The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopts a list of minimum COVID safety standards that school districts will be called on to implement once classes resume.
The recommendations cover everything from mandatory face coverings to group size maximums. Children’s Hospital Chief Quality Officer Dr. Leron Finger says if schools follow these rules, he’s confident that the risk/reward balance of sending kids back to school will play out in parent’s favor.
“I strongly believe that based on the recommendations that Dr. Brumley and the team have put together that it is safe and reasonable to proceed with a return to school,” says Finger.
The recommendations also cover requirements for teachers to be provided with hygienic supplies, bus capacity, COVID symptom monitoring, and more, with recommendation’s expanding or shrinking depending on what Phase of reopening the state is in.
Parents, teachers unions, and even a board member raised concerns about whether physical classes should resume, but Ochsner Pediatrics Chair Dr. William Lennarz says current data suggests the risk is low.
“Children probably get the infection at a lower rate, probably transmit it at a lower rate, and most definitely do not get nearly as sick,” says Lennarz.
BESE has no enforcement power to make districts follow the guidelines, but State Superintendent Cade Brumley says districts that choose not to would lose liability protection against COVID civil lawsuits.
Some spoke out against the recommendations, including Tangipahoa Parish School Board Member Brett Duncan who says he supports many of the standards, but told the board “my concern about hard minimum standards is that once you set hard minimum standards you cut off our ability to be creative in our problem solving skills.”
Several school districts have already decided to delay the start of school.
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