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- The emotional, academic, and health impacts of COVID on students, staff, and families.

Tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

This is the second in a series of shows we're doing on education during COVID, including the risks of opening, the ramifications of not opening, and the long term impact that this very difficult year is having and really will continue to have on children.

To that end, I am joined today by Dr. Mary McDonald, Board Chair of the Urban Child Institute, former superintendent of the Catholic Diocese of West Tennessee, and now CEO of MCD Partners, a national education consulting firm.

Mary, thank you for joining.

- Thank you, Eric.

- Also joined by Dr. Jon McCullers, an infectious disease expert, who is Dean of Clinical Affairs at UT Med School, Pediatrician-in-Chief at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital, and a member of the Memphis, Shelby County COVID taskforce.

Dr. McCullers, Jon, thanks for being here again.

- Always good to be on with you, Eric.

- And I'll say too to those who missed last week's show, we had two education researchers and experts in education, former assistant commissioner from the Tennessee Department of Education, as well as the head of Freedom Prep, a group of five charter schools in Memphis, to talk about all of this from their perspective.

And next week we're hoping to have, all scheduling permitted, two members of the SCS Shelby County Schools board.

Board Chair Miska Clay Bibbs, as well as Billy Orgel, a long time board member.

And we reached out to Dr. Joris Ray, Superintendent, to come on as well.

Last bit of housekeeping that we've done, past shows with Dr. Ray, as well as the superintendents from all the suburban schools who have opened in some form or fashion.

A hybrid, a rotation with some closures, all that.

We did those in the fall which seems like 100 years ago.

But they were telling, and if you are following this issue closely, all of those are on WKNO.org, or they are available as podcasts.

Mary, I will start with you.

What are you seeing in terms of, I mean, we'll talk about the health risks to teachers, to students and families.

But there are these risks and these realities of the emotional impact, the mental health impact, the learning loss and academic loss.

I will front this, and for those listening, there is nothing to me that is simple about this issue.

It is incredibly complicated.

And there are many sides to the whole issue of reopening, and when, and how.

But I will say to you, Mary, what are you seeing?

What are these ramifications that we are beginning to deal with?

- I think we have been dealing with them since the start of it actually.

And there's always a risk in everything you do.

There's this risk they talk about in reopening.

But I think at this point, there is more of a risk in not reopening.

And that risk is directly related to the health and well-being, the holistic health and well-being.

Which is emotional, psychological, as well as physical of our children, of the students.

I know that the adults are affected for sure, the teachers, our frontline workers and heroes.

If you ask me, they really are.

But I think not reopening at this point, not only do you have the academic loss, which is going to take a long time for that to come back, if ever.

But here in Memphis we have a particular challenge because the students who need that school, not only for the education but for the holistic services that school provides as well as the community a school provides for the student and his or her family.

Not having that advantage is becoming more and more of an issue.

That is everything included from the food.

There's food deserts out here in Memphis.

And we know that sometimes the only meal a student will get is at school.

There's the social and emotional well-being of the student.

You can't teach a student if that student is so preoccupied and at risk emotionally.

So those things are happening and they're real.

The decision to open or not to open, I know would have to be made based on the best interest hopefully of the student.

What is in the best interest of the student?

And everything else then would fall into place because you'll do whatever it takes to reopen that school.

I work with schools here as well as across the country who have reopened and have been reopened full-time.

They've given option of online learning, most of them.

But only a small percentage take that.

It's that reopening, that reentry into that sense of belonging for students, that esteem, their self-awareness that they get from the school.

We're seeing a lot of issues with children.

Depression, increase in that, and adverse childhood experiences are becoming chronic when they're not in school.

Something may happen at the home that is not good and that becomes chronic.

You know, you see these ads on television where all the family's gathered around a game table, or a TV and they're having a good time, or they're building a tent in their living room.

Well, that's marketing for a product.

That's not reality for the children.

That's really not.

Sometimes the home is a stressful situation and the school was their only salvation, their only escape.

And at this point, I'm sorry go ahead.

- No go ahead, finish your thought.

I'm sorry, the Zoom is lagging.

- I was gonna say, and at this point they have been isolated or cut away from their peer group, their support group, their identity for so long, it's affecting everybody.

- Yeah, Jon, you're nice enough to come on many times over the course of this pandemic.

And mostly we tend to talk about the health risks and the health impacts in a kind of physical sense.

I'm, you know, talking to a doctor.

I don't know what the right terminology is.

But we haven't talked with you at least as much about the social and emotional impacts.

Wearing your various many hats, what are you seeing in terms of impact to children beyond the physical health issues?

- I think there are profound impacts and there are many different ways this is impacting children right now.

When we look nationally right now, we are seeing significant mental health, behavioral health issues in teenagers.

This manifests as depression and anxiety, and increase nationally in suicidal ideation.

