At the urging of Superintendent Hoffman and other stakeholders including AzPHA, the governor signed Executive Order #51 a couple of weeks ago outlining a process to make better decisions about whether and how to set in-person instruction start dates. Prior to last Thursday, the governor had been setting proposed in-person instruction dates without objective criteria.
The Order required ADHS to develop public health benchmarks that school districts may use to inform their in-person instruction dates.
ADHS released those benchmark criteria last week. The product is quite good, and the metrics make sense. The benchmarks are classified into minimal, moderate, and substantial transmission and align with the Arizona Department of Education’s Roadmap for Reopening Schools.
The new Benchmarks for Safely Returning to In-Person Instruction pose county-specific public health benchmarks related to community transmission. They’re designed to be used in conjunction with ADE’s Roadmap. The criteria include benchmarks around new cases, PCR percent positivity, and COVID-19 related hospitalizations measured through syndromic surveillance.
For example, for a school district to meet the benchmarks for a hybrid model that includes both virtual and in-person learning (hybrid), the District is urged to meet the following criteria:
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Cases: a two-week decline in weekly average cases OR two weeks below 100 cases per 100,000 population per week
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Diagnostic test percent positivity: two weeks with positivity below 7%
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COVID-19-Like-Illness Syndromic Surveillance: two weeks with less than 10% of hospital visits due to COVID-like illness
Here’s where you can check out the Benchmarks for Safely Returning to In-Person Instruction criteria. Solid work by the entire team of folks at ADHS, ADE, and the county health departments.
Collaboration works.
