Fairbanks, Alaska to open schools in the face of deadly COVID-19 pandemic
https://socialistaction.org/2021/01/15/fairbanks-alaska-to-open-schools-in-the-face-of-deadly-covid-19-pandemic/
January 15, 2021
By Samela Jones
The Fairbanks North Star Borough School District (FNSBSD) has decided
to begin in-person classes beginning on January19, 2021. This decision
is opposed by all of the unions representing school teachers, school
support workers and principals.
The school district claims that the return to school is “optional.”
However, peer pressure of students to return to school to socialize,
pressure on parents to allow students to return to school so that
parents may work additional hours, and other factors will accelerate the
return of many elementary and, then, middle and high school students to
return to dangerous classrooms.
Fairbanks public schools are in a red-zone of high community
transmission of COVID-19.
Unions oppose re-opening
The Fairbanks Education Association, the Fairbanks Principals
Association and the Education Support Staff Association agree, as stated
in a recent joint press release that, “All students in the FNSBSD should
remain in remote learning status while the district is in the high risk
zone for COVID-19 transmission.” According to the Fairbanks Daily-Miner
newspaper3, the risk management program for the school district is the
same as the plan established by the state of Alaska. Moreover, the
current COVID-19 infection rate in the Fairbanks North Star Borough is
six-time greater than the threshold required to cease in person instruction.
Nothing has been done in the schools to address ventilation of
classrooms in NSBSD schools. Additionally the new School Board policy
does not require social distancing. Eighteen teachers and support staff
have resigned from FNSBSD schools, all citing COVID 19 as their reasons.
The district employs 1500 public education workers in 35 schools. This
includes teachers, support staff and administrators.
Trump slate wins school board election
The campaign to have a board of education vote to reopen schools
intensified after the October 6, 2020 Fairbanks North Star Borough
municipal elections, where a slate of conservative Tea Party-style,
Trump supporters ran for school board and won. They took up the mantle
of “reopening.”
State of Alaska protocols violated
In early summer of 2020, the State of Alaska released its 2020 Safe
Start protocols for school districts to use as a framework for schools
to use as guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fairbanks is a high
risk, red-level district, based on its 14-day and 7-day average COVID
case counts (35.1 and 80.4 cases, respectively). The 2020 Alaska Smart
Start framework suggests that schools located in communities with high
level of community transmission of coronavirus:
Establish and maintain communication with local and state authorities to
determine current mitigation levels in your community.
• Implement multiple social distancing strategies with EXTENDED SCHOOL
DISMISSALS, closing school buildings to students.
• Cancel all field trips, inter-group events, sports events and
extracurricular activities. • Implement distance learning until minimal
community spread and local health officials recommend school re-opening.
• District may decide that even in a high risk environment, select
vulnerable students may need in-person education in very small cohorted
groups.
• Follow guidelines from local and state health authorities on school
reopening5.
CDC guidelines
Additionally, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) has provided its own set of guidelines for best practices for
public schools during the pandemic. Again, remembering that Fairbanks is
a high community transmission area, the CDC guidelines state:
If local health officials have determined there is substantial
transmission of COVID-19 within the community, they will provide
guidance to administrators on the best course of action for child care
programs or schools. These strategies are expected to extend across
multiple programs, schools, or school districts within the community.
You may need to consider extended school dismissals (e.g. dismissals for
longer than 2 weeks). This longer-term, and likely broader-reaching,
dismissal strategy is intended to slow transmission rates of COVID-19 in
the community. During extended school dismissals, also cancel
extracurricular group activities, school-based afterschool programs, and
large events (e.g., assemblies, spirit nights, field trips, and sporting
events). Remember to implement strategies to ensure the continuity of
education (e.g., distance learning) as well as meal programs and other
essential services for students.
The FNSBSD has also allowed sporting events to occur during the fall
sports season and is continuing into the winter season, according to
Erin Poland, executive assistant to the FNSBSD superintendent, Dr. Karen
Gaborik. This flies in the face of the guidelines of Alaska’s Smart
Start 2020 plan and the United States’ CDC for schools operating in the
red zone of high community transmission of COVID. Even the University of
Alaska, Fairbanks has stopped its winter basketball season because of
COVID-19.
Reckless COVID-19 policies
The actions of the FNSB school board are in line with the reckless
policy of the other school district in Fairbanks, the Yukon-Koyukuk
School District (YKSD). This smaller district operates nine schools in
the Unincorporated Borough of the state along with a correspondence
school with offices statewide. Since September, no fewer than four
teachers and their families have been infected with COVID-19 in YKSD
schools and teacher housing. YKSD did not adopt the Smart Start 2020
State of Alaska guidelines nor did it comply with the CDC guidelines.
Instead, when there is a COVID case in its school or in the district
office in Fairbanks, the district closes the facility for two weeks and
simply reopens, irrespective of the level of COVID-19 presence in the
school or in the village or city where the schools are located. The
district has no posted COVID-19 mitigation plan on its website,
www.yksd.com. As in the case of FNSBSD, YKSD is practicing herd
immunity, allowing teachers and students to repeatedly become infected.
All of its nine schools have been closed at least once during the first
four months of the school year, and some have been closed for COVID
infections on three occasions!
Infection rates among highest in nation
Alaska’s COVID-19 infection rate is one of the highest in the nation.
Infection rates in Native Alaskan villages continue to rise, with
village schools serving as hubs for large scale COVID-19 infections,
such as in the Alaskan Native Villages of Arctic Village, Chevak, and in
the Lower Kuskokwim region.
COVID-19 infections are lifelong. It is irresponsible to open schools
when there is widespread community transmission of the novel coronavirus
in Alaska. Teachers, students and parents in FNSBSD and in the YKSD
schools must push back and defend the lives of themselves and their
families and communities and villages. If this is not done, more
teachers, students and family members will become infected with
COVID-19, and that is an outcome we must oppose.
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George H. Smith “It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain,
emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how
comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on
the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands,
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