Why is it safest for our community if government and private employees work from home, but not education professionals and children?

I was raised in the Mat-Su school district. My mom was a Mat-Su teacher for about 30 years. My sister has taught in the school district for more than a decade. My best friend teaches here. My whole life has been spent witnessing how pivotal Mat-Su schools are to our community, and how far beyond the school walls their influence can reach. Yes, even to those who aren’t directly staff, students, or family.

Today my phone buzzed with an emergency alert video from Governor Dunleavy. Among other things, he said that effective immediately all State employees are to work from home whenever feasible, and that he and state public health officials are asking businesses, organizations, and local governments that can operate remotely to send their employees home as soon as possible. (I have copied and paraphrased directly from the press release on the Office of the Governor’s website.)

These requirements and requests seem pretty clear. And wise, since the number of positive COVID cases in Alaska are rising at an alarming pace. As I write this, today alone 478 new cases of COVID-19 were reported statewide, and according to a November 12th article in the Anchorage Daily News, that number may be an undercount due to test results stacking up in a data backlog.

Yet shortly after Governor Dunleavy made his very clear statement, the Mat-Su Borough School District announced this on their Facebook page:

“District leadership met with Commissioner of Education, Michael Johnson and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Anne Zink and received clarity that the Governor’s message is not a mandate for K-12 schools to close.”

I’m confused. Why is it safest for our community if government and private employees work from home, but not education professionals and children? Let me refer back again to the press release from the Office of the Governor’s website.

“Businesses, organizations, and local governments that can operate remotely are urged to send their employees home as soon as possible.”

The school district is able to operate remotely to send staff and students home. Our educators went above and beyond to do a phenomenal job of that last spring. (Thank you so much, all of you. You are incredible.) And this time the online delivery structure is already in place for a time such as this.

Students and staff collect in classrooms of around 20-30 people. They then pass in the hallways, sometimes switch classrooms and mix into other groups. These are some very big “bubbles” that get exponentially bigger. Every one of those students and staff goes out into our community. We are all made more vulnerable.

Georgia Tech has an interesting tool called the COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool, which can be used to estimate the chance that at least one person who is COVID-19 positive will be present at a gathering of whatever size you input in a certain county. Or, in our case, borough. For the Matanuska-Susitna Borough I entered a gathering of 25, roughly the size of one of my friend’s classes. “Current risk level: 62%.” That’s one class out of multiple classes in a day that pass through her classroom, mix together in the halls, combine into other classes. And do it over again all week.

So according to the very smart people at Georgia Tech, there’s a 62% chance that at least one person in a class is COVID-19 positive, who would expose that class, and a hallway full of people, and the next class, and the next class. And then going home, maybe to the store, maybe to sports practice, maybe to an after-school or second job. Schools are not self-contained fishbowls. They are daily gathering places that disperse in all directions when the last bell rings.

Our schools are at the center of our community, and the decisions made there touch every single one of us. Governor Dunleavy stated both the problem and the solution clearly in his emergency alert video and his press release. The structure is there to go to remote learning. Government and private employees are making our communities safer by working remotely. We need leadership to make the call for our schools to do the same.

Summer P. Browning,

Wasilla