CMS has rules for reopening schools. Here’s why all students won’t go back right away.

A plan to restart in-person learning at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools this fall hinges on the trajectory of COVID-19 spread locally.

Under guidelines currently being discussed, many students would remain in virtual-only classrooms and some grade levels would begin rotations for in-person learning. But those conditions could change, according CMS’ draft plan, if public health data shows COVID-19 trends improving.

On Thursday morning, a CMS advisory committee reviewed a draft of a “dashboard” that could guide a return to the classroom. The dashboard outlines three levels of community spread trends in Mecklenburg County: Minimal, moderate and substantial.

The county’s medical Director Meg Sullivan said during the committee meeting that Mecklenburg is currently experiencing “moderate” community spread of the virus. Under those conditions, according to the district’s dashboard, CMS would prioritize in-person learning for students most in need, such as the youngest grades and those with special needs.

Moderate spread is defined on CMS’ dashboard as a weekly county positivity rate of 5 to 10% and a rate of 10 to 100 new cases per 100,000 residents over a seven day period. Currently, the weekly positivity rate is about 6% and the county is adding about 91 new cases of COVID-19 among residents per day. That figure works out to about 55 to 60 new cases per 100,000 residents over a seven day period, Sullivan said.

Only under a “minimal community spread” scenario would all CMS schools reopen for all age groups, according to the district’s plan. That criteria would be met, the plan states, if the county reports a weekly positivity rate below 5% for 14 days and fewer than 10 new cases per 100,000 people over the same time period.

The county’s percent of positive tests, or positivity rate, is at its lowest point since mid-May but the figure has never dropped below 5%.

Public health Director Gibbie Harris on Thursday said that there are other metrics — such as the number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital —that the county could use to assess the health of the community. But the percent of positive tests and rate of new cases are most relevant to school reopening considerations.

CMS leaders have also said they’d like to see all school nurse jobs filled, something that has been a chronic struggle for the county, which is responsible for staffing those positions. But Harris said that CMS must also focus on its response plan on training staff to recognize symptoms and how to properly isolate symptomatic individuals.

“I think we need to be clear that having a nurse in a school is not going to prevent COVID from occurring in the school,” Harris said. “We are going to have cases as you open up. We’ve said that from the beginning.”

CMS will use the metrics outlined to consider when the district will be ready to switch to Plan B, a hybrid instruction model that rotates students through one week of in-person learning and two weeks of remote classes. Under an executive order from Gov. Roy Cooper, schools in North Carolina must operate with some form of social distancing, ruling out a full return to in-person learning. In school districts already conducting in-person learning, administrators have staggered schedules combined with virtual instruction days.

The school board will meet Wednesday to discuss a possible return to in-person instruction. Families who are enrolled in the full-remote academy option, roughly one-third of district, will remain at home regardless of whether the district switches plans.

More COVID-19 spread would keep students home

This week, local school district leaders also outlined “operational metrics” that would determine whether individual schools would be ready to bring students back, including staffing in instructional and custodial roles as well as building readiness. One repeated concern from school-based employees has been the status of HVAC systems, some of which are outdated or incapable of bringing in outside air.

District staff have said that 39 schools don’t have the capacity to pull in fresh air, which means increased risk for recirculating virus particles.

Attention to school buildings has become increasingly critical for district leaders as the prospect nears of some students returning.

Still, Harris, the health director, noted earlier this week her concerns that Labor Day weekend parties and gatherings may lead to higher numbers of infections and upend some recent progress the county has made in containing the virus.

That could further delay the return of public school students or cause CMS leaders to pull back on reopening once its begun.

In the district’s plan for managing instruction with “substantial community spread” in Mecklenburg County, all students would likely return to remote-only learning. That plan is triggered if health department data shows an average positivity rate of more than 10% over two weeks — which the county experienced between late June and almost all of July. Another criteria of “substantial” spread is if the county sees increased new infections, defined as more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people over a seven day period.

This story was originally published September 10, 2020 at 2:13 PM.