Pandemic back-to-school brings concerns over COVID-19 policy backlash, hiring crunch

August 21, 2021  |  By Lisa Scagliotti

As schools prepare to open next week, Harwood Union’s superintendent has written to the community about concerns over heightened angry public opinion regarding COVID-19 protocols. She also notes the school district is struggling to fill staff vacancies. 

In a memo on Thursday sent to families of students in the Harwood Unified Union School District, Superintendent Brigid Nease cautioned about a “very significant problem looming.”  

Meetings with other school leaders ahead of the 2021-22 academic year opening soon and reports in the news from other school districts around the state have principals and superintendents expressing fear, Nease said. “One of my superintendent colleagues has received a death threat. Some principals are receiving letters from groups threatening to storm the schools on the first day,” she said. 

No specific threats have been made in the Harwood district, Nease said later but she has received messages from community members angry about how the district plans to handle the ongoing reality of the COVID-19 pandemic, she said. 

“When seeking out advice and support we were told to access law enforcement,” Nease wrote. 

Schools in the six-town Harwood district open this Thursday for what will be the third school year overshadowed by the COVD-19 pandemic that began in March 2020. Nease said she understands that opinions vary on how to manage the virus in schools but she would hope disagreements could be civil. 

“None of us can control this virus. We are doing the best we can,” she wrote. “Some might say that our opening protocols are too strict. Please know that the greatest fear school leaders have since COVID began is that we would lose even one student or staff member to this pandemic. The only way we can sleep at night and move forward is to believe we did everything we could to prevent such a tragedy.” 

Making the rules for a new school year 

Harwood Union schools will operate with all students and staff required to wear masks indoors until further notice and even outdoors unless there could be at least six feet distance between individuals. Masks will be required on school buses per a federal directive as well. 

Nease’s Thursday memo suggested that would last at least for the first month given the recent surge in COVID-19 cases in Vermont and in communities in the school district. “We will begin the school year almost like we ended it last spring. If and when conditions improve, we will lessen our mitigation strategies,” Nease said.

Waterbury, the largest town in the district recently has seen the largest increase in COVID-19 cases of the pandemic driven by an outbreak among young children in the town’s summer recreation camp. Other communities also have seen upticks in cases. Children under age 12 who are not eligible yet for the COVID-19 vaccine remain particularly vulnerable to the virus and its highly contagious Delta variant that has become prevalent this summer across the nation. 

Guidance from Vermont Agency of Education and Department of Health authorities suggests that schools might scale back masking rules once they determined that 80% of those age 12 and up who may be vaccinated are immunized. It’s recommended that those under 12 remain masked indoors until they can get the vaccine. 

Harwood school leaders have not set a benchmark for when they would scale back mask rules. The district also said it will require staff to be vaccinated or give proof of a medical exemption and be tested regularly. That position has been supported by the Vermont NEA teachers’ union although it’s been reported that Harwood is the first school district in the state to make vaccination a requirement for school employees. 

Nease’s Thursday memo outlined a long list of steps administrators will follow as the school year opens with full-time in-person instruction, a shift from last school year that relied on a hybrid model with students spending some time learning from home and established a full-time remote program. Nease said no remote learning will be in place this year given that teachers will be expected to be full-time in their classrooms. That also will mean that snow days will not feature remote instruction and again would need to be made up at the end of the year. 

Mitigation strategies outlined in the memo include having windows open as much as possible; incorporating outdoor instruction into the day; keeping seating charts for buses and classrooms to assist with contact tracing should cases arise; and no large gatherings such as assemblies. 

“We know students and staff may contract the virus. Like last year, we stopped the spread within our schools then and we can do it again, but it will take everyone,” she wrote. 

Students and teachers grew accustomed to wearing masks full-time indoors and out during the 2020-21 school year. Harwood Union Schools plan to open with everyone wearing masks indoors regardless of vaccination status. File photo by Gordon Miller

A challenge, Nease said, is that state guidance this year came in a two-page memo to school districts, unlike lengthy detailed guidance a year ago. Nease said school leaders are left to tailor their plans and are likely to vary around the state given that the state’s advice differs from what medical experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics say. Both national sources recommend masking for all individuals indoors regardless of vaccination status as long as community spread of COVID-19 remains high or substantial. Most counties in Vermont right now fall into either of those categories including Washington County where Harwood Union is located. 

