As the push to reopen schools intensifies, Miguel Cardona and first lady Jill Biden travel to Meriden to show how this town did it

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First lady Jill Biden, left, with U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in Meriden on March 3.

On his first day on the job as U.S. Secretary of Education, Meriden’s Miguel Cardona traveled back to his hometown Wednesday to showcase for the nation, alongside first lady Jill Biden and the leader of one of the nation’s largest teachers’ unions, how the district where he spent his career opened its schools for students to learn in-person and full-time amid the pandemic.

“It feels great to be home,” Cardona said during his visit to Benjamin Franklin Elementary School. “Today, the Silver City shines. … I want to commend you all on such a great job. The students of this school have been in school since [Labor Day] when the system opened every day, all day — and it was done in a manner that protected the students and the staff and their families. That deserves a round of applause.”

“Teachers want to be back. We want to be back,” said Biden, who teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College. Her students recently told her they want to return for in-person learning. “And, you know, I think that’s how we all feel, but we just know that we have to get back safely.”

Socially distanced and masked kindergarten students were practicing writing with their teacher while others worked on laptops as the first lady approached. Their T-shirts noted their year of college graduation: 2037.

“It’s so nice to be here. I’m Jill. Hi,” Biden said when she introduced herself to a teacher. She complimented a little girl who’d worn a teal gown under her T-shirt for the occasion.

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First lady Jill Biden talks with a student at the school.

Cardona fist-bumped the students and talked to them about ninja turtles.

As the students tittered and chattered, their teacher told Biden and Cardona that the children have been back in school since August and that she always has extra masks on hand in case someone forgets theirs.

Getting more schools across the country to offer students the opportunity to return for in-person learning is a top priority of President Joe Biden’s administration. The president has set a 100-day timeline to get the majority of the nation’s schools open.

Cardona is keeping track of how much time remains for him to get the job done: 72 days.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

Supporters wave at Jill Biden passing by in a car in Meriden.

Meriden — an urban school district with 8,118 students, most of whom come from low-income families and are Black or Latino — is somewhat of an outlier in both Connecticut and throughout the nation for offering students the opportunity to return to school full time.

Here’s how they did it.

The district’s superintendent and key staff came in on a Sunday early in the pandemic to work on a plan with the local teachers’ union for how to safely reopen schools, set up a system to track student and staff COVID-19 infections, and establish thresholds for when schools would have to close.

The extra funding the district received from the federal government helped the district purchase masks, cleaning materials and other supplies. The district started with a summer pilot program for some of its most vulnerable students to return for some in-person instruction. As the school year approached, the district had buy-in from its staff and teachers’ union to return full-time.

“We have all battled together non-stop to keep this in-person option going,” Meriden Superintendent Mark Benigni said. “There were no secrets or mysteries. This was our plan. This is what we were doing, and this is the guidance we were getting from the [local] health department. We didn’t hide from the data. The data on infections is shared in dashboards that anyone can go on our website and see.”

His district also got significantly more agreement from hesitant parents to send their children back to school for in-person learning, which has been a problem in other districts. Overcoming the confidence gap among some parents and school staff is a remaining hurdle in the push to reopen schools.

Given the option to return for in-person learning, only half have done so in Bridgeport, 41% in Hartford and 15% in Waterbury.

In Meriden, 68% of students are learning in-person, a percentage that continues to rise, district data show. A teacher in one of the classrooms that Biden and Cardona visited Wednesday returned to teaching in-person recently because more students are returning to the building for class.

The district decided not to cut extracurricular activities, as some districts have done as part of their efforts to catch up on lost instruction time. This, Benigni said, was key to luring students back.

“We know school is much more than six hours a day of academics, and that it’s all the other things that students embrace and enjoy, so we didn’t stop our music programs or sports programs or arts programs. Those are still an option for students,” he said.

Cardona — a former teacher, principal and state education commissioner — highlighted the importance of these programs during his visit Wednesday.

