Hundreds of students are being packed into auditoriums for classes taught by a single teacher. Educators are losing planning periods that are necessary to prepare for lessons. Custodians and cafeteria workers are being thrown into classrooms and asked to watch children.

South Carolina schools are facing a logistical nightmare as the highly transmissible omicron variant infects a record number of students and staff.

During the first week of January, 31,522 S.C. students were required to quarantine, according to data from the state Department of Health and Environmental Control. This is approximately a 372 percent increase from the number quarantined the week of Dec. 13 before most students went on winter break.

The skyrocketing number of cases and quarantines in the state has caused operational woes for district officials. Because omicron is a highly transmissible variant, many school districts are seeing a greater number of breakthrough cases among staff members than they experienced during the delta variant’s surge at the beginning of the 2021-22 school year.

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It’s creating a dire situation for many districts as more staff members stay home each day to isolate and quarantine. The staffing is such a problem that it’s contributed to 12 school districts going virtual as of 10 a.m. Jan. 14.

“We’re all drinking from a million fire hoses and you just can’t catch up,” said Dawn MacAdams, coordinator of health services at Richland School District Two in Columbia.

Even though it’s difficult to keep schools open, districts are trying to keep students learning in person as long as possible. Data suggests that students perform better when they learn in person. From the 2018-19 to 2020-21 school years, the percentage of students who met or exceeded expectations on standardized test scores dropped in every subject except for the English I End of Course exams, according to the S.C. Department of Education annual school report card.

Having students learn remotely also puts a societal strain on parents, some of whom have to miss work to watch over their children.

“When we switch to virtual, that is an incredible hardship for our families, where if they don’t work they don’t get paid,” said Lexington School District One Superintendent Greg Little.

Even though district leaders want students in school, many remain reluctant to mandate masks, one of the most effective ways to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

The mask divide

Only three of the state’s 10 largest school districts — Charleston County, Richland School District One and Richland Two — are requiring masks. In those districts, school leaders felt it was important to keep students, staff and visitors masked while cases are so high.

On Jan. 4, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control adopted new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance that shortens the quarantine period for positive cases from 10 to five days. Students can return to class on the sixth day after they tested positive if their symptoms have improved and they haven’t had a fever in the past 24 hours, but they have to wear a mask through the 10th day after testing positive.

Districts are required to keep track of which students tested positive and how many days it has been since they returned.

At Richland One, Richland Two and in Charleston, education leaders say it’s a simple task because everyone is required to wear the masks.

“I don’t know how you enforce it when you don’t have a mask mandate,” MacAdams said.

Other major districts have avoided implementing mask requirements, saying they want to continue giving parents the choice on what their child wears. Districts now have the freedom to implement mask requirements if they choose, but it wasn’t always that way earlier this school year.

A state budget rule backed by Gov. Henry McMaster prohibited the use of state funds to implement mask requirements. On Sept. 27, that budget rule was overturned by a federal judge, who said it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Since then, few districts have started requiring masks even though there were no legal barriers.

“I think we’re really at the peak of it, we’re not considering adding something,” Little said about the potential of reinstating a mask requirement as cases rise.

He added that more and more students are wearing masks despite the lack of a requirement because of the new DHEC rules.

At Kershaw County School District, cases have stayed low despite a lack of a mask mandate. Since the start of the pandemic, Superintendent Shane Robbins said that he has used every tool at his disposal to mitigate virus spread at the 10,856-student district.

The district put federal COVID relief funds toward paying for infrared temperature scanning systems at entrances to buildings, plexiglass barriers on desks, electrostatic sprayers that disinfect surfaces, UV light rays on buses and HEPA filters to increase air quality. The district has also created isolation rooms for sick students and staff members, and is working to have social distancing where possible. Eighty-one percent of its staff are vaccinated.

So far the district’s cases haven’t surpassed its school-year peak of around 250 student positives in August.

“If you walk in our schools right now, because the spread has increased, you’re seeing more and more students and staff members wear a mask than they did before Christmas,” Robbins said.

The staff experience

In the first week of January, 2,010 staff members were placed in isolation with COVID-19 and another 1,375 were put in quarantine for being a close contact, according to DHEC data. At some schools, 10 to 15 percent of the total staff are out, causing major disruptions to the entire day.

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At a Dorchester District 2 meeting about COVID-19 severity on Jan. 14, Jack Mansor, principal of River Oaks Middle School in North Charleston, reported that 27 percent of his teachers were at home due to the pandemic. Later that day, the district announced that it would transition Dubose and Oakbrook middle schools to virtual learning from Jan. 18 to Jan. 24.

“At the end of the day it’s not sustainable,” Mansor said. “My teachers are getting tired, students are tired.”

The situation is causing an overall sense of uneasiness for teachers across the state, said Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association.

Teachers are being asked to cover for classes, forgo their planning and break time, and teach students online and in person. It’s exacerbating the burnout teachers were already feeling from the previous two years of the pandemic. 

“I’ve heard of teachers working the cafeteria line, I’ve heard of teachers cleaning their own classrooms, I’ve heard of custodians working as substitutes right now,” East said.

It ultimately creates a worsened experience for the students, where school has become more about child care than education. Educators like East wonder if it would be better for districts to just go online for two weeks so the virus can calm down.

But there’s problems with that plan, as well. Patrick Kelly, a teacher and director of government affairs for the Palmetto State Teachers Association, said that if a teacher is out sick, they shouldn’t be expected to work, even remotely. If they’re out, they’re either personally ill or they have a child at home who is sick.

“In both of those situations, it is inappropriate to ask the teacher to be at home delivering instruction,” he said.

Both Kelly and East are concerned that this latest wave will be the tipping point for many teachers who have considered quitting their profession.

The state is already in the midst of a teacher shortage crisis, with 1,063 vacancies at the start of the 2021-22 school year, according to the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement’s annual report.

The dire situation that teachers find themselves in right now should be a wake-up call for state lawmakers as they move through the legislative session, Kelly said.

“We started at a deficit, which means we have no margin within our staffing and human resources to respond to something like this,” he said.

Jerrel Floyd contributed to this story.

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