“The Twelve Days of Christmas” have taken on a new meaning for Batavia City School District Superintendent Anibal Soler Jr., who has had to make the difficult decision of implementing 100-percent virtual learning at all four district buildings prior to the holiday break.
“I think these 12 school days off (Dec. 7-22) will allow us to get a little bit of the staff back and hopefully limit the number of people needing to quarantine since there are no kids in the building and there are no additional staff members needing to congregate or walk by each other or be in the same place,” Soler said today. “We should be able to have our staffing back to the levels that they need to be to and be able to reopen Jan. 4.”
Soler said that the inability to adequately staff the classrooms drove him to shut the schools down, adding that 81 teachers, aides and other employees have had to quarantine since the start of the school year.
“The issue is not so much students, it’s the staff members,” he said. “If a teacher has to quarantine at home for 14 days, then I need another adult to cover the class for the in-person kids because the teacher is now home. It makes it extremely hard knowing that we already struggle with the substitute teachers, so it also makes it hard to deliver a quality program. We gratefully have some of our teachers who are willing to tele-work, but we still needed another adult to supervise the kids in front of them.”
The superintendent said he was not under any statewide pressure to enforce all distance learning, but pointed to a couple variables – the rolling seven-day average for positive cases in Genesee County at around 8 percent and the daily calls from students and staff needing to quarantine.
He said that 21 staff members and 21 students have tested positive “and every single one of those positives results in a group of people that have to quarantine for 14 days.”
“It becomes unmanageable and we’re at a breaking point. Definitely 50 percent of our buildings would have been significantly impacted,” he said. “By having kids home, we wouldn't have to worry about substitute coverage and teachers could still teach remotely during these next 12 days.”
Soler said that most students will miss five in-person days (due to a schedule that features a mix of in-person and remote learning).
“That was a heartbreaking thing because we prided ourselves on being able to offer at least some in-person learning to our students, unlike other communities that have been shut down all year,” he offered.
He also mentioned that people continue to gather socially, which makes it even tougher to provide in-person learning.
“As we work with the Genesee County Health Department on contact tracing, we find out that people did go to somebody’s house for Thanksgiving or kids did have a sleepover at someone’s house,” he said. “We know these things are occurring, unfortunately, but when they do occur, they come back into the building and make it hard for us to staff the building.”
Only about 20 students – those who have special needs -- are being allowed in school buildings, he said.
Soler said he believes strongly that Gov. Andrew Cuomo should classify school personnel as “essential workers.”
“If the governor were to label all school staff members as essential employees then they wouldn’t need to quarantine if they don’t have any symptoms. We’d really like to see that rule changed because then we could have had in-person learning – keep school open,” he said. “We should be able to designate them as essential and not make them quarantine if they don’t have any symptoms. As it stands now, that seems pretty harsh.”
He said Cuomo has said on multiple occasions that schools are the safest place … “so why not give us some additional leverage and leeway with the guidelines?”
Soler said he expects that the buildings will reopen on Jan. 4 unless there is a resurgence and the governor deems otherwise.
“Right now, we’re working on increasing the number of parents to give us consent to do the Binax rapid testing in school in case that is required for us to stay open,” he said. “And we’re also focusing on delivering a high-quality virtual experience for the next 12 days.”
