Tag: coronavirus

High School Fall Sports Season To Be ‘Challenging’

At our press time, Freedom High was expected to open its 2020 football season on Sept. 11, hosting its New Tampa neighbor and archrival Wharton High, but the toughest opponent for both teams to combat that night likely wasn’t each other.

It was Covid-19.

And, that doesn’t just go for football. Avoiding the virus is arguably the biggest challenge facing teams across Hillsborough County (and the country), as high school athletes, their coaches and administrators try their best to remain socially distant and safe in what is certain to be the strangest prep sports season ever.

“It’s going to be very…what’s the word I’m looking for? Intensive,” says Wharton athletic director Eddie Henderson “It’s going to be a lot of work.”

The county is following all CDC guidelines for sports and also has issued its own 18-page guide, which covers everything from daily cleaning and sanitizing to quarantining and tracing those who become infected. The rules, which include the difficult-to-enforce ban on handshakes and high fives, seek to prevent a major outbreak of the virus.

Social distancing will be the key to keeping crowds at athletic events from spreading the virus.

One of the rules that will make football feel very different is that the bands and cheerleaders will not be permitted to travel to away games. That means that when the Wharton Social Distancers traveled to take on the Freedom Social Distancers, they had to leave behind some of their loudest and most ardent supporters, not to mention a group that is woven into the very fabric of the Friday night football experience.

The crowds will be smaller. A limited number of fans will be allowed into sporting events like football and volleyball this fall — players (and band members) are allowed to choose only four spectators, but they have to be registered on a list at least a day before each game, so they can be issued electronic tickets. Each player’s foursome will be a “spectator pod” and will be required to sit together.

Fans, who must wear masks in the stands, will find seats clearly marked off in groups of four, socially distant from other pods.

The biggest hurdle, however, will be keeping the athletes healthy. If an athlete tests positive, he/she and anyone in close contact with them will be quarantined for 14 days. That can wipe out any team’s roster in a hurry.

Football will be a huge challenge, due to the unavoidable closer quarters presented by bus transportation and the sheer number of players (often ranging anywhere from 50 to 80 or so) cramming into small locker rooms.

The football teams at Hillsborough and Jefferson high schools have already had infected players and, as a result, may not be able to play the first two weeks of the season.

“I’m holding my breath, and the reason is that, when we’re putting this many people together, you just don’t know,” Henderson says.

While football is the biggest concern, every sport will present its own set of issues.

For example, cross country will have to stagger its starts to avoid large gatherings of runners from multiple schools. Volleyball players will be expected to avoid the traditional high-five after every point, and swim meets with multiple teams may be hard to find. In fact, Wharton’s usual “home” pool at the New Tampa YMCA is not permitting the Wildcats to host any meets there.

Provided that high school sports can make it all work under such unique and demanding circumstances, middle school sports will not begin until the second quarter, with track starting first on Oct. 12, followed by flag football and volleyball on Oct. 19.

“Everything is so uncertain,” Henderson says. “Are we gonna be able to push through or will there be a setback? I hope we can push through — I want to see the kids play. They have suffered enough the last six months with (the 2019-20 school year) getting cut short, and the makeshift way of doing school. I hope we push through.”

coronavirus sportds

New Tampa Students, Teachers Get Back To School

Following a summer of indecision and fear of the unknown, New Tampa’s schools finally opened their doors to students for in-person learning for the first time since they closed in March due to Covid-19.

“Woo hoo!,” shouted one parent, as she drove off smiling after dropping her two kids off at Benito Middle School.

Students spent the first week of the 2020-21 school year eLearning only, as the fight over whether or not to open brick-and-mortar classrooms for students and teachers raged on.

The Hillsborough School Board initially leaned towards doing eLearning only for the first nine weeks, before settling for four weeks after consulting a panel of medical experts. However, that decision was then overturned by Superintendent Addison Davis, after Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran threatened to withhold millions of dollars in funding to schools that did not offer a brick-and-mortar option for parents.

Busy at work cleaning and prepping their classrooms for a socially-distant learning experience, teachers finally opened the doors to their students on August 31.

After the first week, Chiles principal Teresa Evans said things went “remarkably well.” At Chiles, roughly 450 students were home learning online, while 400 or so learned in classrooms. Evans said none of her teachers were forced back into the classrooms, and praised their efforts in the opening week.

“I think we planned and planned and planned and what we planned has worked out so far,” Evans said. “The kids aren’t struggling with masks the way people thought. They have been very compliant, and the parents have been incredibly compliant and helpful in following the new rules.”

Those new rules include keeping desks as far apart from each other as possible, eating lunches outside under the school’s covered courts keeping everything as clean and sanitized as possible.

