As the predicted COVID-19 case count soars throughout Pennsylvania, schools which are all in on in-person instruction are being forced to do some soul-searching to determine whether this is the best course to keep their students and personnel safe.

The Tamaqua district schools are among them, and because Schuylkill County has been in the “substantial” case category for the better part of a month and there have been small pockets of coronavirus cases within the district, the question is whether the district should go to a hybrid or all-virtual form of education.

When the question arose about how to open and proceed for the 2020-21 school year, Tamaqua board members, led by President Larry Wittig, were adamant that getting students back to school full time was important for their mental well-being.

Granted, several well-respected studies during the past several months have confirmed what most administrators, parents and students already know: Virtual learning is not as effective as in-classroom education.

As Tamaqua Area School Superintendent Ray Kinder and others in the hot seat of decision-making can tell you, it is a real juggling act to walk that fine line between safety and a better education model. In the end, of course, it is human safety that must always win out.

With a recent surge of cases in the county, the superintendents of schools were contacted by the Pennsylvania Education Department’s deputy secretary to discuss the problem, make districts aware of the help available at the state level and reinforce the state’s guidelines which were developed before the opening of this school year.

Last week, Pennsylvania’s percent-positivity rate went up to 6.1% from 5%; Schuylkill’s is 11.1%, nearly twice the statewide level.

According to Dr. Greg Koons, Schuylkill’s Intermediate Unit 29 executive director, the districts are in a seven-day holding pattern to monitor the county’s transmission levels. More information should be available by Monday, he said.

Recent notifications went out to Tamaqua district parents from Superintendent Kinder about recent cases, which were termed “isolated.” One resulted in the quarantine of 14 people.

Although these cases appear to be infrequent, he acknowledged that if clusters of cases become widespread, the district will need to “react cautiously to support the health and well-being of our students and staff.”

Most Schuylkill districts are being operated on a hybrid model - students spend part of the time in the classroom and the rest online. Only a small number, such as Tamaqua, have all-classroom education.

The question is whether this is still a good idea given Schuylkill’s high incidence of infection and the troubling recent cases that are sprouting up within the Tamaqua district.

According to the IU’s Koons, the Education Department does not have the authority to order a district to pursue a certain course of action. Only the state Health Department can do this, and its officials are wary about coming down on the decision-making of a local district unless it is absolutely necessary, a Health Department source told me in confidence.

For now, the recommendation for districts in “substantially” affected counties such as Schuylkill is to go all-virtual, but the department is leaving the ultimate decision up to the local district - at least for now.

Although the school board decided to jump in with both feet, about one in five Tamaqua students opted to take online learning at the start of the year, according to school officials. A parents’ survey showed strong backing in favor of exclusive in-classroom teaching.

Wittig was one of the most vocal in advocating for in-classroom learning before the start of the school year. He felt that there was an unreasonable amount of paranoia about the virus and that the district has effective sanitary protocols in place to keep everyone safe. “The students need to be here,” he said, suggesting that they were academically damaged during the last quarter of the previous school year when Tamaqua was on a hybrid schedule.

“If we want to be absolutely safe, stay at home, keep the doors locked, wear a mask. At some point, it will turn everyone into marshmallows,” Wittig said.

Another board member, Nick Boyle, agreed with Wittig. Boyle said school provides a safe haven for students. He said a hybrid model doesn’t make sense because the risks are the same whether students are in the classroom for two days a week or five. Of course, these remarks were made when Schuylkill’s virus rate was among the lowest in the area. This is no longer the case.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com