Charlie Baker pitches in-person learning, says ‘very small numbers’ of coronavirus infections in schools
Gov. Charlie Baker doubled down on his pitch for in-person learning on Thursday, touring a Carlisle school where he reiterated claims the coronavirus doesn’t spread in schools and applauded students for wearing masks which he said, “makes them a lot more mature than many of the adults I know.”
Baker spent about an hour in classrooms and cafeterias — even stopping to watch a youngster named Brady solve a math problem on the whiteboard.
“It was just, for me anyway, a big reminder about why finding a way to get kids back in a classroom can be so powerful for them and for their classmates and for their instructors,” Baker said.
Baker also praised Carlisle’s “interesting” solutions to use “every square inch of space” to distance students as they attend classes in the era of the coronavirus.
The visit came less than a week after Baker and education officials changed the guidance to districts for in-person learning. It now maintains all school districts — even those in high-risk communities — should opt for in-person or hybrid learning.
The rebuke of remote learning was a shift from previous guidance that instructed districts to gauge the safety of in-person learning based on their community’s viral load, but one that aligned with the Baker administration’s priorities to get students back into classrooms.
Baker repeated his mantra that there are “very small numbers” of infections among the nearly 500,000 students attending in Massachusetts schools on an in-person or hybrid basis.
Of the 30,000 students and 4,000 staff who have attended parochial schools in-person since August, there have been fewer 40 than cases, Baker said.
He said the Department of Early and Secondary Educations knows of “maybe one example of an in-school transmission, maybe not even.” Baker did not say where the potential transmission occurred.
Later on Thursday, the Department of Public Health revealed 348 staff and students in Massachusetts schools tested positive for the coronavirus over the past week — up from 252 cases the week prior.
Since the beginning of the school year which kicked off seven weeks ago, a total of 1,508 cases have been reported in Massachusetts schools, according to the DESE.
The numbers pale in comparison to state data, where 14,255 of the 178,000 total cases have been diagnosed in the last week.
Baker said it’s the game nights, the pizza nights, the “small, informal casual gatherings” driving cases.
Alexi Cohan contributed to this story.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/36uvoip
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