“We were nervous, but never terribly worried,” Evans says. “We were very careful and will continue to be, and we are tweaking things as we go.”

While the Covid-19 numbers were slightly rising in Hillsborough County during the first week, schools hadn’t reported any large outbreaks.

According to the school district’s Covid-19 dashboard, the first four days produced only 21 positive cases among students, and another nine from school staff.

The district is not reporting if any classrooms have been quarantined.

From March through July, the district reported 284 confirmed cases of Covid-19.

In New Tampa, the only schools to report any cases were Freedom High and Tampa Palms Elementary, with each reporting one student positive from the first day of school.

coronavirus School

Tie-Dyed Masks = More Toys For Kids At St. Joe’s

It’s the accessory everyone’s wearing this fall, and not because it’s the hottest new fashion.

Local ordinances throughout Florida have made face coverings mandatory, and some creative Wesley Chapel kids have found a way to turn people’s need for masks into an opportunity to do good.

In The Lakes at Northwood neighborhood, located just off County Line Rd. and Bruce B. Downs Blvd., the Burnett, Caruso, Peretsky and White families have 10 kids between them, ages 5-13. They often play together outside.

When the pandemic hit, the kids started talking to each other about doing something helpful in their community.

“They wanted to be able to help other kids, in light of what was going on with Covid-19,” says Katie Burnett, who is mom to Jackson, Mackenzie and Alaina.

Katie says her kids – along with Diana, Ellina and David Peretsky, Mason, Kate and Troy Caruso and Josiah White — came up with the idea to raise money and donate it to St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital in Tampa.

They started with a lemonade stand. The idea grew when Katie and her husband Matt, who own Kona Ice Wesley Chapel, received a box of plain, white, reusable cloth masks to share with the community.

That’s when the kids decided to sell not only lemonade, but individually designed masks, too.

They took their revenue from that first lemonade stand and bought a tie-dye kit. Then, they got to work making fun summer art, using dozens of the masks as their canvases.

Their parents spread the word on social media, and then the kids took turns selling the masks on Saturdays in their neighborhood.

Late this summer, they tallied up their earnings and were able to make a $350 donation to St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital. Parent company BayCare Health System’s senior vice president & Hillsborough County market leader Kimberly Guy stopped by the neighborhood and the families presented her with an oversized check — also made by the kids.

“They got really excited when Kim told them the money would be used to buy toys for kids at the hospital,” says Katie. “That helped make it real for them.”

coronavirus masks St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital

Hillsborough changes course

*Classrooms will be empty for the first week of the school year, after which parents who want their children to learn in-person can send their kids to brick-and-mortar school.*

School in Hillsborough County is starting on Monday, August 24, but instead of being online the first four weeks as voted on by the Hillsborough School Board and based on recommendations from local health experts, those wanting to send their children back to in-person classes can do so beginning Aug. 31.

Superintendent Addison Davis made the announcement Thursday in an email to parents.

“To meet the state’s emergency order for all schools to open on August 31, Hillsborough County Public Schools will now begin eLearning for all students on August 24 and transition to brick and mortar a week later for those students whose parents want to come back on August 31,” the email said.

The district’s decision to start the school year online the first four weeks was rejected by Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) Commissioner Richard Corcoran, and the threat of losing more than $20 million in funding forced Davis to put a new plan — the first week online is being called the “The Smart Start Week” — into place to meet the state’s Aug. 31 deadline.

Those who chose eLearning can continue to have their kids learning online.

Davis said the district is spending $7-9 million on PPE to ensure the safety of students and teachers. He said schools would try to make social distancing work. “It is going to be hard to do,” he said, “but we’ll do it.”

Asked about a possible outbreak and how the district would react, as Florida’s Covid-19 numbers remain high — more than 6,500 positive tests and a 9.52 positive percentage in the latest numbers — Davis said unless it was a statewide decision by Governor Ron DeSantis, schools would be treated individually depending on the significance and spread of any outbreak.

“We will not be closing everything down,” he said.

Parents were given three choices back in July — to send their kids back to brick-and-mortar schools, keep them home for structured eLearning (that follows the typical daily bell schedule), or have them learn on their own schedules via virtual school.

Countywide, 49 percent of parents preferred the brick-and-mortar option for their children, compared to 42.7 percent for eLearning.

However, eLearning is the most popular choice of parents with kids going to New Tampa schools, according to results from Hillsborough County Public Schools.

Of the 9,322 declaration surveys returned from New Tampa, 5,080, or 52.3 percent, chose eLearning, or distance learning.

Roughly 39 percent, or 3,834, chose the brick-and-mortar option, with 759 parents (about 8 percent) selecting virtual school.

Pride Elementary had the highest rate of parents choosing eLearning — 66.8 percent.

