Oregon parents, teachers react to schools reopening

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Both parents and teachers alike are expressing some apprehension ahead of the upcoming school year.

Portland Public Schools parent Brad Korpalski “We didn’t want to put her in front of a screen for long stretches of time, nor did she really have the attention to do it.”

Brad Korpalski has a daughter who’s about to start kindergarten and another going into third grade within Portland Public Schools. He said they did the best, they could to create lesson plans at home, but it’s not something they can do full time. Korpalski said, “Personally, I think a hybrid approach is probably the best course of action, I wouldn’t want to see full distant learning, I mean it would be very difficult for us to manage that.”

But as plans emerge for the fall, many teachers don’t feel safe going back just yet.

Elizabeth Thiel is the Portland Association of Teachers President. She explained, “There’s a lot of fear and one educator told me it feels like being asked to play Russian roulette, probably won’t die, but you might.”

Thiel told KOIN 40% of her fellow PAT members said that either they themselves or someone they live with are in the high-risk group for COVID-19.

“Kids aren’t very good a social distancing when we imagine opening classrooms,” Thiel said. “Even at half capacity with maybe 15 kids in a classroom, there’s a lot of unanswered questions.”

Both Portland Public Schools and the Beaverton School District have proposed a hybrid model of virtual and in-person learning for the fall.

In Portland K through 8 students would be divided into two groups. Group A would be at school Mondays and Tuesdays, group B would come Thursdays and Fridays, leaving Wednesday to clean the school.

Beaverton plans to follow a similar model along with an option for students to enroll in an online-only school.

If this is going to work though, Theil said more federal funding is needed. “In order to open schools,” she said, “for kids, we would need a huge influx of resources to be able to make sure that they’re safe or we’ll need to accept that it’s going to be much less in face-to-face time than what I think we all would like to see.”