PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Montgomery County Commissioner Dr. Val Arkoosh drove home the severity of the coronavirus one year ago when she shared Gov. Tom Wolf’s announcement: All public and private schools in the county must close for at least two weeks.
“We initially focused on schools because we had a lot of cases in our schools out of the gate,” Arkoosh said in retrospect.
One of those early cases in Montgomery County involved a doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s King of Prussia facility. He saw dozens of patients during the first week of March 2020 before he tested positive, which sent shockwaves through school districts across the county.
Now, Arkoosh said they really thought a two-week closure would slow the spread enough to where they could reopen in a matter of weeks. In March 2021, many schools in the county have only recently resumed full-time or hybrid in-person learning. Others, like Norristown, haven’t been in person at all.
The decision to close Montgomery County schools had a ripple effect on the School District of Philadelphia, as many city teachers live in the suburbs and had to scramble for child care.
The two-week pause became a yearlong odyssey of online instruction. With corporate donations, the district acquired Chromebooks and internet access for students to launch the new, virtual school year in September.
The district spent $65 million on COVID-19 protections, but teachers — wary of a history of hazards, including asbestos, mold and lead — took the district’s in-person school plan to mediation. It resulted in a deal earlier this month to phase in hybrid learning for the district’s youngest students.
Superintendent William Hite said he could have never predicted this a year ago.
“When we had that press conference and we talked about two weeks, at the very least we were thinking about two-week intervals, not something that would go now almost a year,” he said.
COVID: Then and Now is a KYW Newsradio original monthlong series looking back at the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic in Philadelphia. Reporters revisit the news from exactly one year ago and examine how protocols, restrictions and science have evolved since then. Check back weekdays in March for more.