COVID-19 is surging in Tarrant County. How will it affect Fort Worth's school year?

Jul. 26—Tequila Lockridge had an easy enough time keeping students spaced out in her classroom at the beginning of last year.

Only 10 of Lockridge's students came back to school in person last September, when the Fort Worth school district reopened school buildings. That's less than half the size of a normal class, she said. But as weeks went by and more kids came back, it got more difficult to keep six feet of space between students' desks, she said.

There were other challenges, too, said Lockridge, a first-grade teacher at the Leadership Academy at Mitchell Boulevard Elementary School in Fort Worth. Students' masks would break, or they'd complain about wearing them, she said. Sometimes, students would knock the plastic dividers off their desks just to cause a distraction, she said.

Fort Worth's first day of school is August 16, and Lockridge is preparing for even more challenges this year. All students will be back at school in person, meaning spacing will be more difficult. And unlike last year, Texas school districts can no longer require students or teachers to wear masks at school.

Public health officials warn that the county is in the middle of a surge of new COVID-19 cases among unvaccinated people, driven in large part by the delta variant. After the devastating academic and social effects students suffered during the last school year, most school leaders and public health officials agree that bringing all students back to school in person is critical. But with more students back at school and fewer tools available to prevent the spread of COVID-19, school officials and public health experts say it will be more challenging to keep the virus in check this year.

"We're going to see more transmission, without a doubt, in schools," said Diana Cervantes, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at UNT Health Science Center.

American Academy of Pediatrics recommends masks at school

On July 19, The American Academy of Pediatrics released updated guidance for the 2021-22 school year recommending that everyone older than 2 years old wear masks in school buildings, regardless of vaccination status. The academy continued to "strongly" recommend in-person schools, citing research saying reopening schools generally doesn't increase community transmission of the disease, as long as masking and other mitigation protocols are in place. In the guidance, the academy notes continued concerns about COVID-19 variants that could spread more easily among children.

"There are many children and others who cannot be vaccinated," said Dr. Sara Bode, chairperson elect of the academy's Council on School Health Executive Committee. "This is why it's important to use every tool in our toolkit to safeguard children from COVID-19. Universal masking is one of those tools, and has been proven effective in protecting people against other respiratory diseases, as well. It's also the most effective strategy to create consistent messages and expectations among students without the added burden of needing to monitor everyone's vaccination status."

The academy's recommendations differ from those issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends masks only for students who aren't fully vaccinated. Speaking July 20 on "CBS This Morning," Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said families should do "what is locally asked for" with regard to masking at schools. Fauci acknowledged the difference between CDC guidance and recommendations from the academy, calling the stricter mask recommendations "the extra step of caution."

Texas schools can no longer require masks

Last year, Fort Worth school officials required anyone entering school buildings to wear a mask. But they won't be able to do so for the 2021-22 school year. In May, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order barring school districts from requiring students, faculty, staff, parents or visitors to wear masks after June 4.

Michael Steinert, the Fort Worth school district's assistant superintendent of student support services, said district officials will continue to ask students to wear masks at school, even if the district can no longer require it. But Steinert acknowledged the community is deeply divided over the issue of masking.

The governor's order barring districts from imposing their own mask mandates leaves school leaders in a more complicated position going into the new school year, Steinert said. Districts are required to follow guidance issued by the Texas Education Agency and orders issued by the governor, he said. Officials pay attention to guidance from the CDC, local public health authorities and the county judge, as well, he said. But when those recommendations come into conflict, schools must abide by the governor's orders, he said.

Aside from encouraging students and staff to wear masks, Steinert said the district will keep many of its COVID-19 mitigation protocols from last year, including daily cleanings and reminding students about the importance of hand-washing and coughing into their sleeves. Schools will also space students out in classrooms as much as they can, he said.

The lack of an online learning option will make it more complicated to keep students spaced apart in classrooms, Steinert said. But despite those complications, district leaders want families to understand that they want all students back at school in person, he said. By the end of last year, about 48% of the students in the district were still in remote learning. School leaders are worried about how more than a year of virtual school affected those students from a social and emotional standpoint, he said.