When we look at the younger kids, it really is stunting of that socio-emotional development.

It's an increase in exposure to these adverse childhood events that Dr. McDonald talked about.

And it is frankly making it very difficult for kids to learn and to get along in the house.

We think about, you know, remote learning and saying, well, it's the same thing as in-person learning.

And it really isn't.

I mean, you know, even in my situation where I have a big house, and technology and good internet, it was very difficult being remote.

It was very difficult being hybrid earlier in the year.

And I could see that the kids were not learning the way they should.

And now when you look in our at risk kids in Memphis, their ability to do that when there's an unstable family situation, or the technology isn't there, where there are all these social determinants of health and adverse childhood events going on, really kinda shuts the door I think on the ability to get the appropriate education that they need, and the appropriate socio emotional development that they need and they're missing from that school community.

- So then I'll stay with you for a second before I go back to Dr. McDonald.

So then can SCS, can Shelby County Schools, which is the only school system now in the state that hasn't opened.

There are a lot of big city school systems around the country that haven't opened.

But the only one in the state.

Can they open safely?

Can they keep kids safe?

And I think there's a lot of concern, can teachers be kept safe?

Because older people are more at risk.

And then you've got the whole factor that, you know, ninety percent of the students at least are black.

A very high percentage of teachers and staff are black.

And COVID is hitting black and brown communities much, much harder.

So you've got both the kids in there, you've got the students, and you've got their families at home.

Can that be done safely and what does it take?

- I think from the standpoint of health, we can do this very safely.

We've been running many schools full-time or in hybrid models for all of this particular school year.

There's good data that comes from the CDC, and now even from some studies that have been done in Tennessee that says when you open up schools and you apply your controls.

So wearing masks, attempting to social distance, cohorting kids, you know.

Hygiene and cleanliness.

Kids don't get infected at school.

Teachers don't get infected at school.

Or when they do, it's very, very rare.

More than 90% of all infections that we detect in teachers and in kids come from the community and they're not coming from the school.

And in the case of kids, it is typically social activities outside of the school, whether that's parties, or that's sporting events, or that's just getting together with your friends to try to rebuild that community you're missing because of school.

That's where the infections are happening.

So in the case of Shelby County Schools, we can do this safely from a health perspective.

We can get them back into that sense of community and start to repair some of that socio-emotional development.

The issues of is it technologically feasible, you know, they have the operational funds to do it the right way, it's a little bit more challenging than some of the private schools that may have more resources to apply to it.

But I do think it can be done.

- Same question to you, Mary.

The schools you're working with, you may or may not want to name them, but if they're in Memphis, or they're public, or private, or they're around the country.

But you've mentioned working with schools as a consultant, you know, schools that have reopened.

What have they done and what sort of infection rate have they seen?

How have they handled it successfully and what have they learned?

- In working with different schools, or talking to people around the country who have reopened schools or not, I've gotten a lot of information that I can share.

One thing is that first they make the decision to open the schools.

And once that's made, then they do whatever it takes in terms of providing a safe and sanitary environment for the teachers, the staff, the students, and making sure that that's done.

When you're looking at a system like Shelby County, and people say, well you can't compare that to a smaller, private system.

Actually there are systems out there that are about the same size.

The Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago for instance, they have about 85-90,000 students.

And they have reopened full-time in person.

There's only about 18% of those students who have chosen to go online.

And all of the teachers and the students are equipped with all the sanitary equipment that they need.

They follow the protocols that they need to do.

And making that decision based on the point of reopening the schools was the first thing.

So yes, that can be done.

That's a large system.

That's in a mostly urban area and has a similar population.

So you don't want to use anything as an excuse for not at least exploring the options of how you can do it.

Another thing that I've noticed is that most of those larger systems that reopened in person, they really practice the principle of subsidiarity.

Which means that decisions are made at the local level.

Even in Shelby County, no two schools are the same.

No two schools have the same needs or have the same populations.

So allowing principals and the teachers who work at the school to develop the plans for reopening, and make sure those plans are implemented and accountable for those plans really helps in making those decisions.

Yes you can open, or reopen, or not open as a system.

But if you look, that's like the big elephant in the room.

If you just take a bite at a time at each school and say that this school is able to reopen because of these protocols, or this one maybe has to stay hybrid for these protocols.

I don't think one size fits all.

So I don't you necessarily have to look at it that way.

- There is, for people interested in this, just this week the New York Times did a very long, very detailed story about Rhode Island's efforts to keep its schools open.

And in Providence particularly, the dynamics.

It's a smaller school system, but it's still very large, had tremendous challenges before COVID started, an aging infrastructure.

And it's a very blunt and eye-opening kind of account of mistakes they made, things that went right, things that went wrong.

But they have kept staying open and seen some success with that.

And I think it's worth mentioning if you're following this stuff.

