Why one Boston parent is planning to keep her kids fully remote as schools reopen
“The risks are still there.”
Suleika Soto’s mind was made up even before Boston was moved into the red, “high risk” category by the state for its rate of COVID-19 infection.
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She’d planned to keep her two daughters, who are in fourth and seventh grade in Boston Public Schools, home for fully remote learning, concerned that district buildings were unsafe for in-person instruction.
The news that coronavirus cases have crept up in the city only reinforced her concerns.
“Obviously, the higher the infection rate, the more the chance is that the kids are gonna get it and then that would disrupt learning altogether,” she told Boston.com.
Soto said she wants her kids to return to in-person learning but remains worried that conditions in district buildings make it risky to do so. She pointed to a report released by the Boston Teachers Union at the end of September that flagged “extensive” safety issues during walkthroughs of six district buildings. According to the union, the concerns observed included issues with “ventilation and filtration, indoor air quality inspection data, and cleaning protocols.”
Following the report, the district said in a statement it would continue working with the union to “ensure a strong launch to in-person learning for high needs students.”
“The health, safety, and wellbeing of our students and staff remain our top priority,” the statement read. “We have been working all summer to prepare our buildings for the return of teachers, staff, and students. In partnership with the Mayor and the City of Boston and with our talented and committed staff, we have accelerated the cleaning of our buildings, ensured supplies are in schools, and implemented new safety protocols.”
The school year for Boston kicked off with all students beginning with remote learning on Sept. 21; high needs students started a hybrid model of instruction on Oct. 1. The district is following a four-phased approach to bringing students back to part-time, in-person learning through the fall.
Gov. Charlie Baker has urged districts not to immediately switch back to fully remote learning should their community be labeled as high risk by the state, pressing instead that schools make the decision based on four weeks of data. According to the Boston Public Health Commission, the city-wide COVID-19 positive test rate is at 3.9 percent, just under the 4 percent threshold for guiding reopening, which officials have said would trigger a closure of schools.
Soto said when it comes down to it, she just feels she hasn’t been given information from the district that makes her comfortable sending her kids back. If there was better communication — especially for what the plan is should infections be confirmed in students — she said she might feel differently.
“I’m just not confident that we’re all there,” she said.
Soto has been raising her concerns about the start of the school year and what she says is a lack of safe spaces for in-person instruction as a parent organizer with the Boston Education Justice Alliance, which is part of the coalition Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance. The district has partnered with after-school providers to offer emergency learning centers for students to engage with remote learning in a supervised, quiet, internet-connected place, but Soto and advocates say the number of spaces remains short of the need.
The only benefit Soto said she sees with keeping her kids remote is the less risk of being exposed to the virus and, also, hopefully contributing to keeping the rate of the virus lower in the broader community.
She said she’s sure the school reopenings will affect the entire city.
A lot of kids in Boston, she pointed out, including her older daughter, usually take the MBTA to get to school from their own neighborhoods. They’ll be on the trains and buses with the rest of the community headed to their own jobs and appointments.
“It affects the broader community in general,” she said. “There are kids here in Boston that go to school in East Boston, so they may have to travel on the Blue Line, they have to switch from the Red Line or the Orange Line. So they’re going to be going all across all different neighborhoods in Boston.”
Already, she said she’s very cautious — the family still tries as much as possible to only go out for essentials.
The mother of two emphasized that keeping her daughters remote is not an easy decision. She said she shares the worries of parents who are raising concerns about the impact of remote learning on the social-emotional learning and development of young students.
And as a single mother, getting back to work is also extremely important for her household. She’s been home for the start of remote learning with a workplace injury for the time being.
“If there were more safe spaces where the kids could go, I would really, really prefer for it to be in-person,” Soto said. “It’s easier for the kids — they miss socializing and they miss being with their friends. It would be easier for me because of the child care situation. I’m now forced to decide between work and staying at home with my kids.”
Her younger daughter is also a special needs student with an IEP, or Individualized Education Program.
“It’s a tough decision that I have to make,” Soto said of the choice to stay remote.
Communities and neighborhoods may have boundaries, the Boston mom said, but the virus doesn’t follow them she said.
“The risks are still there,” she said.
She’s concerned that even if she were to send her kids for part-time, in-person learning with the hybrid model, confirmed cases in the district could send them back home to remote learning, which would cause added complications for her employment.
“If I do start to go fully back into work — I may have to delay that again,” she said. “It’s just a lot of things that can go bad if the kids do return to schools at the BPS buildings.”
Staying remote, as difficult of a decision as it is, allows some planning, and Soto is hoping to figure out options for working from home.
If more safe spaces — buildings with newer ventilation systems than district buildings — were to be established in the community for her kids to go for in-person instruction, she would reconsider. Since May, the district has replaced all air filters in schools and is testing indoor air quality in every school building. Air filters in eligible HVAC systems will be upgraded to MERV-13 filters this fall.
Soto’s worries about the safety of indoor spaces without good ventilation were heightened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updating its guidance on how the coronavirus spreads to state that people can be infected by airborne transmission of the virus.
“There is evidence that under certain conditions, people with COVID-19 seem to have infected others who were more than six feet away,” the updated CDC website states. “These transmissions occurred within enclosed spaces that had inadequate ventilation.”
“Let’s stick to remote until there’s a safer way to get the kids into schools,” Soto said.
That’s what she’s been pushing for with the Boston Education Justice Alliance.
The official stance of the group, according its director Ruby Reyes, is that learning in Boston should remain remote except for those families and students who are in need of in-person services. Those families and students, she told Boston.com, are already being left behind.
“The state has recommended that in-person services can happen in homes, in communities, or in schools, so just making sure that our special ed students that need those in-person services or high needs students or students that haven’t been able to do well with remote only, that those young people are prioritized and found safe spaces to have school in, which isn’t happening,” Reyes said of the situation in Boston.
Reyes emphasized that just as each district across the state faces its own set of circumstances, including the rate of virus infection in the community and the resources available to schools for instituting safe learning environments, Boston itself has schools with differing conditions. And the trust parents, teachers, and community members have in the messaging from school leaders also varies depending on where you are.
There are schools within the Boston district, she pointed out, with large endowments and a foundation for fundraising, but there are also those without those resources. Parents with students enrolled where those resources are available are likely to have more confidence in the school’s ability to prepare for a safe return.
“The capacity for families to do this kind of fundraising in their school is just so different across the board,” she said. “So the affluent schools, yeah, they’re going to be totally fine with sending their kids back, because they’re going to know that their principal has already taken care of all these things. And if they haven’t then they’ll figure it out, they’ll make a call to one of their colleagues somewhere to make sure that an order gets in on time. There are just so many different factors that create those equity gaps.”
Soto said she wants to see better communication from the district about what would happen should cases emerge with the reopenings. As it is, she said she doesn’t feel district leaders have listened to parent, teacher, and community concerns, evident as recently as the School Site Council Meeting, which she attended.
“It is a wrong move to start in-person learning despite the opposition and concerns of so many,” she said.
Soto acknowledged that different setups work differently for different families and she’s not seeking to take away options from anyone.
“You’ve got to understand that there are a lot of essential workers who have kids in the Boston Public Schools that have to go to work in order to keep things going,” she said of the debate of school reopenings. “So you also have to put yourself in their shoes. I think there needs to be a conversation with other parents, have a conversation with the teachers, with the schools, and then we’ve all got to try to come together as we’re dealing with this at the same time and still figure it out. Come together with your community to try and find out what we can do to try and make the right changes.”
Previous coverage: A parent shares why she’s pushing for a return to full-time, in-person learning.
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