Our View: Nothing wrong with Carroll County school board setting optimistic return date | COMMENTARY

As the Carroll County Board of Education met Wednesday night to discuss an eventual return to hybrid learning, which gives students the option of going to class in person twice a week, national COVID-19 numbers were being tabulated that showed Wednesday to be the worst thus far in terms of new cases. That mark was subsequently broken the following day and again on Friday, when Maryland experienced its worst day yet with some 30% more cases than any previous day. The United States is seeing three times as many as cases as during what we believed to be the height of the pandemic in July.

Against that backdrop, the school board voted to resume hybrid learning — which began Oct. 19 for elementary and middle school students and Nov. 12 for high school students but was shut down as community COVID-19 cases spiked — in Carroll County Public Schools on Jan. 7.

However, the vote was to return is contingent on Carroll County’s COVID-19 numbers returning to levels deemed acceptable by the Maryland State Department of Education. Essentially, MSDE guidelines call for a positivity rate at or below 5% and 15 cases or lower per 100,000 in population. Currently, those numbers are around 6% and 23 per 100,000 for Carroll.

As board members pointed out Wednesday, data seems to show that the risk of transmission in schools is low when mitigation measures are taken and a movement is gaining steam, particularly in the northeast, to get kids back in classrooms, both for educational reasons and for their mental and emotional well-being. We absolutely recognize the importance of in-person schooling and believe those who downplay the hardships and potential long-term issues students have been incurring the past nine months — mostly those with the means for top-notch technology and tutors — are being naive.

While the school board has been criticized during the pandemic, including in this space, for seemingly ignoring science, we see nothing wrong with CCPS being ready to resume in-person learning. Certainly, it’s optimistic to believe that in a few weeks this latest, unprecedented spike will be over, particularly with warnings against Christmas gatherings likely go as unheeded as warnings against Thanksgiving gatherings. But just in case the community does get the message and local numbers return to a safer range, what’s wrong with being prepared?

If the number of cases decreases, it won’t matter in most school districts. Howard County, for example, is planning to return April 14, a full 13 months after closing down. Most of Carroll’s neighboring counties haven’t set a target date and will not be able to act quickly regardless of any improvement in data.

Meanwhile, Carroll will be ready to go on Jan. 6 if the numbers are in a better place. If not, the school board will likely set a new date. Perhaps Jan. 13. Or Jan. 20. Or the beginning of the second semester, Feb. 2. And maybe those dates will have to be pushed back, too.

Of course it would be nice to have certainty. Board members realize students (and parents and teachers) are frustrated by not knowing, week to week, what’s going to happen. But one of the goals of education should be to prepare students for real life. And if we have learned nothing from 2020 it’s the importance of being able to adapt to ever-changing situations.

We’d rather see a near-term return date set, even if it has to be changed, than to essentially give up on any meaningful in-person learning during the 2020-21 school year.