As though our times can’t get any stranger but here in South Carolina, if you have kids in elementary, middle or high school, they are more likely to be masked if they attend a private school rather than a public school. Sound crazy? It is!
Last year with all the Covid craziness with education, private schools across the nation saw an increase in students as parents looked for other options outside of the virtual learning and heavy mask mandates that so many public schools were using.
In South Carolina, the legislature wrote in to the budget bill that became law a specific order that public schools could not issue mask mandates for their students for the coming year. (Note: this might change with next year’s budget). There has been plenty of push back against that as well as court challenges. The courts ruled against the law as it pertained to state colleges…they can require mask mandates. But somehow public schools still could not require masks. The City of Columbia went ahead with their own indoor mask mandate including schools and day care centers. Well the South Carolina Supreme Court just struck down Columbia’s mask mandate. The vote was 5-0. If I’m reading this correctly, it strikes down any school official or school board thinking they can institute a mask mandate this year. With this news, I do expect a big move or schools to go to virtual. How long will they go that route? Hard to know.
I’m not going to call out the specific private schools that are requiring masks but if you’re considering a private school and the mask issue is an important one for you, make sure you do your homework.
This sounds serious folks. The Greenville County Schools Board of Trustees are holding a meeting tomorrow morning at 9am to discuss the upcoming school year.
Given the incredible rise in positive coronavirus cases in the past 6-7 weeks here in South Carolina, I’ve been of the opinion that they will not be going back to school this year and that everything will be virtual. Just today, South Carolina DHEC announced that we had 1,532 new Covid-19 cases and 13 new deaths…205 are on ventilators. We’ll see what the Trustees have to say after tomorrow’s meeting.
Note, I’d like to see the students go back to face to face education. We’ve seen the sharp spike in Covid cases but not a corresponding rise in deaths fortunately. Perhaps we’ve nearly achieved herd immunity? Maybe the virus is weaking? I don’t know but just following the data, I personally don’t have big concerns at this time.
Greenville County Schools has done a nice job of communicating and surveying parents as to the level of interest and comfort with coming back to school in the fall of 2020. The past 3-4 weeks has made the decision about schools even more complicated, however.
If one thought it might be difficult to open the schools for 5 days of in classroom instruction given the requirements for social distancing, sanitation and general rule following prior to the recent surge in coronavirus cases, can you imagine the odds now given South Carolina and Greenville County are considered “hot spots?”
Greenville County Schools tweeted this message below out yesterday. They are going to do a Facebook Live on Thursday at 2pm to discuss the upcoming school year. Local news station, WYFF, ran a story about how time is running out to make a decision on opening the schools.
Based upon a Greenville County Schools employee survey they just conducted, a significant majority have concerns about coming back to school.
If you recall at the end of June, Greenville County Schools Athletics called off all summer training / practices that were going on. They’ve been called off until at least July 20th. If we are going to have a high school football season, normal practice is slated to start at the end of July. We’ll have to see what happens with that.
Here’s the latest positives cases of coronavirus in the state of South Carolina. You can see we’ve had a big run over the past 4-5 weeks.
Most parents I’ve spoken with want their kids to go back to school 5 days per week. The virtual Zoom learning generally did not work out so well. It’s estimated that the South Carolina public school system lost track of nearly 16,000 students. If we do this another year like this, we are doing our children a massive disservice.