Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, shown Wednesday, March 11, will on Thursday announce the closure of all K-12 schools, public and private, in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties for more than a month, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
OLYMPIA — Gov. Jay Inslee was set to announce Friday that he is mandating the closure of all Washington schools from March 17 through at least April 24.
The move comes one day after Inslee said he was using an executive order to mandate K-12 school closures in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties for those same dates.
Since then, school districts here have begun planning for ways to get core services, such as food, to families. Meanwhile, closures spread across the country, from Oregon to Ohio to Los Angeles, as officials everywhere ramped up their efforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Shutting schools statewide affects more than just instruction. Schools are a critical lifeline for low-income families, who rely on schools to provide free or reduced-price lunch and often other meals each day.
Across Washington state, traditional public and charter schools enroll more than 1.1 million. About 82,000 were enrolled in private schools in the 2017-2018 school year. More than half a million public-school students — about 45%, or 520,000 statewide — qualify for subsidized meals at schools, meaning many families throughout the state will struggle to feed their children during a prolonged school closure.
Another 14% of K-12 students in Washington — nearly 170,000 — have a disability and receive special education services in schools. Under federal law, students with disabilities are guaranteed a right to “free and appropriate” public education. But if school closures completely halt academic offerings for everyone, guidance from the U.S. Department of Education says schools do not have to provide services to students with disabilities. Conversely, if schools decide to offer online learning or any other service during closures, they must ensure that students with disabilities can access it.
Several school districts that have already closed are looking for ways to get meals to students in need, such as bussing meals to neighborhoods where lots of students live. It may be a challenge to scale up such methods statewide.
Already, Washington received a waiver from the federal government to make it easier to provide meals to students and their families. And the U.S. Department of Education said it would consider temporarily waiving requirements to administer standardized tests to students in districts affected by closures.
As of Friday, it remained unclear exactly whether or how hourly and part-time workers in schools — including bus drivers, paraeducators, substitute teachers and other staff — would draw a paycheck during a six-week school closure. A spokesman with the state’s Employment Security Department said part-time workers, provided they’re actually laid off from their jobs, are typically eligible for unemployment benefits if they have worked 680 hours or more in the previous year. Workers must wait a week from the date of unemployment to receive those benefits.
Standardized tests, which typically start each spring, likely will be suspended.
Very little is known about COVID-19 transmission and infection in children, which complicates what we know about whether closing schools will work as a mitigation technique. Emerging research hints that only long-term closures — those over eight weeks — will put a dent in the virus’s spread.
Inslee’s Friday announcement followed new recommendations from the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention that suggest short-term school closures may have no impact on the magnitude or trajectory of spread of the coronavirus. Closing school for eight to 20 weeks may help curb the virus, though other strategies — such as encouraging frequent hand-washing — are likely more effective, the CDC guidance says.
On Friday morning, hours before Inslee’s announcement, GOP House Minority Leader J.T. Wilcox of Yelm praised the governor’s decision to close schools in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties.
But Wilcox said he was “really concerned” about the possibility of closures in areas that haven’t seen lots of cases.
The governor, “also needs to move forward and make sure that people are not over-doing it,” said Wilcox. “You should not close schools in places that are not yet threatened with widespread infection, because the disruptions create so much chaos.”
If moving too quickly “creates a cascade of unwarranted actions, then we just magnified the impact on the economy that’s not going to be good,” said Wilcox.
Under state law, public school districts must offer a minimum average of 1,080 instructional hours to high school students and 1,000 hours to all other grades. The state education department will waive days that school districts can’t make up past June 19.
A bill the state Legislature passed Thursday permits the state board of education to grant flexibility on credit requirements for high-school students who were on track to graduate before their schools closed.
