Instead of state suggestion, EPS would use new COVID-19 criteria

Dec. 13--ENID, Okla. -- Every day, Tripp Chastain asks his mom if he will get to go to school today.

Dr. Carrie Chastain said while her son, who has autism, would ask occasionally before they went to distance learning last month, now it's an everyday thing.

"My kids, I feel like they don't know from one week to another," the Enid dentist said Saturday. "Now it's just you can't tell and you can't give him a schedule to tell him what's going to happen."

Because of his special learning needs, the third-grader still goes to school at Glenwood Elementary School two days a week for occupational and speech therapy. On those days, Chastain said Tripp talks all day and is noticeably happier.

While other students, elementary classes and entire schools were going into quarantine throughout the semester, Tripp and his sister, Quinn, had not been affected at all by COVID-19 until all of Enid Public Schools went to distance learning last month.

Quinn, in second grade, misses playing with her friends and seeing her teachers, while Tripp needs the structure and routine of doing school at school and decompressing at home, their mom said.

"With every routine upset, like say spring break, we'll do OK for a few days, and then he'll just go through periods where he melts down, nothing's right, and he just kind of has to reset," Chastain said. "It's not that he can't handle it, it's just like everyone's lives are easier when things are like they should be."

Chastain said she's 100% in favor of the re-entry revision EPS Superintendent Darrell Floyd is proposing Monday, while saying she's fully aware Glenwood could be quarantined or shut down again for a few weeks at a time.

"Just knowing that we can go back and deal with this for a couple weeks and be back in -- I'm confident that's what most people want," she said.

Not 'one size fits all'

During his regular report Monday, Floyd will recommend the district no longer follow Oklahoma State Department of Health's Friday reports of new daily COVID-19 case averages to determine whether students and teachers will go into distance learning.

These figures are determined on a rolling seven-day average of daily new cases per 100,000 population in each of Oklahoma's 77 counties. Under the current plan, EPS moves to distance if that average reaches over 50 new daily cases.

The district adopted this plan shortly after school began in August following a recommendation of the state Department of Education.

EPS students and staff have been in distance learning since Nov. 16, after OSDH reported Garfield County had 67.7 new daily cases per 100,000 the Friday before.

At the time, about 7.42% of students and staff were at home isolating or quarantining due to COVID-19. Forty-two were in positive-case isolation, while 588 were in close-contact quarantine.

Under Floyd's recommendation, which would take effect in January, EPS instead would use the following two proposed criteria: If the particular school has enough faculty/staff present to operate the campus; and if the building is under 30% of those in isolation and quarantine due to COVID-19, counts the district reports online throughout the week.

If the answer to either is "no," then the school would close for the appropriate time, based on county Health Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, according to the district. CDC currently recommends up to 10 days of isolation and from 7-14 days of quarantine.

Masks and social distancing protocol will continue to be required on campus.

Other public school districts throughout Garfield County have proceeded with their own specific COVID-19 re-entry plans. After two students tested positive and five staff went into close-contact quarantine Friday, Chisholm Public Schools shut down its middle and high schools through this week, but left its elementary school open.

Maggie Jackson, who oversees the OSDH district that includes Garfield County, said this variety among districts makes contact tracing difficult for the department workers working with each district's school nurses.

"There's not a 'one size fits all' (approach)," she said Friday.

Amplified needs

Those with the district hope the proposed revision could make things easier for its students, staff members and their families -- particularly for EPS' 173 enrolled students with special educational needs.

Special education teacher Anna Minto said her reading program, the Wilson Reading System, works best in-person to help students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities, as she watches how they write or read a page.

Initially hired as a first-grade teacher at Garfield Elementary School, Minto was asked before school began to teach virtual-only as part of the district's online learning plan.

She said using the district-purchased Calvert online program gave her little flexibility with her students, so she asked to become a special ed teacher at the beginning of October -- only to then go back to virtual when the district moved to distance learning a month later.

"That's what I told my principal -- I really feel like I can't escape virtual," she said with a laugh over the phone Friday.

Minto said from her experiences teaching, she sees the common problems students face in virtual learning are amplified when also dealing with a child's special educational needs, like a lack of control from distractions in their environment.

She said four students in her special ed department returned to in-person from virtual learning once she began teaching.

EPS Board of Education member Colin Abernathy, said his youngest son, Cooper, came crying to him Saturday because he thought they'd be going back to school this week instead of next semester.

While second-grader Cooper has been learning virtually since the move to distance learning, Abernathy's eldest son, Parker, who has autism, has been going to Waller Middle School in-person for half days from Monday to Friday.

The Office 5 representative said Parker needs the routine of waking up, getting dressed and going to school, and after virtual learning did not work for the sixth-grader back in the spring, Abernathy worked over the summer with a team from the district to get him an individualized educational program, or IEP.

EPS children with an IEP can attend school in-person depending on site capacity and what learning plan the IEP team, made of parents, teachers, site administration and district staff, deems appropriate.

Whether or not the revision proposal is approved Monday, Abernathy said it's important that parents with children who have special needs and an accompanying IEP still have that option for next semester.

"I've just seen a difference in him," Abernathy said about Parker. "It's night and day compared to the spring ... because teachers were preparing for this from the beginning when school started."

'Too soon to tell'

According to Floyd's reported plan, the change comes of necessity as EPS has carried the burden of the county's continued increase in new COVID-19 cases.

"While the Garfield County numbers have climbed in the recent weeks, the numbers within our schools have remained manageable," the agenda item from Floyd read. "When the numbers in a particular classroom or school have risen to an unacceptable level, we have taken the necessary steps to keep students and staff safe by quarantining those affected while allowing the education of others to continue."

Abernathy said while the next regular board meeting isn't until after Jan. 5, he'd personally prefer a vote be closer to the new semester because of the uncertainty over the future.

"A lot can change in a month, as we've seen," he said. "So if numbers start spiking again and we get back to where we were a couple weeks ago, do we just continue on in class and keep going?"

Jackson, with the health department, said she has too many questions on the prevalence of COVID-19 in schools to predict the revision's effectiveness.

She said there isn't enough data to know how much schools contributed to spread out in the community and vice-versa, for example, or how much transmission occurs in schools.

Enid Mayor George Pankonin on Friday said EPS' "more focused" plan makes a lot of sense, as opposed to a more global shutdown.

In its third attempt since July, the city of Enid less than two weeks ago passed a declaration mandating masks in indoor public areas.

"It's too soon to tell," Pankonin said about whether the city's mandate was having an effect on new cases. "But now hopefully parents are taking safeguards as they're going into town."

Abernathy had less confidence in the mandate's effectiveness, saying he was disappointed in the community's lack of partnership so far with the school district, which enforces its mask policies.

"An argument could be made that the students are safest while they're at school because we do have mask mandates and we do social distance as best as we can, so that in essence makes it the safest place they can be," he said. "And we're where we are based off what the community provides us."

Ewald is copy editor and city/education reporter for the Enid News & Eagle.

Have a question about this story? Do you see something we missed? Send an email to aewald@enidnews.com.

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