By Kara Thompson,
Special to the AFRO
As August draws to a close, back-to-school preparations are kicking into high gear.
Teachers and school systems across the country are making arrangements to welcome students back to the classroom, including Baltimore County and Baltimore City.
At the start of the last school year, school systems in the area had strict COVID-19 protocols and masking policies in place to try and prevent staff and students from becoming infected with the coronavirus.
There were virtual learning and isolation plans in place for those who did fall ill during the year. During the spring semester, when COVID cases were on the decline, the CDC loosened its guidelines, prompting school systems to do the same.
Although the pandemic is not over, this school year will open with much fewer policies in place, and more flexibility for both students and staff.
“We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to open school with as few restrictions in place as possible and with as much freedom in place to enable children to be able to focus on their grades, focus on their learning,” said Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS) Communications Specialist Charles Herndon. “But we’re watching very closely to make sure that we’re in compliance with all the federal and state guidelines and doing everything we can to make sure that our students and our staff are kept safe and healthy.”
For BCPS students, masks are optional, and faculty and students can opt in or out of wearing them based on their comfort level. But cases in the community and county will be closely monitored, and school policies will be amended if necessary.
Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) have a similar policy in place and will continue to offer masks to anyone in the school community who requests one, according to Cleo Hirsch, executive director of the COVID-19 response at Baltimore City Public Schools. She also noted that they have an air quality plan in place to help keep high levels of air filtration in the hopes of lowering the transmission rates of covid.
“The core tenants of our COVID protocols remain, but what we’ve really worked on this summer is streamlining and simplifying our policies so that they’re easier for families, students and staff to understand and implement, and less disruptive to our core mission–which is providing a high-quality learning experience for our kids,” said Hirsch.
Just like Baltimore County, Hirsch said they will ensure all of their plans are in compliance with the CDC and will adjust their policies as necessary throughout the year.
Putting procedures in place to combat coronavirus isn’t the only thing stakeholders are worried about. Protection from active shooters is also a major concern after the massacre in Uvalde, Texas at Robb Elementary School.
“We’ll have school safety assistants who will be in place in a number of our schools,” Herndon said. “That’s a program we piloted last year that provides an extra layer of security and safety in our schools. These are people who will be in the school, watching and addressing any kind of issues–tamping down any kind of tensions.”
In addition to the safety assistants, Herndon said there are also a variety of different things they are doing to make mental health resources more available to the school community.
After a year of virtual learning, coming back to in-person schooling was an adjustment for students and staff alike, but Herndon hopes that this year there will be fewer disruptions and a school environment closer to the one students are accustomed to.
In addition to COVID, and deterring violence, this school officials will also have to find a way to navigate the national teacher shortage. Schools scrambling to fill positions as the clock ticks down to the start of the school year.
Herndon said Baltimore County saw a lot of retirements this year, leaving behind even more positions to fill. But at this point in the summer, they’ve hired more teachers than normal.
“We’ve been very aggressive this summer. We’ve been holding almost weekly, almost daily job fairs, both on the school level and on the county-wide level,” he said. “We’re dealing with the same pressures that other school systems are dealing with and mining the same places where other school systems are looking for teachers as well. So we hope that we’re offering a good package and wonderful benefits and I think folks know that Baltimore County is a great place to come and teach.”
Baltimore City Chief of Staff Alison Perkins-Cohen said the teacher shortage problem is a little magnified this year, as this is the first year of the Kirwan plan.
Perkins-Cohen said that the plan allowed schools, “for the first time, to create positions for programming that our young people should have had access to for years,” said Perkins-Cohen. “Our principals were really excited to create those offerings and it happened in a year when there are far fewer teachers available nationally.”
Because of this, Baltimore City Schools began the hiring process much earlier, around late February and early March.
Perkins-Cohen said they have outpaced their normal hiring numbers, and are on track to hire more teachers this year than in prior years, “which, in this context is a huge accomplishment.”
Still, a massive shortage looms.
“It’s not nearly sufficient because there are all these additional positions that we need to fill– those critical Kirwan positions,” she said. “We’re proud of the degree to which we’ve really tried to get ahead of it, and know that it’s not sufficient.”
Shortly after speaking with the AFRO and other news outlets, City Schools sent out an Aug. 22 message to families directly addressing the shortage. The message said that each year City Schools has to fill about 600 vacancies- and this year is no different.
“City Schools remains on pace to hire the same number of teachers who are usually hired each year – about 600,” said the press release about the message sent to parents.
In part, the message read that “the impact at every school will be different. Some schools will have adequate staffing based on their needs, while others may require help to have enough teachers. The goal is to make sure schools can cover their core areas initially.”
“We will do that by having a paraprofessional, a long-term substitute, a retired teacher, a reassigned teacher-leader or central office former teacher on the first day of school,” said the City Schools letter.
Officials in the communications office for City Schools repeatedly refused AFRO requests to delve deeper into the teacher shortage issue after the statement was released.
The first day of school for Baltimore City students is Aug. 29. Baltimore County students will start the same day.
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