Pennsylvania school districts will reopen for fall 2020

There’s “no question” that Pennsylvania school districts will physically reopen this fall, Gov. Tom Wolf said Friday.

“Schooling will look different,” Wolf said. “You’ll probably have more online learning and maybe less classroom learning, there might be fewer students in each classroom.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Education is expected to release specific guidance early next week that will address issues like online learning, classroom capacity, operating school buses, sports and extracurricular activities, as well as other logistics, Wolf said.

Wolf announced Friday that Allegheny, Westmoreland and 14 other Southwestern Pennsylvania counties will transition to the green phase of the state’s three-phase reopening plan on June 5.

Schools will remain closed through the end of the 2019-20 school year, but summer camps, child care and other summer recreation activities are allowed to resume as coronavirus mitigation efforts gradually lift.

“Each of the local education authorities have a lot to say about what school is going to look like,” Wolf said. “We’re providing guidelines.”

Specific start dates in August or September will be determined by local school officials, Wolf said.

Expanded testing capacity for current coronavirus infections, the availability of accurate, point-of-care tests and a better understanding of how to use the results of antibody tests, which detect whether a person has previously been exposed to the coronavirus, could help officials manage the reopening of schools this fall, Pennsylvania Department of Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine said.

Wolf closed schools for short periods of time throughout March before moving to close all schools statewide through the end of the 2019-20 school year on April 9.

The extended school shutdown affected more than 1.7 million students in public and private K-12 schools across the state, including about 191,000 public school students across 60 public school districts in Allegheny and Westmoreland Counties. Many students have spent recent weeks learning remotely.

Several school districts have held unprecedented graduation ceremonies, including Gateway High School’s ceremony in the Monroeville Mall parking lot Wednesday and Plum High’s ceremony Thursday at Pittsburgh Mills.

“Ultimately we all have to give people — parents, students, teachers, staff members — the confidence that they can come back to school with some semblance of normalcy right now,” Wolf said.