Schools required to offer both in-person and online learning to all students by April
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has announced he’ll issue an emergency proclamation early next week requiring K-12 schools to offer both in-person and remote instruction to all students starting in April.
The announcement comes almost exactly one year after Inslee ordered all schools to close temporarily in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. That closure was later extended.
“After one year of closure of our schools, the time has come for every child in the state of Washington to have access to on-site instruction,” Inslee said at a virtual news conference Friday. “And we are now taking action to make sure that every child has that option available to them across the state of Washington.”
The governor will declare an emergency regarding mental health in youth and children, a spokesperson for his office confirmed.
Under the governor’s proclamation, schools will have to provide all students in grades K-6 opportunities for in-person and remote learning options by April 5. The deadline to offer the same to all other K-12 students is April 19.
By April 19, districts need to offer a minimum of 30 percent of their pre-pandemic average weekly instructional hours via on-campus, in-person instruction for all students. A student cannot be offered fewer than two days of in-person instruction per week, according to the governor’s office, though those can be “partial days.”
For many schools, Inslee said, this will mean a hybrid model that separates students into groups that receive both remote instruction and time in the classroom.
Districts will be have to work toward exceeding that 30-percent minimum, and to hit the school’s “maximum capacity and maximum frequency” for in-person instruction, while still following health and safety recommendations, as soon as they can.
In-person instruction will be required to comply with guidance from the state departments of Health and Labor & Industries.
Inslee has been touring schools across the state, praising successful reopenings and hard work by educators, and urging other districts to follow suit. The state Department of Health has published guidance and recommendations for reopening, but decisions largely have been made locally.
Republicans in the state Legislature proposed their own plan for reopening the state earlier this month that included requiring schools to reopen and increasing capacity at businesses to 50 percent while moving to a county-by-county model for opening — three moves Inslee has since announced.
The governor had previously said he did not believe he had the constitutional authority to order schools to reopen. While Republicans in the state Legislature had called on Inslee to do just that, this week Senate Minority Leader John Braun of Centralia said he similarly concluded Inslee doesn’t have the legal authority.
Nothing about the law has changed, Inslee said, but the conditions have changed. New information about the extent of the mental health crisis allowed him to use existing authority. He said the proclamation is legally binding.
While returning to school in-person won’t solve mental health challenges for students who’ve struggled over the last year, it will help some students, the governor’s office reasons.
“What we see in the education system is the effects of isolation and the trauma of what’s happened for a lot of our students,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal said.
Every grade level is seeing impacts to attendance — especially middle school and high school students, according to Reykdal. The rate of high school students receiving an F, incomplete, or no-credit grade in at least one class has jumped from 17 to 25 percent, he said.
Dr. Nwando Anyaoku, pediatrician and chief health equity officer at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, said at the press conference that doctors there have seen an “extraordinary increase” in emergency department and inpatient admissions due to behavioral health issues. In the first two months of 2021, they’re up 25 percent over last year. And those are just the children who’ve arrived at the hospital, she said.
“This mental health crisis is a real and present danger to a whole generation,” Anyaoku said.
The proclamation also will direct the state Department of Health and Health Care Authority to start working on recommendations for how to support behavioral health needs of children and youth in the next year.
The governor’s office estimates schools in Washington state will have received $2.6 billion in federal pandemic relief after the American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law this week. Inslee plans to encourage the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to use some of the cash for mental health aid for students, according to his office.
There have been three rounds of federal aid. The first round, about $200 million for districts, has virtually all been used by districts, Reykdal said.
Funding from the second round hinges on districts updating and submitting reopening plans. Reykdal said 271 districts’ plans met expectations, but about 35 districts, including Seattle Public Schools, won’t be eligible for funding this month.
The third, most recent round of federal funding hasn’t yet been appropriated.
More than half of schools in the state already have returned to on-site education, Inslee said, but hundreds of thousands of students don’t have that opportunity. Reykdal said about half of elementary school students, 40 percent of middle school students, and 30 percent of high school students are accessing some in-person instruction.
Recently, the governor seemed to be losing patience with delays.
“If I had a nickel for every excuse I have heard for not giving our children on-site instruction, I would be a millionaire at this point,” Inslee said at a recent press conference. “These excuses are getting just a little bit tiresome, frankly.”
He had resisted calls to bump up educators in vaccine distribution, until President Joe Biden issued a directive that required states to do so. Educators and child-care workers became eligible for vaccinations March 2.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown on Friday issued an executive order requiring public schools to offer hybrid or full in-person learning to young students by the week of March 29, and to grades 6-12 by the week of April 19. She had announced those impending directions last week.
This story was originally published March 12, 2021 at 11:37 AM.
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