Experts comment on what needs to happen in Puerto Rico to resume face-to-face classes

Reopening schools to resume face-to-face classes after a year of distance learning would be one of the main measures for the country to gradually return to normal in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it will require, as jugglers, to keep track, at the same time, of the needs of minors to learn, the pace of coronavirus infections, the safety of school environments and even the economic realities of families, experts agreed.

Today begins the second semester of the distance school year for the more than 270,000 students in the public education system. Thousands have been without a classroom for a year now due to the destruction caused by the earthquakes that mainly hit the southern part of the island and then the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We need to open schools, we need to strike a balance with that. In other countries, measures have been taken and opened. That quotas should be used, that not all schools should be opened (at the same time) … necessary measures so that it can be done well “, maintained the pediatrician Mario Paulí.

Governor Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia has already given the guideline for the necessary measures to be taken to try to resume face-to-face classes in March, subject to the evolution of COVID-19 infections on the island as vaccination of the largest number is completed. possible teaching and non-teaching staff of public and private schools.

Bringing children and adolescents together in schools has been a worldwide challenge in the midst of the pandemic, decreed in mid-March. Countries such as France, Italy and Spain have ordered the opening and closing of schools in various instances over the past 10 months. Until yesterday, Russia, the Netherlands and Germany had postponed the start of face-to-face courses due to the rise in infections. In Britain, students could return to classrooms in mid-February, but it is still uncertain.

In the United States, each state determines its school policies. New York City, for example, closed schools in the spring and moved toward distance education because of the alarming number of contagions in the area. In September, schools reopened under hybrid programs, with some students physically in schools and others at a distance, according to each family’s preference. This would remain so as contagions in the city came under control, which came into effect when the closure of the plantations was ordered in November because the positivity rate exceeded 3%. Two weeks later, there was a gradual reopening prior to the Christmas break.

For the return of face-to-face classes on the island, the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would be observed, said the executive director of the Public Health Trust, José F Rodríguez Orengo, who is part of the Scientific Coalition appointed by the first executive.

Vaccination of school staff – both public and private – will be crucial to give way to this return to the classroom, said Rodriguez Orengo. An efficient contact monitoring and tracking system will also need to be established to detect infections and curb possible virus transmission in school settings, he added.

“It has to be planned well, that’s why we’re doing it from now on. We can’t wait to get to February 25, we’re doing very well the scenarios that could be there to make decisions based on studies and students,” he argued Rodriguez Orengo.

The CDC has established a number of indicators that show whether opening schools poses risks of coronavirus transmission. For example, for a return to face-to-face classes to have a low risk of COVID-19 transmission, less than 3% of diagnostic molecular tests performed in the 14 days prior to opening must yield positive results, which is known as the positivity rate. Until Friday, the positivity rate on the island hovered between 8% and 10%, depending on whether only single cases and all samples collected are counted, Rodriguez Orengo noted.

With these percentages, the risks of virus transmission to schools, if opened now, would be high, according to the CDC.

However, the director of the Public Health Trust stressed that it is possible to resume face-to-face classes, first in areas where there are few cases of COVID-19 and thus establish pilot projects that serve to test strategies that would be replicated as which widens the reopening.

“In a place that tends to have a little more congestion, the risk of contagion is higher. That’s why, for example, if you follow a town like Les Marías, it has remained quite stable, in terms of contagion, then “Perhaps in these areas of rural schools, which have few students, a suitable reopening could take place, with the tracking of contacts,” he said.

Last year, the government raised the possibility of resuming face-to-face classes in municipalities with fewer cases of COVID-19, but this was not implemented.

The CDC also recommends that at least five measures be implemented consistently and correctly to reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection in schools: use of mouth and nose masks, physical distancing, frequent hand washing, cleaning and disinfection of spaces, and tracking of contacts.

Public and private schools will receive $ 125 million in federal funds, through the latest economic stimulus law to manage the pandemic, to be able to open institutions safely. This money will be allocated through the Office of the Governor, announced yesterday the Washington DC resident commissioner Jenniffer González, and is in addition to the $ 1.320 million that the Department of Education will receive directly.

The vaccination process

Puerto Rico has experienced one of the longest school closures in the world. According to data from the organization Insights for Education, the most extensive closures have been reported in Latin American countries, such as El Salvador, which closed schools on March 11; Costa Rica, which closed planters on March 17; and Guatemala, which coincided with Puerto Rico in stopping face-to-face classes on March 16.

Not to mention the nurseries that have not reopened since December 2019 due to earthquakes and that their students, in some cases, did not even manage to resume face-to-face classes in temporary spaces before the pandemic was decreed.

the Department of Education already has drafts for the progressive return to classes, said on Thursday the designated secretary Elba Aponte Sants. The agency has, since the summer, a Contingency Plan that has been discussed with employees, which states that the first students to return to school would be pre-school and Special Education.

For its part, each private school establishes its own reopening plan, although following the guidelines and guidelines of the CDC and the government, highlighted the president of the Private Education Association, Wanda Ayala. Last semester, schools complied with various government requirements – such as self-certifications and their incorporation into the health surveillance system – to allow school staff to return to work on kindergartens and to allow students to be admitted at some point. as for taking standardized tests.

“We have complied with everything that has been asked of us and, unlike the Department of Education, that the schools are empty, we have all the administrators in the schools and there are teachers who are in the classrooms. of our schools are ready, I don’t have to start repairing the earthquakes, ”Ayala, director of the Southwestern Educational Society (BRAIN), told Mayagüez.

Beyond the doubts about how much students have learned with distance education, one of the biggest impacts of recent months has been on the social development of minors, said pediatrician Paulí.

“From a social, neurodevelopmental, cognitive point of view, if children don’t have the experience of socializing in school, this can affect them all their lives. Much of social learning, children’s neurodevelopment, adolescents, they develop these social skills by interacting with other children, “he said.

Studies conducted in recent months, particularly in Europe, as well as data reviews in the United States, have concluded that school-age children do not become seriously ill with COVID-19 at the same level as adults. A study published last week by the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice, conducted by professors of Economics and Epidemiology at Tulane University, concluded that reopening schools did not increase the number of hospitalizations with COVID- 19 -an indicator of severe illness- in counties with less than 44 new hospitalizations per day per 100,000 population, equivalent to 75% of the counties included in the analysis.

Yes, there is concern about the ability of minors to transmit the virus to adults, so Rodríguez Orengo has emphasized the importance of vaccinating both school staff and adults over 65, it is known that, in Puerto Rico, many grandparents are cared for by their grandchildren and assist in their care.