Tweaks to state COVID-19 guidelines not enough for Bend-La Pine, Redmond superintendents

The superintendents of Bend-La Pine and Redmond school districts weren’t happy the Oregon Department of Education didn’t reduce social distancing from 6 feet to 3 feet. That means most students in those districts will be stuck in part-time, hybrid learning rather than a full five-day in-person schedule, they said.

Bend-La Pine Superintendent Lora Nordquist said the social-distancing change is important, because less space between students would allow schools to welcome back all students at the same time.

At the moment, many local schools don’t have the space to accommodate the small class sizes that 6 feet of social distancing requires.

“I was definitely let down,” Nordquist said. “For us, it was really critical that we get the 6 feet changed to 3 feet in order to get our kids all in.”

Removing cohort limitations will provide more options, said Charan Cline, Redmond superintendent, “but it’s about how many students can we fit into a classroom, and that’s completely governed by the distance between the students.”

In Bend-La Pine, grades 4-12 attend in-person school two days a week, with three days of learning from home, Nordquist said.

Redmond’s middle schoolers have the same two-day-a-week schedule as Bend-La Pine. High school students are on campus for four half-days a week — they’re in class in the morning, and home for the afternoon, or vice versa, Cline said.

Redmond fourth and fifth graders are in-person five days a week. But they’re only with teachers part time and spend half their day working on assignments in a separate room with staff supervision, to allow for smaller class sizes, Cline said.

Both Cline and Nordquist told The Bulletin Tuesday that many experts have recommended shrinking the social distancing standard of 6 feet — currently recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — to 3 feet.

A March study published in the Clinical Infectious Diseases medical journal, in which more than 530,000 Massachusetts students were studied, found that COVID-19 case rates were similar for schools with 6 feet and 3 feet of distance. The World Health Organization recommends separating students by one meter, or about 3.3 feet.

The CDC is looking into reducing its 6-feet guidance to 3 feet, according to NPR.

Marc Siegel, spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Education, told The Bulletin that the state didn’t budge on 6 feet because more research into the issue was needed. Furthermore, the state looks to the CDC for guidance on the matter, he wrote in an email Tuesday.

Nordquist said she’s confident that the state and the feds will shift the social distancing guidance from 6 to 3 feet. But she’s worried that change won’t happen until the school year is almost over.

“It will be very disappointing to me if our students have to go on a hybrid model for the next three months, and then guidance changes June 1,” Nordquist said. “Every day our students aren’t in class every day, they’re losing.”

For Redmond, the concern isn’t a lack of space, but not enough teachers to lead smaller-sized classes, Cline said.

“It’s more teachers that I need per kid, more bodies per student,” he said.

Still, both Cline and Nordquist said the removal of the 100-student cohort rule will allow for more flexibility in their schools.

“There are early conversations about, can we find some more in-class, extended learning time for kids, based on the cohort learning schedule?” Nordquist said. “It is a piece of good news, it just doesn’t fundamentally change the hybrid schedule.”