Prepared by Chris Kolb, Ph.D.
Vice-Chair, Jefferson County Board of Education
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Introduction
As an elected body, the Jefferson County Board of Education is subject to open meetings laws, meaning that the board must conduct any substantial discussion in public. To abide by these laws, I would normally wait until the next school board meeting to communicate with my colleagues. However, COVID-19 is so consequential to the welfare of our community that I believe it would be negligent to delay, and so I am releasing a public statement.
At the school board meeting on January 19, I presented a significant amount of research regarding the safety of returning to competitive winter sports given the current state of the pandemic. I have updated this information below. In addition, I am concerned that some of my colleagues expect teachers and other JCPS employees to return to in-person work before it is safe to do so. I have also included information addressing this.
As I wrote in early September, no one in JCPS is under any illusion that NTI is as effective as in-person instruction. With NTI, we are doing our absolute best in an unprecedented situation that has already killed over 400,000 Americans and will kill tens of thousands more. NTI has been very difficult for my own fourth-grader and for my family as a whole, so I know first-hand how challenging NTI is for kids and parents. My kid wants to go back to school in-person very badly. The pandemic has had noticeable negative effects on him. I deeply understand the frustrations families have because I experience all the same frustrations.
I recognize that not being in school in-person has negative effects on children and families. However, many of those negative effects — for instance, economic hardship due to lost parental work time — are problems that other governmental entities are failing to address. School systems are used to taking on ancillary responsibilities to make up for inaction at other levels of government, but there is a limit to what school systems can do. JCPS cannot return to in-person learning to solve problems that other decision-makers have ignored.
For the reasons outlined below, I am inclined to support NTI only until everyone in the community has had the opportunity to be vaccinated, until the positive test rate is five percent or less for two weeks, or until Jefferson County is in the “orange” for two weeks and cases in Louisville are steady or declining.
The Current COVID-19 Situation
While trends are beginning to show some positive movement, the pandemic has been worse than ever in recent days, both nationally and locally. As The Washington Post reported, “On [Nov. 3, 2020], the U.S. had never had a day with more than 100,000 new cases; since Nov. 5, it has never had a day with fewer than that.” As a result, January will be the deadliest month in the U.S. by far (figure 1).
On September 30, Gov. Andy Beshear stated that the 1,018 cases reported that day should serve as a “wake-up call,” and he warned Kentuckians that “We can’t let this thing get out of control again because we’re tired.” Kentucky failed to heed this warning, as on January 6 alone the state reported 5,447 new cases, over five times the amount that Beshear regarded as a wake-up call. On September 6, Gov. Beshear announced that Kentucky had set a record for the number of weekly cases, with 4,742, and he stated that “We’re facing the challenge of our lifetimes and we must do better.” We did not do better, as between January 14 and 20 Kentucky reported over 20,000 new cases. As a result, Kentucky set a new record for deaths in a month with six days still to go in January (figure 2).
Local trends largely mirror statewide data. Louisville recently broke a record for new cases in a week, leading Chief Health Strategist Dr. Sarah Moyer to conclude that “We have entered into another surge.” Since the pandemic began, the test positivity rate in Louisville has never been lower than 7.4 percent, and in recent days it has hovered between 13 and 17 percent (figure 3).
The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health states that: “As a rule of thumb … one threshold for the percent positive being ‘too high’ is 5 percent. For example, the World Health Organization recommended in May that the percent positive remain below 5 percent for at least two weeks before governments consider reopening. … A high percent positive means … it is not a good time to relax restrictions [and] … it may be a good time to add restrictions.” Given the current situation, these are recommended actions for Louisville (figure 4).
Sports and COVID-19
The local positivity rate alone is enough to warrant suspending most sports in a competitive setting. However, several other indicators also support this conclusion. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention lists 13 risk factors that should be assessed when deciding if sports are appropriate. The majority of these factors indicate that it is not advisable to play competitive winter sports at the moment (figures 5, 6, 7, 8, & 9).
Of particular relevance locally, the CDC advises decision-makers to consider the number of players who have a higher risk of developing severe illness, such as those with asthma (figure 8). According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, Louisville is the seventh worst metropolitan area in the U.S. for asthma (figure 9).
Further increasing the risk of winter sports is that CDC research indicates that people with no symptoms spread almost 60 percent of all cases of COVID-19. This means that, short of rapidly testing everyone who may participate in or attend a sporting event, even the most stringent and rigorous procedures will fail to identify over half of all people who are positive for the virus. As one medical expert put it: “Many people won’t know they’re contagious based on their symptoms, which may be encouraging them to go about their daily lives with a false sense of safety. … These findings suggest that just identifying and isolating people who have symptoms isn’t enough to control the ongoing spread of the coronavirus. It doesn’t catch all the cases.”
