By any measure, the announcement Friday that schools across New York would be allowed to reopen next month could be seen as a positive, a sign that the state is one of the rare places in the nation where the Covid-19 pandemic is being kept largely under control, an indication that normalcy is at least possible.
That's exactly how Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo portrayed it.
“By our infection rates, all school districts can open everywhere in the state," he said during a conference call with reporters. "Every region is below the threshold that we established which is just great news.”
Is it?
“No one is cheering,” Richard Hughes, superintendent of the Frontier Central School District, said after listening to the governor.
Rather than settle an issue vital to millions around the state, the governor's announcement raised doubts about what school might look like in the fall and triggered a flurry of debate and activity likely to continue until the first day of school.
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School districts will be required to explain to parents how they plan to reopen safely.
Parents will have to decide whether they’re comfortable sending their kids back.
And will teachers even show up?
Also, no interscholastic sports have been approved yet by the state and are the subject of “ongoing discussions.”
Cuomo waited until Friday to make his decision on schools, but last month said in order for schools to reopen, a region’s infection rate has to be 5% or lower, based on a 14-day average. If the rate rose greater than 9%, based on a seven-day average in a region, schools there would close.
As of Friday, the statewide infection rate was at 1%, a number that would be the envy of almost every other state and a far cry from the early days of the pandemic when it seemed the state's health care facilities would be overwhelmed.
“Let me say it this way,” Cuomo said. “You look at our infection rate; we are probably in the best situation in the country right now - as incredible as that is. If anyone can open schools, we can open schools. That's true for every region in the state. Period.”
But if parents and educators were looking for additional guidance from the governor they didn’t get any.
Instead, the decision on exactly how to reopen will be left in the hands of individual school districts. Saying "no one size fits all," Cuomo said the issues have to be addressed district by district.
Kriner Cash, superintendent of Buffalo Public Schools, the largest school district in the region, said he had anticipated that districts would be asked to carry the bulk of the load when it came to reopening.
“What I heard from him today is 'you’re on your own,' ” Cash said Friday. “And once you’re on your own, I’m going to try to have us do the work amicably and peaceably together here in Buffalo. That’s my goal – not to have us at loggerheads.”
Besides the reopening plans school districts were required to submit to the state last week, Cuomo did impose further directives on districts Friday based on a flood of inquiries.
School districts will be required by Aug. 21 to hold at least three public meetings, albeit remotely, for parents to learn about reopening plans and to ask questions. Larger districts, like Buffalo, will be required to hold five.
In addition, districts should have a session just for teachers.
“I have been deluged with calls from parents and teachers, and there's a significant level of anxiety and concern,” Cuomo said. “And I've said a number of times, these school districts have to be talking to the parents and talking to the teachers, because if the teachers don't come back, then you can't really open the schools. If the parents don't send their students, then you're not really opening the schools.”
By the end of the week, schools also must post online their plans for three “highly-questioned areas”: remote learning, Covid-19 testing and contact tracing.
Virus testing and contact tracing, in particular, were hot-button issues for districts following Friday’s announcement. School districts anticipated they would have to help support local health departments on that front, but not actually have to do the testing and tracing themselves.
Cash said he spoke with the Erie County Health Department, which informed him the department doesn’t have the capacity to do the testing for the school district. In fact, there’s a backlog when it cones to obtaining results.
“Testing is the big X Factor,” Cash said. “We are not set up to test.
“And testing doesn’t make sense if you can’t get the results back in 48 hours,” Cash said. “How do you know what the spread of the virus is?”
Cuomo's long-awaited announcement comes after school districts and private schools were required to submit reopening plans to the state for review by last Friday.
Most public school districts planned to offer a hybrid model of in-person and remote learning to allow for social distancing in the school buildings.
But no district or school will be allowed to open if the state Department of Health has not signed off on its reopening plan.
As of Friday, 127 of the state's 749 districts had yet to submit a reopening plan. There were 50 more plans that were submitted that are considered incomplete, Cuomo said. The state will notify districts on Monday if their submitted plans are considered deficient, he said.
In Buffalo, Cash has proposed a four-phased reopening that would delay the start of school until the last week of September or early October.
Teachers would report Sept. 8, providing for two weeks of training and the opportunity to welcome students back slowly to get them comfortable with the new safety protocols in the building.
“Until someone tells me otherwise, I’m going to proceed along those lines,” said Cash, calling the situation “fluid.”
Across the state, somewhere around 10% of families are saying they do not plan to send their children back to school in the fall, according to the New York State School Boards Association.
The governor has previously indicated that he supports parents' right to keep their children home if they don't feel that it's safe to send them back to school.
"If the teachers say, 'I'm not coming back' or the parents say 'I'm not sending my child,' then whatever the school district says is irrelevant," Cuomo said.
