Reynolds: Schools going online without approval won't get credit for instructional time

DES MOINES, Iowa — School districts that conduct online learning without prior approval will not receive credit for that instructional time, Gov. Kim Reynolds said during a Tuesday news conference.

This comes as some districts indicated they are proceeding with their plans and defying state guidelines requiring 50% of school instruction be in-person.

“Schools that choose not to return to school for at least 50% in person instruction are not defying me, they're defying the law,” Reynolds said. “If schools move primarily to remote learning without approval, according, again, to the law. Those days do not count towards instructional time.”

In addition to having to make-up those days of instruction at the end of the year, school administrators could face licensure discipline from the Board of Educational Examiners. She did not say there would be financial consequences like withholding state funding.

Iowa law mandates 180 days of instruction.

“I hope that doesn’t happen at all,” Reynolds said of schools having to make up instruction. “We’re going to continue work with the small number of schools— again, it’s less than five—we're going to continue to do the outreach and we'll work with them to see if we can't get them to comply."

“It is the law.”

The law that has been the center of the governor's school guidelines was approved by the legislature this year and states in-person learning is the “presumed” method of instruction. The Department of Education and the governor’s office have interpreted that to mean more than 50% of learning in person.

The same law also says schools can’t learn “primarily” online without explicit authorization from a public health disaster proclamation from the governor, which Reynolds has not allowed.

Instead, she is allowing parents the choice if they want their child to learn only online. School districts can submit a request to the Department of Education to move to remote learning for two-week increments, but only if they meet two benchmarks: 10% of students absent and a 14-day average coronavirus test positivity rate of 15%, which is three times higher than some public health experts' recommendations.

Rolling Green Elementary School in Urbandale already had permission from the state to conduct online learning but was denied its application by the Department of Education on Monday to extend that by another two weeks. The school board in that district decided to ignore the state and allow the school to continue to teach online.

"We find no pleasure in opposing the [Department of Education's] denial of our request to remain online for two more weeks," wrote Urbandale Community School District Superintendent Steve Bass in a letter. "In fact, if you ask any school board member, you will know just how agonizing this decision has been in the face of an unprecedented and impossible public health situation."

Bass said in his letter that Polk County is still experiencing high levels of community spread, and that the district is "no safer than we were three weeks ago," when the board initially sought the exemption from mostly in-person classes.

In neighboring Dallas County, the Waukee Community School District also suggested it would ignore the Department of Education's guidance about when schools are allowed to move online, pointing to issues with the state's benchmarks of virus activity that would allow temporary remote learning.

The school board in a statement cited other provisions of Iowa law giving districts local control over their decision-making.

"For this reason, the WCSD Board of Education, [and] the Superintendent, will not be following the guidance set forth on July 30," the board said. "We will not request permission from the Iowa Department of Education to temporarily change our learning model should the need arise."

The governor said she was meeting with school boards and leaders starting Tuesday, including Urbandale and Des Moines, to discuss return-to-learn.

Positivity rate threshold 'ludicrous'

State officials have not cited specifically what evidence they have to support the 15% positvity rate threshold that schools need to meet in order to request online learning.

The U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams recently said "less than 10%" positivity rate is preferred for school re-opening. The CDC has released guidance in favor of in-person learning, but CDC Director Robert Redfield said recently there should be some exceptions that allow remote learning for "hot spots," or places he defined as having a positivity rate of greater than 5%, according to a Washington Post report. The World Health Organizations suggested a 5% positivity rate or less when governments consider re-opening.

The benchmarks for schools to shift onlineworry infectious disease experts. They say 15-20% positivity rates signals more widespread transmission in a community and makes coronavirus harder to control.

“Schools are not bubbles. Schools are part of a community," said. Dr. Rossana Rosa, an infectious disease physician at Unity Point in Des Moines. "What happens in a community can be reflected and amplified by schools.”

Rosa pointed to other countries where schools have re-opened and said those places are facing a much different situation than the U.S. For example, Australia had only a handful of new cases in their whole country when they began school reopening and France had a 3-5% positivity rate when they opened classroom doors, she said.

"So we don’t really know what happens when you open schools at these very high, substantial levels of transmission," Rosa noted.

According to thestate's thresholds, “minimal to moderate" is defined as positivity rate a 6-14%.

"We feel that’s adequate for in-person learning. Once we get above that and we have more than 10% absenteeism between the staff and students, then we need to take a look at doing something different," Reynolds said.

State criteria calls a positivity rate between 15-20% "substantial controlled" spread. But infectious disease experts say that’s a gross mischaracterization of what those levels actually mean.

“it’s absolutely ludicrous, " said Dr. Megan Srinivas, an infectious disease doctor in Fort Dodge who is also faculty at the University of North Carolina's medical school. "Fifteen percent---I would call that significant spread in any community.”

Srinivas echoed Rosa that data from other countries’ school re-openings is hard to compare to the U.S., where there are plans to re-open classrooms with much higher positivity rates. And she expressed deep apprehension about the state’s the range in its guidance for in-person learning —up to 14% positivity rates —because of similar positivity rates look like in other states.

“If you look at Florida and Texas, they are not even really beyond those numbers and they have run out of ICU beds," Srinivas said. "They have run out of capacity to really provide the care they need to everybody.”

Reynolds has suggested that children are less at risk of catching and spreading coronavirus, but Srinvias said there is evidence to the contrary, including recent study from the CDC analyzing an outbreak at a summer camp in Georgia.

"This investigation adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and, contrary to early reports, might play an important role in transmission," the report says.