Oregon’s new metrics affect on-campus learning at Catlin Gabel
On Oct. 28, Oregon Governor Kate Brown and the Oregon Department of Education released new guidelines for having school on campus. These updates significantly relaxed the restrictions and thresholds needed for on-campus learning.
Remote learning has been a new challenge for everyone these past eight months. Teachers have had to completely redesign their curriculums and learn many new platforms to teach with. Students have had to find motivation and balance trying to learn while spending hours staring at a screen every day.
However, the prospect of returning to campus in some capacity may be on the horizon. The previous guidelines for on-campus learning were that a county needed to have three straight weeks of fewer than 10 cases of COVID-19, per 100,000 people, and less than a 5% positivity rate to have school on campus for all grades.
The new guidelines now say in large counties, such as Multnomah and Washington, fewer than 50 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people are needed for on-campus school, and anywhere between 50 and 100 cases per 100,000 people are needed for a hybrid model. Both of those figures are over a two-week period.
New state guidelines for school on campus. Graphic based on chart courtesy of the Oregon Department of Education.
In the state’s release they said, “Returning to in-person instruction is one of Oregon’s highest priorities. This priority goes hand-in-hand with supporting the health and safety of our students, staff and the families they return to each day. After a systematic review of data and recent studies and engagement with the Governor’s Medical Advisory Panel, Healthy Schools Reopening Council and other partners, ODE and OHA are updating the metrics to allow for some additional in-person instruction.”
These new metrics have already come into effect in some schools in Oregon, and as of Nov. 12, there were 78 new cases of COVID-19 in Oregon schools.
Members of the Catlin Gabel School community are wondering how these new metrics will affect the school's reopening. Barbara Ostos is the Assistant Head of School and the chair of the Emergency Response Team (ERT) at CGS. The ERT is a team made up of people in many divisions and sectors of CGS. It is, in Otsos’s words “a day-to-day operations planning team to manage in this pandemic.”
With regards to what the new metrics mean for CGS reopening, Ostos said, “It is much more realistic than the previous metrics” and “it moves it in the right direction.” She also said she is hopeful for a downward trend in cases after the winter holidays.
When asked about a potential start date for hybrid learning, Ostos, who described herself as a very optimistic person, offered spring as a start date for hybrid learning.
“I am optimistic that by spring break, we will have K-12 on campus for hybrid learning,” said Ostos. She also said that CGS would start with younger grades returning and gradually go up by age.
With an optimistic start date still over three months in the future, it is clear CGS still has a long way to go before students will be back in the classroom. From Nov. 9 to Nov. 21, Washington County had over 300 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people, and Multnomah County had over 400 cases, both far off from the 100-50 cases of coronavirus needed for hybrid classes.
The state’s new guidelines come at a curious time. On Oct. 30, when the metrics were released, cases in Oregon were on a steep incline, and that trend has only continued, with the state eclipsing over 72,500 cases, as of Nov. 28. Multnomah and Washington Counties have been hit especially hard, and with the winter holidays approaching, cases are projected to surge throughout the country.
“The timing was sort of odd,” said Patrick Walsh, Upper School Social Studies teacher. “It felt like [the metrics] were sort of going all over the place.”
CGS sophomore Jack Beckerman agreed with Walsh.
“It doesn’t make sense to relax guidelines while cases are still climbing,” said Beckerman. “If the cases were declining, it might make sense to relax them a bit, but we hit our record high yesterday, with over 1,000 cases. It’s ridiculous.”
Despite the rising cases in Oregon, members of the CGS community are eager to return to campus, once it is deemed responsible and safe. Returning to campus around spring break would cap a full year with only remote learning, a year that for many, has been incredibly difficult and stressful.
“I never really realized how much school is about the social part of school.” said Walsh. “I would never want to do all my classes remotely ever again. What I realized is that so much of what I like about school and what I think students get from school is being with each other.”
As far as remote learning for students at CGS, it has been a challenge at times as well. CGS sophomore Alex Proksch shared what he misses the most about in-person school.
“My favorite part of CGS is the relationships that I create with my teachers and peers,” he said. “The environment in CGS classrooms is far superior to Zoom classes.”
Clearly, teachers and students at Catlin Gabel alike are yearning to go back to classes in person. And with multiple COVID-19 vaccines progressing forward and the reduced state requirements, the return to Honey Hollow Farm may be on the way.
To learn more about Catlin Gabel’s plan to return to campus, click here. To read Catlin Gabel’s Pandemic Management Plan, click here.