“Across the country, future Lin-Manuel Mirandas are sitting at home instead of going to the drama club. Future astronauts like Mark Kelly are sitting at home instead of going to a science lab to spark that wonder of science. We must continue to reopen America’s schools for in-person learning as quickly and as safely as possible.”

Along the way, there have been some students and staff in Meriden who have tested positive for COVID.

Since the school year began, 9.6% of the districts’ staff and 3.1% of students have tested positive for COVID-19. Presently, however, there are no students or school staff at Benjamin Franklin Elementary recovering from infection or quarantining after being exposed to the virus. Districtwide, currently 0.1% of students have tested positive and are in quarantine, and 0.09% of school staff have tested positive. State officials hope now that teachers and more people are getting vaccinated every day, fewer COVID infections will show up in students and staff.

Members of the Velez family account for four of the COVID-19 infections in the district.

Maria Velez, who works as a climate specialist at a high school in the district, was on leave from her job as she prepared for shoulder surgery when she became ill with COVID-19. She believes she got the infection from one of the pre-operation doctors’ visits.

The virus spread quickly in her house to her husband, who also works in a Meriden school, and two daughters who attend school in-person. It didn’t spread in her daughters’ classrooms, however.

“Fortunately for us, we came out OK,” she said while standing outside the school Wednesday to cheer on Cardona, who is a local celebrity in Meriden.

Now recovered, she wouldn’t have done anything differently.

“We had to go back to work. My kids needed to go back to school. They have to live life. We don’t know how long this is going to last, so we learned how to adapt,” said Velez.

Gina Pavao decided to send her kids back to school at Franklin Elementary. She needed to go back to work at the Save-A-Lot convenience store, and her son and daughter missed their friends. Their grades were also suffering as she struggled to help them do their work at home.

“It was stressful being home with them. As long as they wear their masks and use the sanitizer, I trust the school knows what they are doing,” she said, standing outside the school.

A coalition of parents set up school desks and a dry-erase board outside the school on Wednesday to remind onlookers that Black and Latino children are being left behind during the pandemic.

Yehyun Kim :: ctmirror.org

A classroom is set up outside to remind federal and state officials not to forget about Black and brown children. The protest took place at an intersection in Meriden where Jill Biden drove by.

“I’m out here today because I want to congratulate and welcome Jill Biden, and I also want to congratulate Miguel Cardona and his position. But I also want to make it clear that we are going to hold [Cardona] accountable,” said LaShawn Robinson, who has four kids in the Hartford Public Schools system and organized the demonstration with Connecticut Parents Union President Gwen Samuel. “You have questions to answer when it comes to my child’s education and other kids in the community.”

Hartford began offering its students full in-person learning this week.

A CT Mirror analysis of state data shows that districts that are learning in-person are more likely to be predominantly white. Black and Hispanic students are most likely to be attending school online a day or two a week. State data also show that students attending remotely are missing almost twice as many days as those attending in-person.

The state releases data each week that show the number of students in each learning model that have tested positive for the coronavirus, but those figures offer little context, since they do not show the rate of students in those learning models who have been infected. A CT Mirror analysis of last week’s data show that infection rates in all learning models are substantially under the 1% mark, the level above which community spread occurs, according to public health experts. However, the infection rate was higher for students learning in-person, with 13 out of more than 10,000 students infected last week, compared to a rate of six out of 10,000 students learning online and nine out of 10,000 learning in the hybrid model.

Research released earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concludes that schools have not been super-spreaders.

“In-person learning in schools has not been associated with substantial community transmission. Although national COVID-19 case incidence rates among children and adolescents have risen over time, this trend parallels trends observed among adults. Increases in case incidence among school-aged children and school reopening do not appear to pre-date increases in community transmission,” the federal agency concluded.

Biden said the president’s omnibus COVID-19 response bill, which directs more money to schools, will help get more schools like Benjamin Franklin Elementary reopened.

“We just know that we have to get back safely. I think that once we get our teachers vaccinated and we get the American Rescue Plan passed … schools like this can have the money to be back safely,” she said during her visit.

Cardona said it is priority No. 1 for him, too.