There is an old Army saying, sometimes attributed to Dwight Eisenhower, that goes, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”
The point of this seeming oxymoron is that it is critical to plan for an emergency, but emergencies have considerable unknowns which will require original plans to be revised.
The Justice administration Friday released more specifics on its back-to-school plan. It is a county-by-county color-coded system based on the number of positive Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people.
As our Brad McElhinny reported, “Cases from 0 to 7 per 100,000 equals green, 8-15 is yellow, 16-24 is the orange zone, and if you exceed 25 is red. Red triggers distance learning only.” Yellow and Orange require additional mitigation efforts.
Counties will use a 7-day rolling average of Covid-19 cases. “School systems will know definitively where they stand at 9 p.m. Saturdays when the system locks into place with a determination for the week,” McElhinny reported.
The plan represents a reasonable attempt toward opening school September 8, but it is just that—a plan, and there is not universal buy in.
Some teachers had hoped Governor Justice would start the school year with remote instruction only. That might be the safest approach, but distance learning has its own set of drawbacks, especially for children in the younger grades.
Parents are divided. The numbers coming in from counties suggest many parents are opting for remote learning or a hybrid system of distance and in-person instruction.
Under the color coded system, parents, teachers and staff will have to be prepared to pivot if they get word late Saturday evening that their county has gone into the red, or come off of red and are returning to in-person instruction.
These and other uncertainties create lots of anxiety. School, by its nature, is highly structured. The year begins with the calendar in place that teachers and parents can plan around. Teachers go in with established lesson plans and goals for the year.
The knowns create a reliable structure for learning. However, as we all know now, the virus is effective at generating unknowns. To cope with the unpredictability, we plan as best we can, which is what county school systems and the Justice administration are trying to do.
That planning is critical to any attempt to reopen schools, but the old Army truism means everything will change.