After awkward start, Peninsula district and health officials find a way to keep kids in school

After an awkward fumble over timing, the Peninsula School District and county health officials agreed this week to cooperate on a pilot program that may allow some students to return to school, in spite of the recent surge in coronavirus cases — including one at Peninsula High School.

Details of the program are still being worked out, but PSD Superintendent Art Jarvis said it will allow the Gig Harbor district to continue in-person learning for Kindergarten and first-graders who are already in school, and to call back second-graders in another week.

Three other small districts — Eatonville, White River and Carbonado — are expected to participate in the “rapid testing” pilot program, which is being financed by a $7.8 million CARES Act grant.

The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department confirmed the still-nebulous program hastily on Oct. 29, a day after Peninsula School District announced it would partner with the health department to continue in-person learning

The health department seemed caught off guard by the Peninsula announcement and later issued a “clarification.”

“While we are exploring a pilot program for rapid COVID-19 testing for K-3 grade students in rural districts, we are in the planning stages and have not finalized these arrangements,” the unsigned statement said. “The details of any partnership haven’t been fully developed.”

Jarvis issued an apologetic statement later the same day, saying he was simply anxious to “quickly inform parents and staff” of the new development.

“Obviously our statement caught the TPCHD off guard at the very time our intent was to express our deepest appreciation to our health department for opening the door to this possibility,” Jarvis wrote.

Delay for grade 2

Jarvis said the pilot testing program would allow the district to continue with in-person learning for kindergartners and first graders, who have already been back in school for a month. It would also permit the district to continue plans to bring back second graders, although that would now be delayed a week, until Nov. 12.

“This is excellent news, as evidence shows our children are thriving safely in the in-person setting,” Jarvis said. “By partnering in this pilot, TPCHD is supportive of our continuation of in-person learning while we work out the details of the program.”

The news came on the same day that Pierce County announced 107 new COVID-19 cases. With a six-day data lag required in the state’s Safe Start measurements, the county’s case rate per 100,000 is 114, well above the “high” range.

Case at Peninsula High

Up to now, the district has recorded no COVID-19 cases among students or staff, Jarvis told the school board last week. But on Friday, the district acknowledged a single positive case at Peninsula High School.

“Yes, we have a positive case at PHS,” said Aimee Gordon, the district’s communications director. “I don’t have any more information other than the people who were close contacts of the COVID-19 positive individual have been notified and are following the health department quarantine guidelines”

Because of privacy regulations, she said, she was unable to say whether the infected person was a student or a staff member. While most high school students are still studying online, a small number of special-needs students have returned to the building in small groups.

No early indicators of change

The contretemps over the early announcement of a program that, officially, didn’t exist yet ruffled feathers on both sides.

At first, the health department seemed to be implying it had never heard of the program Jarvis was citing.

Earlier Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Chen, director of TPCHD, sat for an interview with The News Tribune, during which he discussed plans for schools. Chen gave no indication in the interview that any change in course regarding the district’s plans was on the immediate horizon.

However, Gordon said the pilot program was the health department’s idea and Chen was fully informed about it.

“We’re surprised that they’re surprised,” Gordon said, because Jarvis and Chen had hashed it all out over the previous weekend.

“They approached us with the idea last weekend,” she said in an email. “We’ve been hopeful, waiting to learn more details the past few days. We have also been in discussion with Bruce Dammeier. He’s been a huge supporter of our partnership.”

Dammeier is county executive and sits on the Board of Health.

“We obviously had a misunderstanding about the communication sequence,” Jarvis later wrote to parents. “That was our clear error. My deep apologies go to Dr. Chen along with our thanks for his efforts on our behalf. I look forward to our continued partnership with TPCHD.”

The TPCHD “clarification” used careful wording to put the onus for the decision on the Peninsula School District.

“We are glad Peninsula School District Superintendent Jarvis is exerting his authority to determine a path forward for in-person learning for the district’s K-3 grade students,” the statement read. “However, his announcement this afternoon concerning the COVID-19 rapid testing pilot surprised us.

