St. Paul Public Schools said Friday it doesn’t have enough staff to begin gradually bringing students back to school.
District students have been learning from home since the fall semester began on Sept. 8.
Officials had promised to decide by Friday whether an initial group of around 500 students — those who spend most of a typical school day in a special-education setting — could begin getting in-person services and instruction two days a week Oct. 19.
But despite decreases in new coronavirus cases in Ramsey County, the school district said Friday it’s not ready for that move.
“After careful consideration using local data about COVID-19, and these 23 readiness targets, SPPS has determined we cannot safely transition students to hybrid learning at this time,” the district said in an email to parents.
A district webpage shows the district has met all of its self-imposed readiness targets but one: “95% of the stage school instructional staff needed for are available for hybrid.”
The district did not explain what’s causing the staffing shortage.
However, human resources director Kenyatta McCarty said Tuesday that before moving to a hybrid teaching model, it would take time for the district to wade through teachers’ work-at-home requests based on disability or other health-risk factors. She said that “ideally,” the district won’t need to hire additional teachers, but some would need to be reassigned.
The district said it will see again next week whether it’s ready to move phase-one students to a hybrid schedule.
Friday’s decision for phase-one students won’t necessarily slow the return of others in the district.
The second group in line to return twice a week includes grades preK-2 and additional special-education students. The district plans to announce Oct. 14 whether those students can start going to school Nov. 16.
No additional transition dates have been set.
Students who want to stick with distance learning when the district moves to a part-time in-person schedule will have that option.
TEACHERS NOT READY
Nick Faber, president of the St. Paul Federation of Educators, wrote in an opinion piece published Thursday in the Pioneer Press that the district isn’t ready for in-person instruction, even on a part-time schedule.
He said chronic underfunding has left schools without the money to pay for nurses, coronavirus tests or the space for students to keep their distance. And he warned that a twice-a-week in-person schedule will be confusing for families and hard for teachers to manage.
“The logistics of that scheduling, with teachers trying to teach in person and give online content on the days students are not present will become confusing for educator and student alike, causing more of each to lose faith in SPPS,” he wrote.
However, further delaying in-person instruction and services for special-education students creates some legal risk for the district.
The school board recently met in private to discuss how it will respond to a national class-action lawsuit accusing school districts of failing to provide special-education students a “free and appropriate public education” when they closed in spring because of the pandemic.
Marcy Doud, the district’s assistant superintendent for specialized services, told the school board on Tuesday that St. Paul is meeting its legal obligations but “we know that those therapies are best delivered in person.”
Meanwhile, the district has scaled back its plans to provide in-person academic help. Officials previously said they’d open five high schools as academic support centers on Oct. 1, with help available in each corner of the city.
Instead, they’ll start registering students on that date but won’t begin offering services till Oct. 12, and only at Washington Technology Magnet. District spokesman Kevin Burns said Friday that they’ll expand to more schools as needed.