CT Coronavirus Schools: Who's Going In, Who's Staying Home

CONNECTICUT — Connecticut schools are using three attendance models this year — fully remote, fully in-person and a hybrid mix of the two — and districts have been swapping in and out of them as local coronavirus infection rates change.

Trying to keep track of what district is using what model is a bit like following a ball around a roulette wheel, and just as hard to predict. Fortunately, the Connecticut State Department of Education has been tracking it.

From the most recent reporting period (Oct. 19-23), 34.4 percent of Connecticut students (176,734) were fully remote. Note that parents who do not live in a "remote school" district can still opt their child into full-time, remote learning for any week. Of the students in the fully remote model, 2.6 percent are disconnected.

Why wouldn't they? Trade journal Education Week says there can be a half-dozen reasons. Lack of internet access is the obvious culprit. Although most, if not all, schools have provided students with computers at the start of the semester, not every household is connected to the 'net. In other cases, parents' COVID-altered circumstances might mean the child has taken a job to help put bread on the table, or must mind younger siblings during school hours.

In the graph above, the blue line is everybody learning from home full-time. The red line represents those learning full-time from home who did not connect on even a single school day during the reporting period.

Happily, the numbers are trending in the right direction. While the percentage of fully remote students has increased in recent weeks, the number and percentage of those remote students who are disconnected have declined steadily over the first six weeks.

The number of remote students disconnected from their classrooms is down two points from the week of Sept. 8. That's a drop of about 5 percentage points from the end of August, when everybody was still trying to get their act together.

The CSDE said the increase in the number of students learning from home is due primarily to the shift to fully remote instruction in eastern Connecticut. There, the coronavirus positivity rate has been on the rise.

The pattern of the virus spread is mirrored in the pattern of towns, below, with higher numbers of students learning remotely around the COVID-19 hot spots, such as Danbury and Norwich. The darker the shade of blue, the higher the percentage of students staying home.

The data that serves as the basis for the map above was culled less than a week before the number of coronavirus "red alert" towns jumped from 19 to 30, reflected below:

On Wednesday, the statewide coronavirus positivity hit levels not seen since the beginning of June. More red zone towns reverted to phase 2 of the state's reopening guidelines, and Gov. Ned Lamont said orange zone towns could now join them.

Is it reasonable, then, to assume that as towns are added to the red and orange zone lists and return to phase 2, the number of districts keeping their students on the full remote model will increase?

Maybe not.

Last week. Lamont also said the data overwhelmingly supports the premise that schools, with their strictly enforced distancing, mask-wearing and disinfectant protocols, are likely the safest places anyone can be. The spread is occurring at family gatherings, in private residences, where the restrictions are typically relaxed or ignored.

It's worth pointing out that, even in pre-pandemic times, it's not always easy getting young Nutmeggers into classrooms, online or otherwise. There were 527,829 students enrolled in Connecticut schools for the 2019-20 year. Chronic absenteeism, calculated on in-person school days until mid-March 2020, was 12.2 percent, according to the state.