“While school districts determine how to implement health department recommendations concerning in-person learning, we have not yet finalized plans for this testing pilot.”

The back-and-forth about authority had fine-print significance. Both the school district and the health department are anxious to avoid liability issues should one or the other proceed without clear authority.

A ‘task force’ for callback

The rolling callback of Peninsula students would be supervised by a yet-to-be-formed task force, Jarvis said.

“I have just now assigned district senior leadership the task of exploring this opportunity by leading an inclusive task force,” Jarvis said. “This group will include a variety of stakeholders, including staff and community members. Together, the task force will look at the pilot program and determine how it can work in our district.

“While we are exploring this opportunity, we will continue providing our dual in-person/remote learning platform for kindergarten and 1st grade students as we have been doing since Sept. 28, and will continue moving forward with bringing back 2nd grade students for in-person learning one week later than planned.”

Second-grade children whose parents elected in-person learning would return on Nov. 12., Jarvis said. Special-education students, students with disabilities and others in various grades who have been attending in small groups would continue to do so, he said.

“I understand the last few days have been challenging, and I appreciate your understanding as we work to find solutions that allow for staff and students to come together for in-person learning,” Jarvis said. “As soon as we have more details about this program, we will let you know.”

Angry parents

Both the school board and the health department have been under intense pressure from angry parents who want their children back in school, even as others choose online learning.

Just last week, Jarvis had to tell the Peninsula School Board that, because of a countywide spike in coronavirus numbers, the district would be forced by the health department to return to full remote learning on Nov. 2.

“We are looking at a 3-to-5 week period, possibly longer,” he said then.

The school board took the news hard, and several members berated Chen personally.

“I’m more than disheartened, I am maddened,” said Deborah Krishnadasan, the school board president. “I’m ticked off. Our area has done so well. To pull our kids out of school now is going to do more harm than good.”

Jarvis has been arguing for months that the Gig Harbor and Key peninsulas, which have have had relatively low COVID-19 rates, should be considered separately from the rest of the county, but said he had not been able to persuade Dr. Chen. The 14-day case average for Gig Harbor and Key Peninsula has hovered between 30 and 40, well within the county’s “moderate” range.

“TPCHD has local control over the county as a whole and will not make exceptions for specific areas within the county,” Jarvis told parents in an email Oct. 16.

Hybrid model for some grades

The district had been planning on staging the remaining elementary grades back to in-person schooling at two-week intervals, beginning the first week of November.

A hybrid model — remote learning for some and in-person school for others, perhaps by shifts — will be necessary for higher grades, Jarvis told the school board, because with smaller classes and social distancing, by the time 2nd-graders are returned, “we will be running out of both space and teachers.”

Exactly what the “rapid testing” program will look like is still unclear, but presumably it would include onsite testing using kits, already used in industry, that can give results in hours or minutes.

Planning for the testing program “is in its early stages but will move swiftly,” said Nigel Turner, Director of the Communicable Disease Division in a news release last week. “We are engaging with school districts to come up with the right mix of testing and leverage resources brought into Pierce County from Department of Health and the Gates Foundation.”

The three other school districts expected to participate in the “rapid testing” program are in rural areas which, like the Peninsula, have not had the kind of COVID-19 numbers that have put the rest of the county in lockdown.

Eatonville serves around 2,000 students, White River, which serves the area around Buckley, has 4,000 students and tiny Carbonado has only 200 students.

“Rural areas can face greater challenges in accessing testing but are well suited for this pilot. We can apply what we learn in larger urban environments,”Dr. Chen said in a news release Oct. 29. “Putting rural communities first is an equity-informed approach.”

Latest information on school re-opening is on the Peninsula School District website, www.pds401.net

Debbie Cockrell and Allison Needles of The News Tribune contributed to this story.

This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 5:30 AM.