VICTOR JOECKS: CCSD’s reopening announcement was a publicity stunt, not a plan

There was only one problem with the Clark County School District’s reopening announcement. It didn’t contain a reopening announcement.

On Wednesday, Superintendent Jesus Jara and leaders of the Clark County Education Association held a joint press conference to announce a tentative agreement related to starting face-to-face instruction next year.

It was hard not to be excited. But then Jara started sharing the details.

The district will bring back only pre-K through third grade students when it first reopens. The earliest any students will return to the classroom is February, and that’s a best-case scenario.

That’s not a reopening plan. It’s an announcement that there may one day be an announcement.

This was a capitulation, too. In November, Jara and his staff prepared a thorough reopening blueprint that would have allowed students of all ages to return. Families would have had the option to continue distance learning.

The Board of Trustees should have approved it. But the teachers union opposed it. It wanted the district to allow all teachers who wished to continue working from home to be able to do so. After it became obvious he didn’t have the votes, Jara withdrew the proposal.

But with this announcement, Jara has prematurely restricted the reopening proposal he’ll present in January. That is especially odd, because three new board members start next month. He should have presented a full-reopening plan and had this ready as a compromise if the board objected.

Jara made a mistake, but he doesn’t deserve most of the blame. At least, he’s been fighting to reopen schools and sounding the alarm about the problems created by the lack of in-person instruction.

“It is imperative that we embark on a path to safely and responsibly reopen our schools,” Jara wrote in a Review-Journal op-ed in November. “Our very future, especially that of our children, depends on it.”

The public’s ire should be focused on the trustees and employee unions for their continued foot dragging. There is overwhelming evidence that it’s safe to reopen schools. Children are half as likely to catch and spread the coronavirus as adults, according to a 40,000-person study out of Iceland. Schools around the state, country and world are doing in-person learning successfully.

The learning problems caused by school closures is already substantial. Studies by Illuminate Education and Renaissance Learning show students have lost one to three months’ worth of learning in math and reading on average. Expect those losses to be highest among low-income children. Nationally, McKinsey &Company projects that maintaining the status quo on distance learning will result in students losing nine months’ worth of learning in math by the end of the school year. If schools reopened in January, it would be five months lost.

Families and students need a real reopening plan not a publicity stunt offering only false hope.

Contact Victor Joecks at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com.