W2EC Testimony - Roundtable on DCPS and DCPCS School Reopening – September 21, 2021

Testimony by David Alpert
Ward 2 Education Council
DC Council Roundtable on Re-Opening District of Columbia Public Schools
and Public Charter Schools for School Year 2021-22
September 21, 2021

Good afternoon, Chairman Mendelson and members of the Council.

I am president of the Ward 2 Education Council for 2021-22. We are a group of parents and staff of DCPS schools in Ward 2 who coordinate for the benefit of Ward 2 school communities and all DCPS communities across the District.

I first want to thank you for holding this roundtable and also to thank all our educators and education officials, in DCPS, charters, private schools, and more, for opening schools this fall. The evidence has become clear that the harms to our students of being out of school for a long period of time are severe. We should take all steps possible to ensure schools can stay open and not see the spread of Covid which would force quarantines and closures.

One clear simple step is outdoor dining. Thankfully, DCPS is supporting schools with funding for tables and other equipment.  Many schools have instituted outdoor dining. Unfortunately, many more have not been able to, because of delays in receiving equipment, lack of staff and volunteers, lack of usable outdoor space, and more.

This is frustrating because the value of outdoor dining was eminently foreseeable. I myself raised this in the spring as questions swirled over six feet versus three feet and so forth. Some pre-planning could have ensured schools were ready, but instead, schools are now scrambling.

At this point, we can best help schools by ensuring the funding to purchase equipment; minimizing bureaucratic delays; sharing best practices; and expediting volunteer clearances.

Second, the Ward 2 Education Council recommends more frequent testing to catch Covid cases as quickly as possible so that there can be minimal further infection. That could include more frequent testing of students and also testing for vaccinated teachers, since Delta can affect vaccinated adults. We also appreciate the vaccination requirement the mayor announced on Monday.

The protocols at DCPS for symptomatic students are puzzling. First, nurses are not involved in any Covid protocols, which makes little sense and burdens school staff. If a student is symptomatic, they have to wait for a contractor to arrive to test, or the parents might pick up the student before that even happens, limiting the ability to catch potential cases and nip them in the bud.

Third: DCPS discloses the exposure notification letters, but they are not informative. Just telling a family that their student does not need to quarantine doesn’t help them know if the exposure was a whole class quarantining or just a contractor who passed through and had no student contact. More information could be shared without affecting medical confidentiality. Depriving families of information will just serve to raise parents’ anxiety levels, not knowing if DCPS is keeping vital knowledge from them.

I also hope the District can take a good look at “test to stay” programs being piloted in other states, where after an exposure, children and teachers receive daily rapid tests, and can keep coming to school so long as they test negative. This could be especially valuable for non-DCPS schools where a case could lead to a two-week quarantine of the entire class.

Finally, there is another topic I want to raise personally, about the travel quarantine rules for small children.

The policy right now varies widely among charters and private preschools and elementary schools. Some, as with DCPS, have shifted to match the DOH policy saying quarantines after travel are recommended but not required. Others still enforce the old rule and will turn away families unless 3 to 5 days have passed and there is a negative Covid test. While individual non-DCPS schools can make their own policies, multiple parents have been told by their schools that this is an OSSE requirement, even though there is no written OSSE policy to that effect. In fact, this isn’t the only area where schools are telling parents that their OSSE regulators are forcing policies upon them that don’t match the written DOH or OSSE rules.

I am concerned about the Delta variant and support health rules to keep kids safe. In this situation, the specific travel policy is very poorly tailored. A family encounters much more Covid risk doing indoor dining in Virginia, or even in the District, than they do driving to visit vaccinated grandparents in Pennsylvania. Yet if OSSE is indeed forcing some preschools and elementary schools to follow the old rule, there is no room for those schools to apply their good judgment. If parents have to keep their children home and then visit a Smithsonian museum with unvaccinated tourists during their “stay home from school” days, they may be encountering more risk than on the actual trip. We need a clear and consistent rule that also is well tailored to actually reducing Covid risk.

I hope you can ask OSSE to clarify whether their regulators are applying their own private versions of health guidance or whether schools are being given consistent and transparent requirements.

Thank you very much.