-Yesterday, health officials delivered recommendations
for when students may be able to return to classrooms.
-We're being asked, as superintendents,
to make the most important decision of our lives,
and we're making that recommendation,
which is, you know, life and death.
-The safety of our schools is a priority,
is the number-one thing.
If you don't have safe schools, nothing else matters,
because you're not going to be able to do anything else
if your schools aren't safe.
-Saying, based on the metrics released today,
Arizona is not ready for in-person classrooms.
-I'm not comfortable.
I'm not comfortable sending them to school.
My son is a high risk.
You know, I'm afraid that he'll get sick
and I won't see him again.
-The Arizona Department of Health Services will develop
and release public health benchmarks
for the safe return of in-person,
teacher-led classroom instruction.
Local school leaders will make the determination
and consider these recommendations.
-It is a huge wave for any leader in education
to be trying to navigate and trying to figure out,
"How do we keep everyone safe?
How do we provide the best services possible
that our community relies on?"
And so these are truly lose-lose situations, every turn.
-The on-site services, as I understand them,
are for those students
who otherwise could not access the virtual learning.
So, whether that's -- -This gives you
the three benchmarks.
And you can see right here where Gila County,
where we're at, right here, has the three X's right here.
And we're at all -- We happen to be at all three of them.
I'm going to turn on our lights for us.
This data that we have right now, we can take it
to the county health department and ask for a waiver.
And if we're given the waiver,
we don't have to bring students onto campus.
And that's what, you know, we're afraid to do.
And this is an area
that we're looking at putting kids if we need to.
We can offer some good online instruction,
but we can't bring back,
you know, any family members that we'd lose.
And we've already lost Kim Byrd, you know, a wonderful teacher.
And we haven't finished grieving for her.
Let's see.
Going to Miss Byrd's room, which is sad.
This is really --
This is really my first time, myself, going in this room.
This is, like, a lifetime of teaching.
And she has books and just, aw --
Most of this stuff, she bought with her own money.
Having lost Kim, you know, in some ways,
I feel like it's easier for me to make the decision,
because I know what can happen, I see it.
Three teachers sharing a room, spread out, social distancing,
PPE, wiping down everything, and one teacher brings it in,
and the other two get sick.
And of course, you know, Kim, you know,
one week of teaching summer school,
I'm talking to her Thursday.
On that Saturday night, she goes into the urgent care,
and she never came out.
-We have approximately 5,700 students, total enrollment.
Our free and reduced lunch is at 82%, districtwide.
We've been on online instruction since August 5th.
The story with the superintendent back north
and what he's dealing with,
with the death of a teacher in a local small rural area,
that story can happen to any of us.
Even if you think that you did everything right,
there is still that high possibility of essential risk.
There is no guarantee.
That's what it comes down to.
There's the measures, benchmarks, you know, guidance.
That's all they are.
They're just guidelines.
There is no, really,
recommendation on what we're going to do.
All I know is that if we open now,
we're going to be closing pretty soon.
-You're going to need a sheet of paper.
It's been very exhausting, to be honest,
because what used to be my, what is it, 8- --
I want to say 8-hour days -- have become 10 to 12.
I honestly believe I'm not doing as much
as I would do in a regular setting.
I have to pretty much cut my instruction,
because I only have an hour to go online
for reading, writing, and math, and that's it.
So I got to make sure that I concentrate
on what's very important.
-Do I do it on the expanded form?
-Do the expanded form, and do the written form
just like we did in the example together.
But with the delivery of the news
that we are opening this Monday, August 17th,
and we're going to have children on campus,
it makes me uncertain.
Not that I don't want to see children,
because I think that's what I signed up
for the rest of my life to cater
and, you know, guide these children,
but with this pandemic, I think that kind of puts a halt
into things and kind of gives me this mix of emotions.
Because you're not talking about a cold.
You're not talking about a cough.
You're talking about a virus that can lead to death.