In fact, elementary schools where, ironically, children are said to be the least affected by the virus, led the way when it came to parents choosing to keep their kids home — Clark Elementary (61 percent choosing eLearning) was second, and Tampa Palms Elementary (59.6) was third.

Freedom was the only New Tampa school where parents favored in-school to distance-learning, by a 46-41 percent margins. At Wharton, 695 parents chose eLearning, while 679 favored a return to the classroom.

* * * *

On Aug. 6, the Hillsborough School Board voted 5-2 to open the school year with eLearning for the first four weeks. The Board planned to meet again on Sept. 8 to see what the Covid-19 numbers were looking like.

And yes, the Board had already voted two weeks prior to approve Davis’ reopening plan, which offered the three choices for parents. But, it did so almost begrudgingly, due to a July 31 state-mandated deadline and concerns that it didn’t have enough medical data.

On Aug. 6, the Board brought in experts to help with that decision.

After listening to more than 50 mostly-impassioned public comments, a panel of medical experts from the USF Department of Health, the Moffitt Cancer Center and Tampa General Hospital and faced questions from the Board, with the most important one coming from District 5 School Board member Tamara Shamburger:

“Yes or no?,” she asked, cutting to the chase. “Should our schools be reopened?”

One by one, the medical officials said no — with most citing the current community spread of the virus and the county’s already high positivity test rate. While five percent is considered safe, the county’s positive Covid test rate was nearly double that at the time.

Based on that medical advice, Shamburger and District 6 member Karen Perez pushed to open the school year with eLearning — originally for the first nine weeks — and when the vote was taken, everyone on the Board agreed to online-only for four weeks, with the exception of chairperson Melissa Snively and Cindy Stuart (who represents District 3, which includes all of New Tampa’s public schools).

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis expressed his displeasure at the county’s decision. Corcoran wrote a letter to Superintendent Davis, saying Hillsborough County couldn’t do eLearning for four weeks, because it went against his decree that parents must be given a choice of returning to school.

Meanwhile, Miami-Dade and Broward counties are among the districts being allowed to open online, because they are still in Phase One of DeSantis’ re-opening plan.

coronavirus Covid-19

Outside The Box, Inside The Pod?

Although Hillsborough County is giving parents three choices for the upcoming fall semester, it really comes down to two choices — learn in a traditional classroom with other students, restoring the social interaction and face-to-face contact that are the stalwarts of education; or learn in a more isolated and individual-based online format at home that makes it easier to avoid contracting the virus and transmitting it to others.

However, there is a group of local parents considering something else — merging the classroom and online settings together in a unique collaboration that, they believe, will offer the best of both worlds.

Tampa Palms resident Jenni Wolgemuth, an Associate Professor of measurement and research at the USF College of Education and mother of a first- and fifth-grader, is helping to organize a group of 4-5 families whose children will learn online, but will learn together in a small “learning pod” overseen by a privately hired learning support specialist.

“A one-room school house,” Wolgemuth calls it. “It is an attempt to create a bubble around a group of families, all agreeing to similar standards of social distancing.”

That school house, or learning “pod,” that Wolgemuth has organized will have nine students in it. Four of the students are fifth graders, who would hopefully have the same teachers at the charter school they all attended last year.

The pod also will include two first-graders, a third grader, an eighth grader and a ninth-grader. The parents would rotate hosting and the kids would bring their lunches and eat together and have time for outdoor activities together, too.

Everyone would still be taught by their school’s teachers through the online platform and Zoom video classrooms used by their schools. However, the parents are already interviewing people to be a support specialist, who would monitor the pod from 8 a.m.-3 p.m. and help the students with technology issues, staying on task and doing their assignments.

“Basically what we would have been doing if we had been home,” Wolgemuth says.

The idea was Wolgemuth’s brainchild and she says she began thinking about the learning pod solution before the Hillsborough School District issued its choices for parents. She thought the District was too comfortable with the idea that everything would be fine by August. “I’m a planner,” she says. “This was my plan A.”

She mentioned the concept to friends, but the response, at first, was tepid. She continued, however, to bring it up in conversations.

When she had a Zoom call with other parents after the choices were revealed by the District, there was still some hesitation. During that call with other mothers, however, one of the husbands, a doctor who works with Covid-19 patients, overheard the plan.

“That is a really good idea,” he said, and the plan started to take root.

There are still hoops to jump through for Wolgemuth and her group, which includes a second Tampa Palms family, two families from Lutz and another from Carrollwood.

They will have to see how the pod works for the younger students, namely the two first graders. And, having nine or so computers using the same WiFi network could create issues that would need to be addressed.

Otherwise, Wolgemuth thinks the idea is the best fix for one semester, with the hopes that the coronavirus can be brought under control and that everyone can go back to their brick-and-mortar schools in January.