The governor orders the resumption of personal lessons on Covid-19

Governor Doug Ducey last week ordered schools to resume face-to-face classes no later than March 15 after the spring break.

However, the executive order exempts middle schools and high schools in counties with high transmission rates in the parish – at this point, most counties in the state are included.

“More than half of the schools in Arizona are open and have personal opportunities. More schools need to follow suit and pave the way for equitable educational opportunities for every student, ”Ducey said.

The order won’t have much of an impact on Northern Gila County, where school districts all resumed face-to-face tuition a few weeks ago thanks to a vaccination program that included all school staff.

Parents could still choose to have their child take part in a distance learning program.

The order represents a postponement of Ducey’s previous pressure to leave the decision to the local school authorities based on local conditions.

Arizona public teaching superintendent Kathy Hoffman said the deadline does not give schools enough time to carefully prepare for a return to personal teaching, especially given that despite a decline in new cases, most counties in the state are doing stay in the “red zone” For spreading in the community.

The order comes because a growing number of states have lifted restrictions on businesses and schools as a result of the pandemic.

However, health officials have asked the public to continue wearing masks and avoid mass gatherings and “super-spreader” situations such as overcrowded indoor restaurants. About 25% of the Arizona population have had at least one shot, and perhaps another 15% have recovered from the disease. This suggests that around 40% are at least partially protected. However, epidemiologists say the pandemic will not go away until 70 to 90% of people are protected.

President Joe Biden has announced that by the end of May the US will have enough doses of the three approved vaccines to vaccinate every adult in the country – roughly the end of the current school year.

On the other hand, the federal centers for the control of diseases have declared that schools that enforce a mask mandate avoid mass gatherings and pay attention to the spread in the community, schools – especially elementary schools – can safely reopen.

The stress of resuming one-on-one teaching is due to mounting evidence that over the past year students have lost months of learning while switching back and forth from distance learning to one-on-one. In many districts, perhaps a third of students do not show up for distance learning regularly and their scores have dropped significantly. In Arizona, public school enrollment has decreased about 6%, creating significant budget issues in many districts.

The schools in Payson, Pine and Tonto Basin have already returned to face-to-face teaching. The shift to in-person tuition took off in December and January when an estimated 75% of school staff received the Moderna vaccine, which provides 95% protection against serious illness and hospitalization caused by COVID. Once teachers were vaccinated, they no longer had to be quarantined every time they had close contact with an infected student. Before Payson was vaccinated, Payson had to close both middle school and high school at different times due to no adequate replacements for the quarantined teachers.

However, many counties have not yet fully vaccinated faculty, making efforts to reopen schools to one-on-one teaching difficult.

Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association, said, “We have had a governor for a year now who has been telling districts, ‘Find this out,’ and staying away from it, even when districts are looking for state leadership … Now come the governor out and says, “Here is this new mandate and we’ll all be there in a couple of weeks.” I just don’t get it, “said an article in the Arizona Republic.

Gila County remains at high risk of infection despite a sharp drop in infection rates over the past two weeks. In the state school reopening benchmarks, Gila County is rated as “significant” risk on two measurements and as “moderate risk” on the third. Originally, the state-recommended schools recommended distance learning plans or a hybrid mix of face-to-face and distance learning unless all three benchmarks fell into the “low” category. The state later announced that school authorities could resume classes as long as one of the three measurements falls into the “low category”. However, these guidelines remained purely advisory and left the school authorities wrestling with the decision.

In Navajo County, two of the benchmarks remain in the “high risk” category and one in the “low risk” category – the percentage of positive tests.

In Apache County, two of the measurements remain in the “significant risk” category and one in the “low risk” category – including the percentage of positive tests.

President Joe Biden had urged all schools across the country to return to teaching in person within 100 days of taking office. However, the persistent spread of the virus, the slow roll-out of vaccination programs, resistance from teacher unions, and the worrying spread of new, faster-spreading, potentially more dangerous strains of the virus led the White House to call for the virus to be swiftly opened up instead, but placed less emphasis on elementary schools fast opening of middle and high schools. Not only do adolescents catch and spread the disease more easily than younger children, they also mingle with six times as many teachers and staff as elementary school students every day.

These recommendations are roughly in line with Governor Ducey’s ordinance, which includes the exemption of high schools and middle schools in areas of high incidence in the community.

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