COLOMBIA – In the midst of an effort to vaccinate South Carolina teachers before face-to-face learning can fully resume, local officials who decide how their schools work are converging on Hilton Head Island for their own educational conference.
About 300 school board members and overseers from across the state are attending the South Carolina School Board Association’s four-day annual convention that begins on February 18, said association director Scott Price.
Reduced to meet security protocols, this year’s convention at the Hilton Head Marriott by the sea comes with a mask mandate, temperature checks and social detachment. The exhibitors at the show were eliminated. And all student presentations will be transmitted by video. The groups featured include student choirs from Cayce, Johnsonville and Fairfield County, the Williston-Elko drums and the Pelion High orchestra, according to the program.
“It will look completely different than it normally is,” said Price.
It is the association’s first fully in-person conference since its convention a year ago, after an online-only conference in August and a hybrid meeting in December.
“We are trying to provide the much needed professional development for our members in a secure manner,” said Price. “We have taken a series of measures to ensure the safety of the participants and our team.”
The event received approval from the state Department of Commerce for meeting the COVID-19 protocols for meetings of more than 250 people.
The organization declined to provide a list of applications, so it is not known which school districts the participants come from.
Currently, about 55% of the state’s 1,266 public schools offer an entire week of face-to-face learning. Most of the rest offer a weekly combination of face-to-face and online learning. The last two districts to bring students back, rural Lee and Calhoun counties, recently allowed some face-to-face learning in the first grades.
Lawmakers pressuring districts to offer an entire week in the classroom say they expect school board members they attend to make decisions at home, allowing students to learn personally.
“I just hope they know what they are doing and are safe and understand the point of view of some districts not meeting person to person,” said Dep. Russel Ott, D-St. Matthews. “The potential for sending mixed messages definitely exists.”
Calhoun County Democrat authored a proposal to make K-12 employees eligible for the COVID-19 vaccination in exchange for requiring each district to provide families with full weeks in the classroom. At the first hearing, on February 16, on this measure and a similar one approved by the Senate, dozens of defenders of other workers and residents at medical risk also asked to receive the vaccines. A second hearing is scheduled for next week.
“If it is safe for school board members to collect these numbers, it is certainly safe for teachers to be in classrooms,” said Senate Education President Greg Hembree, R-Little River.
Defending the legislation to put elementary and high school staff in the first phase of COVID-19 vaccinations, Amelia McKie, a member of the Richland Two School Board, said that it is the local authorities who should weigh what is best for students, staff and their families “when it is absolutely safe to fully reopen schools.”
“The only thing we know will work at the local level is that teachers, school staff and administrators can get the COVID-19 vaccine,” she told the House panel, representing the School Council Association as a member of its board.
follow Seanna Adcox on Twitter at @seannaadcox_pc.