Guest editorial: Playing the blame game with public health

This editorial was published by the News Tribune of Tacoma.

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Pierce County families have a right to be unhappy about the on-again, off-again gyrations of in-person schooling. And no families are feeling more whipsawed right now than those on the west side of the Narrows Bridge.

More than 800 kindergarteners and first graders have been back on Peninsula School District campuses for a month. So when Peninsula School District Superintendent Art Jarvis announced last week an imminent return to full-time remote learning, prompted by public health recommendations to contain a fall COVID-19 surge, it caused an outburst of frustration — and understandably so.

But for Peninsula School Board members to channel public animosity at the Tacoma Pierce-County Health Department and even make groundless claims about the TPCHD director not caring about kids? Well, that’s not understandable. It’s irresponsible.

They’d be wise to tamp down the rhetoric, stop the scapegoating and keep focusing resources on students, especially those in greatest distress during the pandemic: young kids, special education learners and students getting Ds and Fs while struggling to keep up at home.

Peninsula and a few other small local districts in communities with lower COVID counts deserve credit for being dual-platform pioneers. While large districts like Seattle and Puyallup have canceled in-person classes until 2021, Peninsula has charted an alternate course, showing what’s possible with good planning and good fortune.

By most accounts, K-1 students are thriving in classrooms. Social-distancing, masking and other safety measures are being followed. No coronavirus infections connected to classrooms have been reported. Second graders were in line to return to school next.

So Jarvis set a solemn tone last Thursday when he told the school board that staff were preparing to switch back to distance-learning for all students, starting the first week in November, based on new public health guidance.

Curiously, the board proceeded to deflect responsibility to TPCHD in general and to health director Dr. Anthony Chen in particular.

What can families do to keep their kids in school? Call the state school superintendent’s office, they advised at Thursday’s meeting. Contact your legislators and county health board members, they added. And by all means, call Chen, they pleaded; they even shared his phone number.

What about lobbying them, the five Peninsula School Board members, who are elected to make tough decisions? Oddly, that didn’t come up. Meanwhile, TPCHD has been deluged by calls and emails.

Yes, Chen is strongly urging all local schools to do remote learning; one should expect nothing less of a public health chief in a week when COVID has flared to “high” activity level (more than 75 cases per 100,000 population during 14 days). As the case rate topped 100 late last week, Chen was fulfilling his duty under the “decision tree” put out by the state Department of Health.

Yet TPCHD says it has “explicitly communicated” to Peninsula and other local school officials that in-person learning decisions are theirs to make. “They do not need a waiver, variance, or written permission” to disregard health guidelines, TPCHD said on its website Monday.

No doubt Peninsula educators would like the health department to give them cover. It would be helpful in dealing with lawyers, risk management specialists and labor unions.

But if they want to throw caution to the wind and keep some elementary-age kids in classrooms, they can, at least for now — and there are defensible reasons to take the risk. The educational and social-emotional needs of Washington children clearly aren’t being met under the remote-learning model. Educators aren’t the only ones saying so; pediatricians and family physicians around the region have called for schools to reopen.

Pinning blame on health officials might be convenient, but at least Jarvis didn’t try to ascribe base motives. “I don’t doubt the sincerity of the Pierce County Health Department in trying to keep people safe,” he said at Thursday’s meeting.

Too bad some school board members didn’t show similar restraint. Vice President David Olson was way out of line, saying: “I honestly don’t think (Chen) cares. It’s his way or the highway.”

Such language, which sows distrust and undermines public health experts, has become sadly common in the White House. But we expect better from local school boards.

Among Olson’s audience were three student school board representatives. One of them, Gig Harbor High School senior Connor Flaherty, gave perhaps the most hopeful message of the evening: “Stick with it, we’ll all get through this and we’ll make it back to a normal education.”

Which only proves an old adage: Young people can sometimes be our wisest teachers.