-From the spring break till right now,
they haven't gone to school, because of the coronavirus.
And then they started online school,
which I think it's pretty neat,
because they're not going to get sick.
I tell them that it's like if he was in school,
because they go to bed at 8:00,
regardless if they're not going out of the house.
And they wake up at 6:00, serve breakfast,
and then they get online.
He gets online for the morning-bell work,
and then they connect at 8:30.
So it's like if he was in school.
-I'll check it.
It's basically on a schedule.
We're right here.
At 9:30, we go to independent work, all the way to 12:00.
Some days, it's kind of hard to understand what she's saying,
but presenting is really neat.
Like, because there's a lot of people using the Internet,
and it's kind of lonely for a long time,
so you get stressed.
Like, it's hard, but I like it.
You get to learn how to type.
-Do you know why you're staying at home?
-Yeah.
-Why is that?
-Not preventing to get sick and dying, I guess.
-Health comes first.
Safe becomes first, not only for you but,
I mean, for the rest of the household.
The pandemic got started, and your life changed.
So you have to -- It can't be the same as it was before.
I hope they learn the same
as if they were in school in person.
I hope this helps, because if they say
that tomorrow they have to go back to in-person,
I wouldn't send my daughter and my son to school,
because I don't want to risk it.
It only takes one person to infect a lot of persons.
-This week, the waiver was denied
at the county health director's level.
And in our case, the subgroups that they're referring to,
in the executive order, is that these subgroups
need to be provided a place for them to come and be at.
So, when you figure, well, if we bring some people back,
out of 5,600 students that I have,
you're going to have over 700, 800
or more families sending these students.
Why?
Because our district qualifies for all those subgroups,
so that's the confusion.
So our waiver was very different than other parts,
because I was trying to tell them,
"We can't comply with this, because it's going to bring
hundreds of students back to our schools."
I received a call from the chief of staff
at the Department of Education AD,
following up with our concerns.
And my concern is on my communication
regarding the waiver denial and on behalf of department.
He said, and Superintendent Hoffman,
they understood the contradictions
that have been taking place, the misunderstandings.
And he was calling to provide full support.
We will continue with online for all of our students,
as we have been doing,
and with the exception of our special-education
self-contained program.
So we will be bringing those students in for services,
but it will not be until the 24th of August.
-I think one thing that's been very challenging for all of us
in the education field
is that a lot of these decisions are public health decisions.
A lot of these challenges are because we're not trained
epidemiologists, we're not public health experts,
and yet that's the type of decisions
that we're being faced with, is, "How do we keep schools safe,
in the sense of teachers and staff?
How do we make sure students are safe?"
Our communities and the livelihoods of our children
are at risk here --
significantly at risk -- during COVID-19.
And yet how do we make these decisions?
-It's opening day, but it sounds like the --
it's like the major-league ballparks.
The fans aren't out there.
It's kind of sad, when you think about it, but --
Today we opened for on-site learning,
but we had no students show up.
As you can see, we kind of made some safe spaces, 6 foot apart.
It seems like we're rushing to get kids back in the classroom,
because that's where they need to be.
But I will agree with them 100%,
but when it's safe and it's not putting other people at risk.
That's when the time is right, not when we got a virus
that is not under control, by any means,
and we're going to risk lives.
-40 students altogether came back,
and they're all at four sites, distributed among four sites.
The rest of our students are still on the online program.
Gracias.
[speaking Spanish] Have a great day.
We pretty much know that the states are --
there was no state plan, that there was no national plan.
So I'm not concerned with the state at this time anymore,
and I'm not concerned with any deadlines
or any state orders or governor orders or anything like that.
It's up to us to make those decisions,
and we're going to continue to make the decisions
based on the data and based on science.
We're just going on a day, weekly basis.
We know, I know, that whatever is recommended,
it will be our decision only, and no one else's.
How are you guys?
You're good, everything good?
Excited to be back?
Yeah or no?
Wendy doesn't know.
She's like this.