- Here in Memphis, the schools that I know that have reopened, well, a charter, a private, and a Catholic, all of those have remained open in-person learning.

They allowed hybrid opportunities for parents who do not wish to have that opportunity.

But the point is that they are staying open.

And the teachers, they're having cases of students with COVID, or teachers with COVID.

They have the protocols to follow.

They do not close the school, but maybe that classroom.

Or they isolate for the two weeks, but they stay open.

They stay open and they give the parents that option.

- Go back to you, Dr. McCullers.

The CDC came out with guidance, and you know, some studies that it is safe to open.

There is minimal spread in the schools.

Much less than some, not all.

But some researchers thought there might be, that kids would be potentially even super spreaders and the schools and all the kids around each other and on top of each other.

Those measures, the CDC said it could be done but you need distancing, you need masks, you need contact tracing.

And they also found you've gotta have the right ventilation.

I don't expect you to know the state of every Shelby County school, or every public or private school in Memphis.

But is it your sense that those things can be met in most of the schools, that they can do distancing, masks, contact tracing, and handle the ventilation issues?

- Yeah, what we've seen and we do have the various school systems reporting twice a week into our joint Shelby County Memphis taskforce.

So we do get a good look into what's going on in the schools right now.

And there have been challenges.

Most of the challenges have been around sports to be honest.

That's where we've seen outbreaks in sporting events, both in terms of the players, and in terms of the spectators.

Within the schools, the challenges have been to really implement those risk-based guidelines that CDC has put in.

But they've been able to do it.

They've done it successfully in a great variety of schools across the city and the county.

And when they've met challenges, they've worked at 'em and they've overcome them.

And I do think that Shelby County Schools can do the same thing.

And there may be some bumps in the road as Dr. McDonald said, but they'll overcome those.

And I think, you know, returning to your question about equity and about Shelby County Schools being predominantly African-American, that's also a really key point in this in that this is really the most disadvantaged students and families within our city and within our county.

And they're the ones who are gonna be disproportionately impacted without the schools open.

COVID has really exposed a lot of these inequities, you know, kind of across society in terms of our African-American, our Hispanic population, tend to be in more service oriented jobs, more public facing.

They're more likely to get infected.

When they do get infected, they're more likely to spread it to family members because the households have more people in 'em, and have less space in 'em, and are often multi-generational.

And then even in the roll out of the vaccine, we're seeing significant equity issues where our African-Americans here in Memphis are not getting the vaccine at the same rate that white persons are.

And as a single example of the way we've rolled it out, we've really taken on not only, you know, starting with some of the priority groups like first responders and healthcare workers, but we've pushed service workers down the line.

We've pushed teachers down the line in terms of priority.

And we've started to layer on this age-based prioritization.

Which it makes sense because they're at higher risk for bad outcomes like death.

But disproportionately, if you look at the population across the United States, twenty percent of white people are over sixty-five.

But only 9% of Hispanic and African-Americans are over 65.

So even the age-based criteria really discriminate against persons of color.

- Do you think those should be changed?

- I think that there's an ethical framework that you have to think about.

There's a balance here certainly.

You do want to look at those who are at most risk of death and that clearly is the elderly and those with comorbidities.

But there's also a significant equity issue about, okay, we're gonna protect those who are older and are at more risk of death, but are better able to protect themselves from the virus to start with.

And we're not gonna protect those who are public facing, more likely to get the infection.

So you're saying it's okay for younger people to be infected in order to protect older people.

And because of the racial, you know, distribution of those two groups, it really creates these inequities in who's getting protected.

So it's a difficult question to answer, Eric.

And I think we've struggled with this on a national basis.

But it's clear that rolling it out this way does create racial inequity.

- Dr. McDonald, I want to talk a little bit looking forward.

What will we have to do as a community to make up for this year?

For the learning loss, for the academic, you know, loss.

And that's really, I mean obviously, it's gonna be more it would seem on the schools, on SCS, and the schools that didn't reopen, 'cause that is harder.

When we had the head of Freedom Prep on last week, you know, they've done hybrid, they've done some in-person, they've done virtual.

And she was very blunt about how, you know, virtual really isn't working for a lot of kids.

They're doing it but they know it's a real problem.

And her account of how things have gone despite their best efforts is really kind of harrowing.

And you can go back to it if you want to listen.

But what do we need to start preparing for or doing now?

I mean in terms of summer schools, in terms of tutoring.

I mean, how do we make up for this loss or will we ever?

- We have no choice but to make up for that loss.

I actually serve on the board of Freedom Prep.

So I'm well aware of that situation and the challenges that they, as well as other schools have faced.

We have no choice but to make up for that loss.

And the loss is learning, going to be that for sure, that gap in the achievement levels.

Also, the styles of learning.

Students have to learn how to learn.

And a lot of them have lost that because they have gone to Zoom and they just really are not engaged.

