek wrote. “There is no one size fits all approach to a return to in-person learning.”
She expects there to be COVID-19 cases in local schools, and wrote there are plans for identifying people who’ve been exposed to the virus and for how to stop its spread in schools.
“For the safety of students and our community, as we cautiously expand in-person learning, schools will also need to be able to transition to remote learning for some students when the situation requires it,” she wrote.
This story was originally published September 23, 2020 at 1:46 PM.
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