Remote learning and the broader effects of the pandemic also took an academic toll on Texas students. Across the state, including in Fort Worth, students lost substantial ground both in reading and in math, according to the results of this last spring's State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR. District officials have made it a priority to help students recover the ground they lost. In-person learning is the only way for the district to help those students catch up, Steinert said.

Last year, district officials said they were prepared to shut down campuses where there were major outbreaks. That never happened in Fort Worth, although the district briefly moved all classes back online during February's winter storm. Other Tarrant County school districts moved classes back online during a spike in COVID-19 cases in November. If an outbreak happens on any campuses in the district this year, Steinert said school officials will look at the district's options. If large numbers of students or teachers are in quarantine, some classes may need to move back to remote learning for a short time, he said.

"Everybody, for better or for worse, learned how to do that last year," Steinert said.

School reopening may drive cases indirectly

Some research indicates schools haven't been the super-spreader environments that public health experts initially feared they might be. In an analysis of COVID-19 reporting data from regions across Spain released last October, researchers at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in Barcelona found "no significant effects of the reopening of schools" on infection rates. In most areas, researchers found no uptick in cases associated with school reopening. In a few areas, they noticed a slight increase "compatible with current diagnostic effort in the schools."

But in a report released in May, researchers at the University of Kentucky suggests the reopening of school buildings in Texas last fall triggered a sharp uptick both in new cases of COVID-19 and deaths from the disease. In the study, researchers acknowledged that their findings differed from other research conducted elsewhere, but noted that "the initial conditions in Texas were more ripe for community spread and schools opened more widely, more quickly, and generally, close to full capacity."

Cervantes, the UNT Health Sciences Center professor, said the biggest effects of school reopenings on Tarrant County's COVID-19 case counts were likely indirect. Districts generally did a good job of implementing protection protocols in their own buildings, Cervantes said, so transmission of the disease was never rampant in schools.

But as schools reopened last year, sports and other extracurricular activities started up again, Cervantes said, and students began hanging around with each other outside of school hours. Those settings, outside the controlled environment of school buildings, likely drove transmission of the virus more than in-person classes themselves, she said.

That trend may change in Texas during the upcoming school year, Cervantes said, when many of the tools districts used to keep students safe last year, like spacing and mask requirements, are either more difficult to implement or off limits entirely. Schools will need to rely on good ventilation and try to make the case to parents that their children still need to wear masks at school, she said. But she doesn't think those will be enough to keep the virus at bay.

That's a problem, not only for schools, but for the larger community, Cervantes said. While children are less likely to get severely ill or die from the disease, it isn't impossible for them to do so, she said. And even those who contract the disease but only experience mild symptoms, or even no symptoms at all, can still spread the virus to adults in their households, she said.

"Kids don't live in their own separate worlds," Cervantes said. "They live with adults."

Return to school is crucial, Fort Worth teacher says

Six weeks after the district reopened school buildings last year, Lockridge, the Mitchell Boulevard teacher, welcomed her second group of students back to school.

She quickly noticed how far those students had fallen behind the ones who'd come back to school just a few weeks before. Once those students were back, she was able to help them catch up, she said. But she worries about the students who were in remote learning all of last year.

Lockridge said she understands there are risks associated with bringing every student back to school in person. But remote learning was hard on many of her students last year, she said. Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tended to struggle most during remote learning, she said. Often, they didn't have an adult at home who could help them get connected to Google Classroom or turn in assignments, she said. Many of them didn't have a quiet place where they could do schoolwork without distractions, she said.

Lockridge worries about the long-term academic effects of the pandemic. If students come back to school in the fall and can't write their names by the middle of first grade, it could affect them for years, she said. The only way to help students recover is to get them back to school and mitigate the risks as much as possible, she said.

"I know there's a risk. I know the risk is high and it's dangerous," Lockridge said. "But those academic gaps — I mean, they will bring tears to your eyes."

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