© Provided by Washington Examiner Oregon Gov. Kate Brown issued an executive order on Friday mandating that all public schools offer hybrid or full in-person instruction by March 29 for kindergarten through fifth grade and by April 19 for sixth grade through the twelfth.
"Comprehensive distance learning was a tool deployed to manage a crisis in a year no one could have imagined," the Democrat's order says, referring to the onset of COVID-19 last year. "This emergency tool was never intended to be a permanent, or preferred, solution for educating the vast majority of Oregon's children."
As of March 9, over half of the state's schools were offering either hybrid or full in-person instruction, according to numbers outlined in the governor's order. More than 80% were offering at least limited in-person learning.
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In a March 5 letter detailing the impending order, addressed to the directors of both the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Department of Education, Brown said, "Because of this progress and the great work done by Oregon's schools, parents, students, administrators, teachers, and staff, the time has come for our students to return to the learning environment we know serves them best: in-person instruction."
The Oregon Education Association, a union representing 44,000 teachers in the state, and some parents and teachers had been resistant to earlier moves by the governor to encourage in-person instruction. OEA President John Larson said that with her decision in December to make the state's metrics for returning to in-person instruction advisory rather than mandatory, Brown was "radically and abruptly" changing state health guidelines without input from teachers.
In her Friday order, Brown cited improved ventilation, adequate protective equipment, the provision of federal dollars, and evidence of the safety of in-person instruction as the foundations for reopening.
"Our kids are only kids once," Brown says in the order, continuing that with mitigation measures in place, "The science and data are clear: schools can return to in person instruction with a very low risk of COVID-19 transmission."
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The Oregon Education Association did not immediately return the Washington Examiner's request for comment on Brown's order.
Tags: Oregon, Schools, Coronavirus, Teachers Unions, children, News
Original Author: Jeremy Beaman
Original Location: Oregon governor orders schools to begin offering either hybrid or full in-person instruction