DETROIT—When public schools here opened for summer instruction, protesters blocked school buses and challenged the opening in a lawsuit. In-person learning was too risky, they said, amid the pandemic.
On July 21, a judge ordered the school district to test all in-person students for Covid-19. Only three students—less than 1% of those attending in-person classes—have tested positive, according to school authorities and the Detroit Health Department.
Detroit’s foray into in-person summer school offers a glimpse of what students and parents may face when more schools reopen in the fall as the pandemic continues.
On a recent Monday morning, Janet Glenn, summer school director at Detroit’s Munger Elementary-Middle School, stood outside the front doors as students in masks lined up 6 feet apart from each other. They waited patiently outside the building for their turn at the thermometer, siblings sometimes standing on the same black line taped on the cement to enforce social distancing.
‘I feel safe,’ said Janet Glenn, summer school director at Detroit’s Munger Elementary-Middle School.
On the table next to the thermometer—which could read temperatures from a student’s wrist—sat hand sanitizer and a bowl of extra masks for students who had forgotten their own.
Class sizes are kept small and rooms are cleaned by custodial staff every afternoon. Students eat breakfast and lunch in their classrooms to maintain social distancing. One first-grade teacher at a different Detroit school said she taped Xs on the desks students shouldn’t sit in and assigned students computers so they don’t need to share.
“It’s been great,” said Ms. Glenn, who is the elementary school assistant principal at Munger during the school year. “I even have an underlying health condition so I’m making sure I’m masked up when I go around to the classes, when I go around to the students and the teachers to make sure everything’s OK. I feel safe.”
Johnny Cooke Jr. entered Munger Elementary-Middle School in Detroit after having his temperature checked on July 27.
Detroit closed its schools, which serve about 51,000 children, in March, as the number of Covid-19 cases in the city grew. Along with school districts across the country, the Detroit Public Schools Community District pivoted to online learning, also distributing lesson packets to students who couldn’t access virtual classes.
After surveying parents, DPSCD decided to offer both in-person and virtual programs for optional summer school. High-school students can use the four-week term to make up graduation credits, while younger students take enrichment lessons. About 2,000 parents indicated interest in each summer school option, according to DPSCD Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, but about 620 students attended face-to-face classes at the program’s peak. He said numbers have since dropped to about 500.
With parental permission, over 400 students in Detroit have been given a rapid nasal swab test since July 23, a spokeswoman at DPSCD said. Students weren’t allowed to return to in-person school after July 23 until they had been tested. The around 100 students who didn’t get tested were transferred to online school, the spokeswoman said.
The empty playground at Munger Elementary-Middle School in Detroit on July 27.
Three students who tested positive for Covid-19 went to different schools and were from different neighborhoods. Mr. Vitti said the results show that students haven’t been passing the virus to each other in their classrooms.
“If we would have seen numbers above 3 [percent] or we would’ve seen concentration of students testing positive then one would argue, and legitimately, that they were infecting each other because of summer school participation,” Mr. Vitti said. “But obviously the numbers don’t indicate that.”
Michigan’s Safe Schools plan allows for in-person classes right now, as long as local safety precautions are followed, and doesn’t require all students to be tested for Covid-19.
The judge’s ruling to mandate testing in Detroit schools came after civil rights attorney Shanta Driver, national chairwoman of the activist group By Any Means Necessary, filed a lawsuit to end DPSCD’s in-person classes.
Since the first day of summer school, protesters have blocked school buses and demonstrated against the face-to-face instruction.
It is an issue of both safety and race, said Kate Stenvig, a Detroit-based national organizer for BAMN. Ms. Stenvig and other protesters feel that sending children in the 78% Black city back to school while the pandemic continues to claim lives puts them at an unfair risk.
“We’re not allowing Detroit to be another Tuskegee Experiment,” Ms. Stenvig said, referring to the 40-year study of untreated syphilis in Black men told they were receiving health care from the U.S. government. “This is a racist attack on our children.”
The majority of suburban, largely white school districts near the city are online this summer, underscoring the differences socioeconomic class and access to computers and the internet can play in education during a pandemic.
Mr. Vitti denied that Detroit schools are pushing the in-person option. He said the district decided to give parents a choice by offering both in-person and virtual summer classes.
More on Education During the Pandemic
- Reopening Schools Try to Decide When They Should Close Again Due to Coronavirus Cases (July 30)
- CDC Issues Coronavirus Guidelines for Reopening Schools (July 24)
- How Online School Will Be Better This Fall—but Still a Burden on Parents (July 21)
- ‘Are They Setting My Children Up for Failure?’ Remote Learning Widens Education Gap. (July 15)
- The Results Are In for Remote Learning: It Didn’t Work (June 5)
“Really the truth is what we’re pushing for is empowering parents with either option,” he said.
DPSCD plans to let parents choose in-person or virtual instruction for their children in the fall, too.
The district pledged in April to get every student a laptop through the Connected Futures initiative, funded by local corporations including Quicken Loans and the Skillman Foundation. Households will also get free internet for six months, though they will need to pay for connectivity after that.
He said the mandate that Detroit’s in-person students get tested for Covid-19 is just one more hurdle for families, and the district hasn’t decided yet if they will test all students attending fall classes.
Siblings Sonya Hill and Santana Hill waiting in line to get their temperatures checked before entering Munger Elementary-Middle School on July 27.
Mr. Vitti, who plans to send his own children to in-person class in the fall, said he worries whether it is fair to put the burden of testing on parents, and whether parents will look to enroll their children in charter schools instead if the requirement isn’t extended to schools across the city or state. The district would lose over $8,100 for each student who switches to a charter school.
The Detroit Federation of Teachers, however, agreed with the judge’s ruling on testing, said union president Terrence Martin. The union doesn’t believe the decision to begin face-to-face instruction was informed by medicine and statistics, he said.
“In order to keep people protected and keep people safe, this is what we have to do so that our students have a future,” Mr. Martin said. “Right now we just don’t believe that this is the time for face-to-face education in our school system.”
Mr. Martin isn’t teaching summer school himself, but he said about 100 union members are currently teaching in person. According to Mr. Vitti, 300 teachers applied for 170 in-person teaching spots for this summer.
“The teachers want the money,” Mr. Martin said. “The other reason is my teachers want to teach…But if it’s not safe, it’s just not safe to return. And we don’t believe right now that it is.”
Brianana Link said her son Johnny Cooke Jr. would benefit from smaller class sizes and the opportunity to interact directly with teachers this summer.
That Monday morning at Munger, Kathleen Jamroz dropped her grandchildren Sonya and Santana Hill off at school and waited from her car as they walked up to the thermometer to make sure they were cleared to go inside.
“I still worry a little bit about the virus and everything. But if they didn’t like it, we wouldn’t be here,” Ms. Jamroz said. “My granddaughter couldn’t wait to come to school this morning.”
For parent Brianana Link, Covid-19 testing was a benefit. So were the smaller class sizes and the opportunity for her son Johnny Cooke Jr. to interact directly with teachers this summer.
“I don’t know why parents are afraid to send their kids back to school,” she said. “You guys are flying, going to all the stores, all the malls. I see your kids in bounce houses, y’all having backyard parties. Why are you afraid to send your kids to school?”
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