Casting aside the standards of the Centers for Disease Control and Maryland health officials, County Executive Marc Elrich and his health officer, Travis Gayles, on Friday night announced they would bar nonpublic schools from opening in the fall for in-person instruction.
On Saturday, after Republican Gov. Larry Hogan publicly expressed his disagreement with Elrich’s and Gayles’s decision, county officials privately tried to convince Hogan that the nonpublic schools were fine with the government barring their doors.
That’s not true.
“This decision was a real sucker punch,” said Robert Gold, the co-founder and executive director of the Feynman School. “We were really trying hard to make a plan this year to keep everybody safe,” he told me Saturday evening. The school consulted with experts, including a National Institutes of Health scientist, and Gold said one mom, a pediatrician, said “absolutely no qualms.”
“The notion that the schools are okay couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“It’s an intrusion on the responsibility and rights of families to determine what is best for their children,” said Kevin Davern, headmaster of the Avalon School on Saturday. “It unreasonably treats small schools that are able to take reasonable and workable precautions like the conglomerated schools that cannot.”
“The thought that everyone in this community is happy with this is baloney,” Rabbi Zev Katz, principal of the girls’ division of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington told me. “This seems like tremendous governmental overreach.”
“It’s overreaching. It’s inappropriate,” Rabbi Yitzchok Merkin, headmaster of the Yeshiva told me. “It’s just wrong.”
Principals and board members of multiple Catholic parishes told me they were unable to comment without permission from the Archdiocese of Washington. The Archdiocese pointed out how hard schools and the Archdiocese had been working to make in-person instruction safe by modifying buildings and schedules and imposing rules — all in accord with guidance from federal and state health officials.
“Great care has been taken by our school leaders to create reopening plans that follow all current state and national guidelines for reopening schools,” stated the perpetually nonconfrontational Archbishop Wilton Gregory.
Parents were also angry.
“We were incredibly caught off guard last night with the announcement, especially after Hogan condoned opening, and CDC gave the OK,” said Katie Calidas, a parent with two children at one Montgomery County Catholic school. “Our school has been working so hard to make improvements to meet the safety measure, only to be shot down by the county. It doesn’t seem they were given a fair shot. And the county misled them in the first place, pretending they would be allowed to open if safety requirements were met.”
Seema Panchal, a parent in Potomac, said, “When our kids’ public school officially closed for in-person teaching, we had to scramble. As I am an essential worker, I have to have guaranteed care for my 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son in order to be able to care for the patients I see every day as a pediatrician. When we found the Goddard school in Gaithersburg, I was impressed with her ability to keep kids safe and provide in-person teaching. They had a meticulously planned for not only the kids’ safety but the teachers’ safety. … This is a shock to all of us, including the school director. I am extremely disappointed in their decision as it doesn’t make medical sense to me.”
While some private schools, particularly the well-endowed, were happy to close down and probably were relieved by the county’s orders, I privately heard from angry parents or teachers at dozens of schools that had crafted detailed plans to keep children safe. This included over a dozen Catholic parish schools, along with independent religious and nonreligious schools.
Leaders at the less-well-heeled private schools expressed worry they could be devastated, or even shuttered, by this decision. These schools are kept afloat by tuition. Parents who are making sacrifices to pay for an exceptional education and experience for their children might not be able to justify the cost if the private schools are providing the inferior product that is remote learning. Other parents might lose work because they have to stay at home with their children.
Elrich’s and Gayles’s decision could result in the closure of many religious and private schools. The school heads are not fine with that. The question is whether Elrich and Gayles are.
UPDATED: This article has been updated Sunday afternoon to add comment from the leaders of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington.
