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This story was updated at 7:31 p.m.
Gov. Phil Scott has ordered the dismissal of all schools in Vermont and the cancellation of all school related activities no later than Wednesday. The decision Sunday was made amid fears that keeping schools open could help to spread the coronavirus.
The directive will last until April 6, according to a statement from the governor’s office, but could be extended for a longer period. It applies to both public and private schools.
Scott’s directive tasks local districts with planning to continue to offer food and special needs services, provide options for childcare for health workers and other essential workers, and ensure children continue to be educated during the shutdown.
Students are not required to attend school on Monday or Tuesday if districts elect to stay open during the first part of the week. Teachers and staff, however, must report to work to help with the orderly rollout of the cancellation of classes.
Health Department Commissioner Mark Levine called the move “another important step to help keep us ahead of the curve, in terms of preventing and reducing the spread of COVID-19.”
The decision, he said, was based on “the best scientific evidence available.”
Scott said while the cancellation was essential to support the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he wants to ensure that children are “safe, nourished, and still learning even as the traditional structure of school is disrupted.”
The governor has asked superintendents and school districts to continue to provide services to children, including take-home academic assignments. Communities should be prepared, he said, for the disruption to go beyond the April 6 deadline.
Closing K-12 schools statewide impacts at least 18,000 school employees and about 80,000 students across the state.
Vermont has already seen a handful of sporadic school closures as local officials reacted to suspected or confirmed cases within their communities. The superintendent of the Two Rivers Supervisory Union Saturday closed the district’s six schools until further notice to students and most staff effective immediately after an individual in Ludlow was diagnosed with the virus.
Under Scott’s directive, districts must develop “Continuity of Education and Service Plans” before they close schools at the end of business Tuesday. Those plans must include: meals for children as needed, services for those with disabilities and special needs, childcare for first-responders and health care workers, trackable academic work, and a remote learning plan for longer term cancellation of classes.
State officials had noted that the temporary school closures in Williston earlier this week highlighted the negative impact shuttering K-12 facilities could have on the healthcare system’s ability to respond to the crisis, since healthcare workers who lack alternate childcare options had to skip work.
An analysis released Friday by Colorado State and Yale researchers estimates that 15% of healthcare providers with children don’t have someone else in their household to provide child care when schools close.
“The results suggest that it is unclear if the potential contagion prevention from school closures justifies the potential loss of healthcare workers,” the researchers told Chalkbeat.
Local and state school officials have been under enormous pressure to shutter schools as anxious parents and teachers watched the news coming out of hard-hit communities in the U.S. and abroad.
Relying on recent guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vermont’s public health authorities have emphasized that mass school closures too early for a short period of time would be hugely disruptive while doing little to stem the spread of COVID-19. Better to close down later in the outbreak, they said, but prepare for a much lengthier shutdown of two months or more.
Speaking to lawmakers Sunday afternoon, Secretary of Education Dan French said health officials now believed the state was at that tipping point. Also on Sunday, the Health Department announced three new cases of the virus, bringing the state’s total of confirmed cases to 8.
“This is largely in response to updated public health information, which indicates that we are experiencing community spread, which is the next level of contagion,” he told the Joint Rules Committee via conference call.
French also said the state had just been granted permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to waive the “congregate feeding” requirement that students be given federally-subsidized meals in group settings. That should give schools the needed flexibility to feed students in ways that minimize contact with each other.
“Now we’re in the process of producing additional guidance to the field about what are the options and how we specifically do that,” he said.
Lawmakers also peppered French about waiving requirements that students be in school for a certain number of days, whether hourly school employees should expect to continue receiving pay, and how to deliver special education services if learning is moved online. In most instances, French said the agency was only beginning to work out the details.
“We’re going to start making those plans. But I don’t have the actual solutions today,” he said in response to a question about how, exactly, schools might provide childcare options to healthcare workers and first responders on the front lines of the epidemic.
The pandemic has shuttered schools in individual districts – and entire states – across the country, including in New Hampshire, where Gov. Chris Sununu also announced Sunday that the state’s schools would switch to online learning as of Monday.
The closures have affected more than 25 million pupils, more than half of all public school students, according to a running tally by Education Week.