The Georgia Tech COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool gives further cause for concern. Due to insufficient testing in Louisville, researchers at Georgia Tech advise that there are at least five times as many COVID-19 cases in Louisville as are being reported (figure 10). Using an “ascertainment bias” of five with a crowd of only 100 people yields a 97 percent chance that at least one person in the crowd will be COVID-19 positive (figure 11).
JCPS is planning to allow 225 or more people to participate in or attend basketball games. Thus, if a crowd of 100 yields a 97 percent chance that at least one person will be positive — and a 58 percent chance at least one person will be positive and asymptomatic — then more than doubling the crowd to 225 will make it a virtual certainty that more than one person at such an event will be positive for COVID-19, and at least one person will be asymptomatic, making them prime candidates to spread the virus. This is especially true if one of them is a coach, referee, or athlete, who will be yelling and breathing inches away from other people’s faces.
Why Vaccination Alone Is Not Enough
While the development and distribution of a vaccine is tremendously hopeful news, several facts indicate that, on its own, vaccinating K-12 school personnel will not be enough to foster a safe return to in-person education or many competitive sports.
Most importantly, while vaccination may lessen the rate of transmission, it is likely that many people who are vaccinated will still transmit the virus. Thankfully, their symptoms will probably be mild or non-existent. However, by transmitting the virus to people who have not yet been vaccinated, they will put unvaccinated individuals at risk, including members of their families. Moreover, vaccinations are not yet approved for those under 16 years old, meaning that children will still spread the virus to others, including unvaccinated members of their families. Finally, vaccination is about 95 percent effective, meaning that “one out of every 20 people who get this vaccine could still get moderate to severe infection.”
In addition, there is evidence that more contagious strains of the virus are now spreading, and, “infectious disease specialists are concerned that any strain that is more contagious … might quickly increase the number of COVID-19 cases.” Thus, the CDC advises that “Experts need to understand more about the protection that COVID-19 vaccines provide before deciding to change recommendations on steps everyone should take to slow the spread of the virus.” In other words, the vaccine has not yet caused the CDC to change guidance about schools or sports. If state officials decided to vaccinate K-12 personnel with the expectation that we should move away from this guidance, then they were not listening to the CDC.
According to the core indicators the CDC encourages school districts to use in determining whether in-person instruction is advisable, recent data indicates that Louisville significantly exceeds the thresholds for even the highest-risk category. On Jan. 14, Louisville had almost five times the number of new cases needed to meet the criteria for “highest risk,” putting Louisville in quintuple red territory (figure 12). In addition, for some time the positivity rate has hovered between 25 and 50 percent higher than the threshold for highest risk (figures 3 and 12). Phase one vaccinations in Kentucky are not expected to conclude until the summer, when phase two vaccinations (for anyone over 40) are only expected to begin. Thus, up until the traditional end of the school year in late May there will be many people over the age of 60, many people with health risks, and many essential workers who will not yet be vaccinated.
Finally, there is evidence that returning to in-person instruction leads to higher rates of community transmission of COVID-19. “After preying heavily on the elderly in the spring, the coronavirus is increasingly infecting American children and teens in a trend authorities say appears fueled by school reopenings and the resumption of sports, playdates and other activities.” Moreover, some studies indicate that children are, “twice as likely to pass on the virus than adults.” This is even more concerning given that new strains of the virus appear to be more contagious. Thus, “Because these new strains are more contagious, a lower level of community spread may put in-person schools at risk of an outbreak,” making the high positivity rate in Louisville even more concerning.
In short, even after K-12 school personnel have all been vaccinated, the community transmission rate is likely to remain the best indicator of the danger that the virus poses. This conclusion is supported by recent research that indicates, “in-person … options are not associated with increased spread of COVID at low levels of pre-existing COVID cases, but cases do increase at moderate to high pre-existing COVID rates.” Thus, absent a significant decline in community transmission, competitive winter sports and in-person school will contribute to a higher rate of community transmission, which will lead to increased illness, hospitalization, and death in these groups. While all K-12 school personnel could be vaccinated by the end of March, many of their children, partners, and extended family members will not be. In my view, it is unwise to ask teachers and other staff to choose between risking the lives of their family members and keeping their jobs, especially given the growing teacher shortage.
Practical Considerations
Practical concerns also make a return to in-person school problematic. Here is how one JCPS teacher sums many of them up: “I am concerned about the loss of instructional time if we return. We will be spending weeks on teaching expectations. If we return before spring break, that time will be used to teach expectations and then we will have to re-teach expectations when returning from spring break. These are weeks that could be used to teach content if we were to continue with NTI for this school year. … Speaking for my class, my students are set on their very structured schedule they have for NTI and know exactly what to expect and are comfortable with their current routine. Is there really a benefit in changing this on our students for 10 or less weeks?”
Moreover, transportation remains an unsolvable dilemma. While many parents will decide to continue NTI if we return to school in-person, an unknown number of buses will still transport a hi