Buoyed by declining COVID case numbers and the ongoing administration of vaccines, St. Vrain Valley School District has set its sights on having students back in classrooms five days a week as early as the end of March.
About 630 SVVSD employees in Phase 1B of the state’s vaccination rollout, which includes school health workers and people 70 and older, have already received vaccinations, Superintendent Don Haddad told school board members Wednesday.
The district’s remaining approximately 4,400 employees will be vaccinated based on job classification and age group as soon as the state progresses to giving shots to those in the second tier of Phase 1B, he said. That second tier, often referred to as below the line in reference to the delineation of priority groups in the state plan, includes essential frontline workers in education.
The state's COVID-19 vaccine distribution priority plan updated on Dec. 30. Source: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment“We are now finalizing with our providers the process. So once the governor’s office releases additional vaccines and approves or authorizes B1 staff below the line, which includes all of our other employees, our teachers … custodial staff, bus drivers, everyone else, we will move quickly to get them vaccinated,” Haddad said during the board’s Wednesday meeting. “My hope is that we can get as many people vaccinated as we approach spring break and we’re really hopeful that we can move back to a five day a week program for K through 12, still providing that option for at home for parents who still want that through synchronous learning.”
Whether the district can bring students back to schools five days a week after spring break, which is March 22-26, “is always just a little tenuous because we don’t have control of the vaccines,” Haddad said.
Meanwhile, the district is doing all it can to get as many students as possible in in-person classes four days a week, he said.
Elementary school students currently attend in-person classes four days a week. Middle and high school students remain in a hybrid model of remote and in-person learning and a number of students have opted to attend solely remote, which has opened up a number of additional seats for those who want to be at school four days a week, Haddad said.
“We’ve had a number of high school students now who are asking to come back four days a week, and middle school students, we are allowing for that until we run out of seats,” he said.
Students also can work in school libraries on Fridays “so conceivably a student could have five days a week in the building if they are choosing to do that,” Haddad said.
“Again our objective is to get all of our students back in-person as quickly as it is deemed appropriate from a safety perspective based on the county and state recommendations. But right now things are going well,” he said.
Since the onset of the pandemic schools in St.Vrain, and across the state and country, have fluctuated from in-person, fully remote and hybrid learning models. If and when students should return to full-time in-person learning has been a source of contention. At the crux of parents’ worries are safety, children’s isolation and the quality of learning, while health officials have been focused on transmission rates.
In a paper published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers “noted that the kind of spread seen in crowded offices and long-term care facilities has not been reported in schools. In-school transmission has occurred, but the researchers said there is little evidence that it contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission,” CNN reported.
St. Vrain tracks the number of COVID cases and quarantines by school in a dashboard on its website. As of Thursday morning, there were 26 active student and two active staff cases; cumulative cases totaled 503 among students and 204 among staff. Active quarantines, data for which is updated on Friday mornings, stand at 459 students and 44 staff. Cumulatively, 5,879 students and 856 staff have been quarantined, according to the district data.
