Wichita schools ask city for help as COVID surge among teachers threatens closures

The Wichita school district is calling for help from the city as teachers and school staff are contracting COVID-19 at an alarming pace, causing staffing shortages that could force some school buildings to close.

“The District is in the process of considering closing of a number of school buildings due to a shortage of staff at those buildings,” USD 259 leaders said in a letter to the Wichita City Council on Tuesday. “If something in the community does not change soon, the District will have to consider closing additional buildings.”

There are more absent teachers and paras than there are substitutes. When a school nurse misses work during the surging coronavirus pandemic, the school goes without. And the COVID situation is getting worse.

The state’s largest school district is urging the state’s largest city to allow public health orders to be enforced in the city limits.

In Sedgwick County, masks are mandatory in most indoor public areas and social distancing is required. Large gatherings are not allowed, and businesses have had to cut hours of operation and limit the number of people allowed inside. Violators could face penalties up to $500.

But the rules can’t be enforced in Wichita, home to approximately 75% of the county’s population, without the City Council’s permission. The council plans to meet at 9 a.m. Thursday to discuss its response to the virus.

“Clearly, the current practice of asking citizens to voluntarily comply with COVID-19 safety measures is not working universally,” school board president Sheril Logan and Superintendent Alicia Thompson said in a letter to Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple and the City Council.

School officials have repeatedly blamed the dire staffing situation on the spread of COVID-19 in the greater community.

“The percentage of our staff testing positive for COVID is not higher than the percentage of community members testing positive,” USD 259 spokesperson Susan Arensman said in an email. “Yes, we have seen cases increase, but our staff is a reflection of the community and as overall cases rise, so do our staff cases.”

The numbers tell a different story. An Eagle analysis found that COVID-19 is more than twice as prevalent among Wichita school staff than in the community.

Wichita Public Schools reported 160 staff tested positive between Nov. 6 and Sunday. There are an estimated 7,308 on-site employees in USD 259. That equates to 2,189.4 new cases per 100,000 people.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported 5,417 new cases in Sedgwick County between Nov. 6 and Monday, which is the most comparable time frame with available data. The county has an estimated population of 516,042. The county’s per capita case rate was 1,049.7 per 100,000.

Calculating rates of disease per 100,000 people is common in public health, and a version of the measure is used by USD 259 as a gating criteria for reopening and closing schools during the pandemic.

Are teachers getting COVID at school?

When presented with the calculations, Arensman said the 160 cases among staff equates to 2.2% of the district’s employees.

That’s still double the percentage of Sedgwick County residents that contracted COVID-19 in roughly the same time period. The 5,417 cases in the county equates to a little more than 1% of the population.

“We are the fourth largest employer in southcentral Kansas,” Arensman said. “We have employees who live in other counties besides Sedgwick. Our numbers reflect not only Sedgwick County residents, but the numerous other residents whose case data would show up in whatever county they live in. Our dataset and the county’s dataset are two different datasets.”

She said the majority of the employee’s cases are not workplace related.

During the Nov. 9 school board meeting, Kimber Kasitz, the school health director, said most staff and students who test positive don’t know where they got the virus.

“We talk about the community, our staff and our kids come in from where — the community,” Kasitz said. “The majority of our staff members or students that test positive, it’s called likely person to person. Meaning they don’t know where they got it.”

Kasitz added that: “We are really below 10% on staff members that were a direct close contact to someone at work that tested positive.”

Arensman said the majority of cases — the “likely person to person” ones — are not considered to be workplace related because “they were not found to be a close contact” of another case at school. However, county health officials have said a refusal by most patients to cooperate with epidemiologists has severely limited contact tracing.

While school officials have blamed community spread for the increase in cases among staff, that doesn’t explain why staff have higher case rates than the community. It also doesn’t explain why some school buildings have had no cases while others have been rocked by cases and quarantines.

“We have staff that would not have to have been quarantined if they would have thought about some of those things,” Kasitz said, after describing staff eating lunch together at the same table as playing Russian roulette. “The kids, we’re controlling that in the lunchroom. But for staff, we really need to be mindful. You can have lunch in the library or in a classroom and sit 6 feet apart, or more.”

The World Health Organization reports a “strong correlation” between COVID-19 numbers at schools and in the community, as “community transmission is reflected in the school setting.” There should be additional focus on reducing transmission among staff members, as they are at a higher risk, the WHO concluded in an Oct. 21 report. Additionally, “staff need to be stay vigilant for exposure outside the school.”

While teachers are contracting COVID-19 at a higher rate, students continue to have lower transmission statistics. That is consistent with state and local health data, which show children are being diagnosed with the disease at lower rates than adults.

Not enough substitutes

The Wichita teachers’ union has called for shifting all classes online only, as would be recommended in the red zone of the district’s gating criteria. Wichita middle and high schools have been using remote education the entire semester, though elementary schools have had approximately 60% of students enrolled in in-person learning.

“Elementary schools have the highest number of staff out, and that’s where we have in person students,” United Teachers of Wichita president Kimberly Howard said in an email. “We should be full remote until the community spread is under control.”

The higher rates of COVID-19 cases among school staff is compounded by active quarantines of about 805 employees, or about 11% of the workforce, due to exposures. There are not enough substitutes to fill in the gaps.

As of Friday, the district was filling less than 60% of its substitute teacher requests, less than 30% of its para requests, just over 50% of its custodian requests and 0% of its nurse requests.

The school board on Monday canceled classes for the entire week of Thanksgiving, primarily citing a “significant strain on functional capacity in the school district” caused by staff cases and quarantines.

While a shortage of substitute teachers was predicted by some during the summer, Wichita’s Board of Education president said sick staff would not lead to school closures.

When the school board adopted its reopening guide on Aug. 20, board member Ben Blankley suggested adding a staff absenteeism metric in conjunction with the the student absenteeism metric. Logan, the president, rejected the idea.

“I think the difference in my mind is we’re tracking student absenteeism because that’s reducing, reducing, reducing our kids in the building,” Logan said. “Staff, if we start to get a lot of staff (out sick), we’re still bringing subs in for them. We’re obviously keeping track of that, and it’s very important because we care about our staff, but that’s not the driver of shutting a building down, because we have subs that can come in and take their place.”

Staff absenteeism has since become a major factor in reopening decisions.

“People are afraid to sub in today’s world,” Logan said at the Nov. 9 board meeting. “A lot of our substitutes are retired teachers or others, and they think ‘I don’t have to do this. I’m going to stay home and stay safe.’ And so our sub pool has dropped, understandably.”

This story was originally published November 18, 2020 at 6:17 PM.