Parents Mixed Over Schools’ Covid Response

A letter from the Oceanside School District was sent to families in the district about the rising Covid-19 cases in Nassau County. Sixty-seven cases were reported in the district following the Thanksgiving holiday week. The letter was sent as a reminder to parents to continue to be mindful of the virus and to keep students home if they are experiencing Covid-19 symptons.

In a phone call, Schools Superintendent Dr. Phyllis Harrington clarified the reasoning for the letter and made it clear that there are no current plans to switch to a hybrid or remote model. “We saw the same uptick that everybody else had heard about in the county on Long Island,” she said. “We put the numbers on our website daily and from right before Thanksgiving to right after Thanksgiving, approximately one week. We did have an uptick in the number of positive cases. I made a commitment to notify parents if the numbers did spike, but the purpose of that letter was a reminder of the things that we still expect of everybody and we’re not changing our course of action because our course of action has worked.”

Harrington continued, “We’ve had everybody in school since day one. The letter was just an FYI and a reminder that Covid has not gone away and to remember to follow all of the protocols that I delineated in the letter. Nothing has changed, and there’s absolutely no talk of doing anything differently than what we’ve been doing. We believe it’s been very, very successful.

“That letter was a polite reminder to parents: Please, don’t send your kids to school if they’re sick,” Harrington added. “Even if you suspect there might be someone you were in contact with, please get tested before you send your kids to school, especially on the heels of the holidays. The last thing in the world I want to do is to have families have to struggle through this during the holidays. If everybody does their part, hopefully we will keep this minimal and the numbers will scale back down to what they were months ago.”

Parents in the community had mixed opinions about the school’s response to the rise in cases. “It’s shameful that Oceanside School District does not have a remote learning program for kids in mandatory quarantine,” Eugene Berman said. Berman’s daughter Milana, a 6-year-old student at School No. 8, is on a 10-day quarantine.

Oceanside resident Claudia Claude wished that the district would return some aspects of last year’s hybrid model. The district “did such a great job last year,” Claude said. “Allowing people to be remote (if they wanted to) and keeping class sizes small,” these were positives from the 2020-21 school year, according to her.

Ellen Feinstein, whose children graduated from the district, said she hopes that events like the upcoming winter concerts and Getting into College Night, which usually draw large crowds, will either go virtual or be delayed. “I distinctly remember how every time my children participated in concerts, many of their peers would get whatever virus was circulating at that time,” Feinstein said. “I shudder to think about Covid transmissions this year.”

Oceanside resident Louie Catalanotto said he believes that the responsibility should be on the parents to keep their children home if they feel sick, treating it like the flu. “Want to hear my thought on it, move on with your lives and stop being scared,” Catalanotto said in a Facebook post.

“We have a strong instructional program in place for the kids who have to quarantine. I think, for the most part, that people completely understand the situation that we’re in. We’re trying to get back to as close to normal as we possibly can,” Harrington said. “I’m very, very comfortable with the position that our district does take. We want to do the best that we can and keep people informed at the same time.”

The letter to parents stated that individuals who are fully vaccinated, which is defined as two weeks past their second vaccination, will not be required to quarantine if they are deemed a close contact as long as they remain asymptomatic. As a whole, U.S. Covid-19 cases climbed heading into the holidays this year and last.