MIAMI (WSVN) - Miami-Dade County Public Schools’ board members voted unanimously to have some students return to class next Monday during an in-person meeting to discuss the upcoming return to school campuses for students and teachers.
Late Tuesday night, the district voted to allow students in pre-K, kindergarten and first grade to return to in-person learning, if they wished to do so, on Oct. 5.
“I think we will all need to exercise some degree of grace and flexibility as we move forward, and you can certainly count on us,” M-DCPS Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said. “That’s what we will do for our work force, and certainly, that’s what we’ll do with our students.”
All elementary students along with those in grades six, nine and 10 can report to campus starting next Wednesday, and on Friday, all other students can return to the school campuses.
“My feeling, my sentiment about the teachers is: I understand them,” Carvalho said after the vote. “I understand the level of anxiety. I’m a father, and many of these teachers are my friends, they’re my colleagues. My commitment is that we’re going to spare no effort in ensuring that the steps that we will take between now and Monday shall be taken to protect our work force, to protect our teachers, to protect our students.”
The school board met to discuss the issue following a letter from Richard Corcoran, Florida’s Education Commissioner, that raised “grave concerns” surrounding the district’s staggered reopening plan that was set to start on Oct. 14.
The letter was in response to the board’s unanimous decision to push back students’ return to campus by one week. The move was made out of an abundance of caution, officials said.
“Either we lose $84 million and try to submit a revised reopening plan and hope it’s approved, or we go ahead and stay with what we originally submitted and open our schools on Oct. 5,” M-DCPS Board Member Susie Castillo said.
“It’s clear we’re going to exercise social distancing in the classrooms of at least one meter,” Carvalho said. “That’s the international standard — 3 feet, 3 inches, and the lunchrooms in the cafeterias, 6 feet because the kids are going to have to take off their masks.”
United Teachers of Dade President Karla Hernandez-Mats released a statement on the district’s vote that reads in part, “Political agendas prevailed tonight … after seeing that our schools were not ready to receive the community in a safe manner. After all of that, the pressure from President Trump and Governor DeSantis proved to be far greater a force on our school board than our pleas for public health and safety.”
Meanwhile, Carvalho vowed to listen and watch as the countdown to in-person learning in the district is now less than one week away.
“I also want to hear from teachers,” he said. “If there are issues in schools that do not comport to those elements that meet our expectations. I need to know about it.”
During the Tuesday meeting, board members focused on how to move forward with getting students back on campus.
“We’re not saying not to open,” Hernandez-Mats said during the meeting. “We’re saying just delay it a little bit, so that we have everything in place.”
“We just make a plan, let’s stick to it,” a woman said. “Let’s get our children back in school.”
“These decisions that you are making are people’s lives,” a second woman said. “It’s their families.”
“The board made an informed decision last week to open Oct. 14, and yet, here we are because someone who thinks they know what they are talking about is making a power play,” a third woman said.
Hernandez-Mats added they found schools were not ready to reopen while performing spot checks across the district on Monday.
“We have to let the state know … these schools, we need more time,” M-DCPS Board Member Dr. Lubby Navarro said. “We gotta be frank because people’s lives are at risk.”
“No school was 100% ready,” she said. “They are a lot of improvements, like I said, but no school was 100% ready for reopening. We don’t want to go back to Phase One. We don’t want to see COVID cases continue to skyrocket. We want to make sure that this is contained, so that we can open and not have another failure and another restart and another pivot.”
According to Corcoran, the delay could be dire for some students. In the letter, he said that the emergency order gives districts guaranteed funding beyond what would otherwise be available, specifically to address COVID-19.
The commissioner said regarding the urgent circumstances that “we cannot and will not ignore.”
“The commissioner said that as long as all students across the district, all grades, whose parents opted for the schoolhouse model, would be back by Oct. 9, that he would authorize a staggered return beginning Oct. 5,” Carvalho said.
“We know that the best type of education happens in the classroom,” Hernandez-Mats said. “We cannot mitigate the loss of life.”
Broward County Public Schools received a similar letter from the state and also plan to start on-campus learning on Oct. 14. Their board is expected to meet on Thursday to discuss their response to the state.
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