And that's across the board at all schools.

But also we have to be prepared for the emotional losses that have been experienced by the students and the teachers as well as their families.

But particularly the students because they are not aware of why they are feeling this, and why they're having to go through this.

And I had experience in the past with that with the students that came to us in Memphis from the Hurricane Katrina, who went to school here.

And I realized early on that the sense of belonging, the sense of loss, that's the same thing that the students here now are feeling.

And at that time, I engaged a psychotrauma team to work with students and their families.

Because you have to kind of fill in that gap.

What's really the issue here?

In our community, I think there's a few things that we have to do.

We have to stop looking for fault, finding blame, thinking that this didn't work, so those people were wrong, and this didn't work so they were wrong.

No, I think we need to just come together and work on these issues together.

No one school has all the answers.

No one system has all the answers.

And no one system has all the losses.

There's losses everywhere.

So if we could work as a team, work together from across the spectrum of educational options in the city.

You know, we don't position anyone as being right or wrong.

But to come together and say, okay, we have a problem with the children in our community and what they have gone through and what they are facing.

And we need to come up with this plan, student-centered plan on how we can do it.

Yes, it will take volunteers of tutoring, and all of those things for the academic piece.

But it's the emotional piece that I worry about.

Some students actually have given up.

I don't care what grade they are.

They have given up on this learning because this is not how they learn, and this is not the social interaction that they are most responsive to.

They've lost a lot and we have to recognize that.

We should have concern but not fear.

We do have answers.

We do have solutions.

We have smart, smart people in this community who will come together and assist in any way.

But we just make sure that we are addressing the holistic needs of the student.

- Briefly, do we have the money?

Enough money?

- I always say, money follows the mission.

This is a mission we're on.

This is a mission to make this right for our students, for our community, for our children.

And yes, we have the money.

It may be in other people's pockets right now.

But yes, we have the money.

And coming from a system where we always have to make a dollar out of $0.98, we will get the money, we will get the money.

People will step up.

- If I could add, Eric, from the health standpoint, as we think about reopening, we think about reintegration of kids into schools, right now we're seeing so many behavioral and mental health issues in kids while they're out of schools.

But we're also seeing this other side of it, this anxiety about going back into schools.

And if you think about first day of school in the fall after a summer break, and all the problems we have with kids going to a new school or going back into that peer group environment after some time away, many kids have now been out for a year.

They're gonna be going back after this big gap.

And you know, there's gonna be expectations on them.

There's gonna be anxiety and concern.

And it's just gonna be heightened compared to what we normally see.

Some other issues, you think about college prep, all the anxiety around trying now to get into college when you've been hybrid for a year and can't visit the colleges, and you know, feel like you're not ready for that.

That's a problem in normal times.

And now with COVID layering on top of that, it's a tremendous, you know, mental health issue that we're facing.

- Go ahead Mary, no, go ahead.

- I just want to add to that, Dr. McCullers, yes.

And also the teachers.

Remember, they're the ones who are the frontline for the education system.

I do not think that it is equitable to send them back into the classroom without them having some retraining, and some guidance, and some trauma addressed themselves.

I think that they need to be well-equipped and well-prepared.

It's not just teaching, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

They're talking about dealing with emotional problems for themselves and students that they've never dealt with before.

We should not send them back unprepared.

And I think we need to focus.

Yes, we need to focus on the students' learning.

But also the professional development for the teachers, to help them to be effective in the classroom as they've always been.

- With just a minute left, and I could talk about all these issues more.

We did a show last week people could take a look at on WKNO.org, or get the podcast about these issues.

And next week we'll have at least two board members, Board Chair Miska Clay Bibbs and board member Billy Orgel from the Shelby County Schools.

And we've reached out to Dr. Ray, Superintendent of Shelby County Schools to come on.

But just with a little bit of time left here, Dr. McCullers, where are we more broadly in the community, not just on education and teachers and students with vaccine rollout?

Is it accelerating?

Are we getting smarter?

There is obviously mass, really a great deal of frustration and confusion so far.

I'm not putting that on you.

I'm really not putting that on any one person.

It is an incredible task.

But it has not been the greatest rollout so far.

Do you see it getting better and do you see more vaccine coming our way?

- Yeah, it's been a slow rollout.

That's really a supply issue at the federal level, and it's been a lack of central administration, both at the federal and state level, that are now improving rapidly with the Biden administration in place.

So I am hopeful for it.

I do think it's accelerating.

I think we'll get there by the middle of summer.

- All right, well thank you both.

Dr. McDonald, Dr. McCullers, thank you for joining us.

But that is all the time we have this week.

Remember you can get past episodes of this show at WKNO.org.

You can actually go to YouTube and search for Behind the Headlines.

Or you can download the full podcast of the show from The Daily Memphian site, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks and we'll see you next week.

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