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Seattle, Lake Washington school districts close for at least two weeks

Parker Miles Blohm
/
KNKX
Seattle Superintendent Denise Juneau (right) with, from left, School Board President Zachary DeWolf and Gwendolyn Jimerson of the Seattle Education Association

Two of the state’s largest school districts are closing for at least two weeks due to the coronavirus outbreak, affecting more than 80,000 students.

Officials with Seattle Public Schools and the Lake Washington School District both made that decision after Gov. Jay Inslee issued mandatory social distancing measures and prohibited gatherings of more than 250 people in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties. He said that response is needed in order for the region to slow the spread of the deadly illness.

The Lake Washington School District includes Kirkland, where the hospital and nursing home that account for the majority of the state’s COVID-19 deaths so far are located. An online petition started by a middle schooler urging the schools to close gained more than 60,000 signatures.

Seattle Superintendent Denise Juneau said she determined it was no longer possible for the district to operate normally with the increase in COVID-19 cases and the amount of deep cleaning required due to possible coronavirus exposures at schools. But she said she grappled with taking this action because the city’s working parents are so dependent on schools being open.

“That’s why this decision was so difficult to make,” she said. “We realize our impact on this city. We realize our impact on families who need our services. We realize our impact on the education of our citizenry.”

Unlike the Northshore School District northeast of Seattle, which closed schools starting last week, Juneau said Seattle will not offer students online instruction while schools are closed. That’s because many families in the district do not own computers or have Internet access.

But she said she asked educators to prepare packets of work for students to complete at home. She said the district is still working on details for providing food to students who depend on school meals. About one third of Seattle's 53,600 students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

The school closures mean upheaval for many families that have nowhere to send their kids and are now scrambling to find child care. But some parents and teachers welcomed the news because the coronavirus is spreading so rapidly in the state and poses such a big threat to older people and medically vulnerable people.

Daniel Gross teaches AP U.S. government and AP human geography at Roosevelt High School in Northeast Seattle. He’s been concerned about getting ill from being around about 150 students every day and then spreading it to family members, including his 93-year-old grandmother.

“She’s like a second mother to me, and I’ve had to isolate myself from her because I’m nervous about transmitting the virus to her,” Gross said.

Some parents had already chosen to keep their children at home. Natalie Singer is the mother of a middle schooler and high schooler in North Seattle. She and her husband work for Microsoft and had begun working from home because of the virus. Earlier this week, they started keeping their children home because one of them is asthmatic and Singer is also asthmatic.

Singer said she’s facing the challenge of trying to work from home and manage her children’s learning. She said not all teachers responded when she asked for work for her kids to do at home, so she is making her own assignments.

She says she told them “`it could be a good idea for you guys to do some creative writing where you just write about how you’re feeling with COVID-19 and being out of school and what that experience has been like, and that can count as your creative writing.’”

Singer said she’s joined some Facebook groups that have sprung up to share tips on temporarily homeschooling kids during the coronavirus outbreak.

In the Lake Washington district, eighth grader Michael Finlayson had drafted the petition to urge the schools to close out of concern for his mother, who has severe cerebral palsy and has a hard time recovering from respiratory infections. His father, Ken, said the family is glad to see that the schools are closing.

“Obviously, we think that it is the right decision,” Ken Finlayson said in an email. “We understand that it was not an easy decision, and there were many complicated variables involved. It seems like the district is heading in the right direction by addressing the needs of child care and meal programs, while also offering students opportunities for remote learning and social distancing.”

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Education Coronavirus Coverage
In July 2017, Ashley Gross became KNKX's youth and education reporter after years of covering the business and labor beat. She joined the station in May 2012 and previously worked five years at WBEZ in Chicago, where she reported on business and the economy. Her work telling the human side of the mortgage crisis garnered awards from the Illinois Associated Press and the Chicago Headline Club. She's also reported for the Alaska Public Radio Network in Anchorage and for Bloomberg News in San Francisco.