These factors combined with the critical goals of having schools open full-time and all activities such as sports and extra-curricular offerings in place “necessitate our moving forward with an abundance of caution at the start of this school year,” Nease wrote. 

Harwood Union Education Association President Justina Boyden said teachers and staff see many positive steps going into this school year. “We are very excited to welcome our students back into our buildings, five full days a week.  We are excited to be able to return to supporting and cheering our students on in athletics, drama, and all of the other co-curricular activities that they enjoy and love,” she said. 

She expressed support for measures that aim to keep schools open and staffed full time. “Our job first and foremost, in any given year, but most especially now, is to keep our students, our colleagues, and ourselves safe.  The only way to do that at this moment is to take the precautionary measures laid out by our administrative team,” Boyden said. 

She noted that union leaders plan to meet regularly with administrators to determine what steps are needed. “We certainly have learned how to be even more flexible and to pivot as necessary,” she said. 

Nease emphasized that the final decisions on daily operational details rest with superintendents and school boards who may adopt measures more stringent than state advice under authority schools have to provide safe environments for students and staff. The Harwood Union School Board last year made school administrators responsible for managing COVID-19 school procedures. The board plans an online question and answer session for the public regarding back-to-school issues and it has a regular meeting Tuesday evening where COVID procedures will be discussed. 

In addition to managing COVID-19 factors, the district also is facing a serious hiring challenge, Nease wrote in her memo. Vacancies a week before opening day included four teachers, 11 para educators, two food service workers and two social workers.

Threats in context 

 In an interview on Friday, Jeff Francis, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association, said that he relies on superintendents to know what’s happening in their communities and it’s important to heed concerns such as what Nease raised regarding backlash from the public. 

“We are living in an era of hyper-vigilance around school safety,” he said. “When a superintendent raises attention about concerns like this … it causes people to have to pay attention.” 

Across the country and even in Vermont, attitudes about wearing masks and getting vaccinations have become politicized during the pandemic, Francis said. “I hadn’t heard much about volatility,” he said. Still, the memory is fresh of the insurrection that took place at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, he noted. Society has seen extremism on display and tensions are rising in many parts of the country around school policies to address COVID-19, Francis noted. 

In some states such as Texas and Florida for example, governors have ordered schools to not require masks, yet some school districts are moving ahead with mask requirements anyway.

David Younce is superintendent of the Mill River Unified Union School District in Rutland County and president of the Vermont Superintendents Association. He said he is concerned about how having each school district craft its own policy will lead to disagreements and strong emotions across the state. “I have not experienced threats,” he said. “But it in no way surprises me that they are out there.” 

Vermont prides itself on schools having strong local control, Younce said. But the question over how to mitigate COVID-19 risk “seems like the perfect litmus test for what deserves to be more centralized.”  

Francis said leaving the details up to individual districts puts school board members who answer to the public and individual school leaders in a difficult position of wanting to follow medical expertise while balancing vocal community members. 

Younce said the pandemic has raised the stakes for school decision-makers, recalling what used to be one of the most controversial parts of his job. “I remember when one of the more challenging decisions I’d have to make was whether to call off school tomorrow for snow,” he said with a laugh. “That’s a piece of cake at this point in time.” 

Boyden said Harwood Union district teachers are discouraged by the concerns Nease described, but she said she hopes the adults in the community can push back on volatile reactions and help chart the path for the coming months. “As educators, we always teach and model for our students how to solve problems through dialogue and not aggression. As a society, we need to be role models for our children and strive to make the world a more peaceful place,” she said. “We - all of us - students, staff, families, and community - we can do hard things.  We’ve got this.”  

Nease agreed, noting that she hoped by sharing her concerns and the gravity of the communications she’s received, the community could be aware of the situation and work together to quell what she called “discord happening in our Vermont communities.”

People need to use “respectful civil discourse to discuss our differences and compromise where we can to find solutions,” Nease wrote. “I am appealing to our HUUSD community to use appropriate channels and forums to engage in these difficult conversations.”

Monday’s Q&A with school leaders will be held online from 6:30 to 8 p.m. via Zoom. It will be recorded and posted on the school district’s YouTube channel. Details on how to watch or participate are online on the HUUSD website.