03/15/2020
MORE ON THE SCHOOL CLOSURE FROM MR. NILES
Dear CCLCS Familes,
When I wrote the letter to the school community on March 13th announcing a school closure of at least 5 days, I invited those of you who wanted to know more about the underlying ideas and process that led to the decision to reach out. Enough of you have done so that I felt it would be efficient to send out a general description of some of the process that led to this decision. I harbor no illusions that my thoughts are in any way unique, or even correct, but I understand that my decisions have consequences for all of you, and that anyone reading this pays a chunk of my salary, so you deserve transparency if you want it.
Please understand that I know I’m not an epidemiologist, and I realize that any one of my logic pathways could be seriously flawed. This whole issue comes down to making predictions about the future from disease models which all have serious flaws in their ability to predict the path of this particular virus in our particular sets of circumstances. One set of models comes from historical epidemics, like influenza from 1917/18, and some of the previous Coronaviruses like SARS and MERS. Other models come from the early days of this virus in other countries and even in other parts of our country, like Washington state.
Needless to say, I studied the narratives and data around these pathways and tried to glean what I could.
It’s not easy to gain much from these cases without wide cones of uncertainty due to comparative differences, but I feel as though I did learn a few general lessons. We’d rather be like St. Louis than Philadelphia in the influenza narrative, and we don’t want to be like Italy in the COVID scenario. In other words, early, decisive steps are important in staving off large-scale damage in a virus that can spread exponentially and that in the words of the experienced Dr. Fauci from the president’s task force “is 10x more lethal than the flu.”
Still, as I stated in my letter to families, I understand that the closing of school comes at a high cost to society at large and to families in particular. Adding insult to injury is the realization that the cost to families in greater need tends to be higher. Public schools like ours provide a wide array of social services to families in need, giving them a leg up towards the kinds of equity they deserve in a society that is highly stratified. We feed a lot of kids who face food insecurity at home. Parents may lose wages if they have to stay home with their kids. Also, it’s pretty clear that most students with diverse special needs lose gains that they make in school during closings of significant length. Closing school is a serious matter that should never be taken lightly.
As I also stated in my letter to families, the societal cost to missing the mark on social distancing measures could be catastrophic. We are making very important decisions with very imperfect models with a wide spectrum of guidance to inform us. Many of us have been working hard to channel our inner epidemiologists!
In a conference call with about 1,000 Massachusetts educational leaders on the morning of March 13th, leaders from the Department of Education (DESE) and the Department of Health laid out some criteria to use in the decision matrix of whether to cancel school. I think it’s safe for me to say that the great majority of school systems would not have met these criteria on the morning of March 13th. The criteria revolved around closures due to direct exposure to infected individuals in a particular school, or around “sustained community transmission” of COVID-19 in a specific school’s region.
I have great respect for the professionals at DESE and for the superintendents I know who have chosen to comply with their directive. It is no accident that Massachusetts has the best public schools in the nation. It is no accident that in international tests, Massachusetts students perform at the top of the world standings. We have great schools. We have great school leadership. The directive is based on the evidence as they understand it, on trying to achieve the proper balance between hysteria and responsible action, and on a deep understanding of the inequities that school closings can exacerbate.
Given the respect I personally have for the competence of our state officials, it was hard for me to buck their directive. I understand and respect their logic.
But, as an experienced school leader with the responsibility to affect the fate of my school’s families, I have learned to also trust in my own analytical processes. I have studied this situation hard since the virus first broke out, reading and listening to everything I could get my hands on. I spoke with many people whose opinions were all over the map, from hoax to exponentially exploding apocalypse. As I do in studying a winter storm, I consolidated the information into a narrative thread with potential action indicators. My indicator was that when community transmission came to Massachusetts, it would be time to institute the methods of social distancing that include school closures.
I thought hard about the state’s more refined standard of “sustained community transmission in your region”, but rejected that standard for a few reasons:
1.) The lack of testing in the US leads me to question snapshot assessments of the status of the disease in any region. Yes, if sustained transmission were in a region for an extended time, there would be more very sick people, but I suspect that the transition from any community transmission to sustained community transition could be swift, but invisible for a time without testing, and it is clear to me that the proper timing for social distancing is a key to its effectiveness. If we are at this point in the curve, schools should be closed. If we aren’t, and sustained community transmission does not develop, we can happily open school again.
2) I understand the importance of flattening the curve. I wonder about our preparedness for the kind of large spike in COVID-19 that could occur with a combination of community transmission and late social distancing. I have seen many reports that our infrastructure preparation has been slow, like our preparation of testing kits. Equipment to protect our health care professionals, ICU rooms, respirators, auxiliary sites for testing and quarantines seem to have been harder for us to organize than in some of the other countries where the COVID-19 has penetrated more deeply. I am not making a political statement by stating this, I am just explaining the importance I see in my small role in influencing the flattening of the curve.
If you,ve read this far, thanks for hearing me out. I have been touched and impressed by all of the CCLCS families who have reached out with offers to help any families in need during this unusual time. I hope beyond hope that we have taken the right steps and that the curve gets really flat really fast. What I’ve seen and read makes that seem unlikely. There’s lots of information coming in that social distancing measures need to be lengthy to be effective. I will be in touch during the week with our plans moving forward. Feel free to reach out at any time.
