Burlington elementary schools will add more in-person instruction to a hybrid teaching model, after the first month of school ended without a single Covid scare.
“We’ve had no cases of Covid in our schools,” Burlington Superintendent Tom Flanagan said at Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger’s press conference Wednesday afternoon.
“The numbers in our schools and in the city, in the state, are suggesting it’s time to move back to more in-person instruction,” Flanagan said.
Burlington’s success mirrors that of the local colleges. At the press conference, University of Vermont and Champlain College leaders also briefed the public about the low positive test rates among the thousands of students who returned for the fall semester.
Burlington’s success sits in stark contrast to college towns across the country, where outbreaks caused by incoming college students have shut down multiple institutions.
Flanagan said the school district will phase in four-day-a-week learning — Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday — starting with grades K-2 on Oct. 19. That schedule will be implemented with grades 3-5 on Oct. 16. Flanagan said other schools across the region that reopened successfully are also moving to four or five-day-a-week schedules.
He said schools will continue to follow state guidelines to ensure the continued safety of students. That includes health checks before students are dropped off and regular sanitation of buildings.
However, Burlington High School students are still constricted to all-online learning after cancer-causing PCB chemicals were found throughout the school’s property. While the chemicals were identified in July 2019, the district waited until August 2020 to report the findings — likely a violation of state law.
“We’re really working urgently to find a new space, or to get back into the old space,” Flanagan said. “And our goal is to get back in person by Jan. 4, for second semester.”
Wendy Koenig, director of federal and state relations for the University of Vermont, said at Wednesday’s event that expansive testing for the virus has been the “bedrock” of the university’s success.
UVM tested all students before they arrived on campus, when they arrived on campus, at the seven-day mark, and then weekly thereafter. “And it’s our intention to test weekly as we continue,” Koenig said.
She said UVM has conducted 65,000 tests so far, with a 99.5% negative rate. UVM students will also be sent home before Thanksgiving, and will end the semester with one more week of classes that will be taught remotely. Final exams will also be remote. Spring break has been canceled to limit travel among students, and students won’t return to campus until Feb. 1 for the spring semester.
Champlain College, which has a much smaller enrollment than UVM, has conducted 8,728 tests, according to its testing dashboard, and just three students tested positive, a 0.03% test positive rate.
Champlain College President Benjamin Akande said when he came into the job in July, it became a priority for him to protect not only his college community from the virus, but also the surrounding community.
“On July 1, which was my first day at Champlain, I saw residents of Burlington walking dogs and pushing children in strollers across our campus,” Akande said. “I was not only responsible for the health, safety and welfare of our faculty, staff and students. … I took responsibility for those who resided around our campus and transited through it on a regular basis.”
Weinberger said the colleges’ initial success does not mean the virus has been defeated. He reminded people to stay vigilant.
“I think it would be easy to get complacent at this point, and really kind of pull back on some of these expensive investments,” Weinberger said. “And I very much appreciate that that is not happening.”
The mayor also provided an update on the city’s Covid-19 wastewater testing pilot program.
At the beginning of August, the city began testing some of its sewage treatment tanks in an effort to detect Covid-19 outbreaks before they showed up through clinical tests.
Brian Lowe, the city’s chief innovation officer, said an advance notice of spikes could help the city respond to an outbreak before it became more expansive. During the eight weeks of testing, the city did detect a small spike in mid-September when more college students arrived.
The pilot program cost the city $25,000, and Weinberger said the city expects to be reimbursed through emergency funds. Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is continuing this wastewater treatment research for the city at no additional cost.
