Outdoor Lunch Needed At All Arlington Schools: Petition

ARLINGTON, VA — An Arlington woman has started a petition on Change.org with the goal of convincing Arlington Public Schools to implement outdoor dining for students at all schools as a safety precaution against the spread of COVID-19.

Some APS students returned to their classrooms on March 2 for in-person hybrid learning after being stuck at home for nearly a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr. Francisco Durán, the APS superintendent, decided last month to return students to schools in March as positivity rates and other indicators began to decline in Arlington and neighboring communities.

Wendy Pizer, the mother of two APS students, decided to launch the petition because she saw a need for safe dining in the county's return-to-school plan.

"That is the biggest hole in the plan right now," she said. "We all know by this time in the pandemic that indoor dining is a high-risk activity. So, to have that in schools as a condition of accessing in-person instruction is a problem."

Pizer's two children — one in middle school and the other in high school — are currently studying at-home virtually.

"We would not go into a restaurant right now to eat inside a restaurant unmasked, so we are not going to put them in that same position in school," she said. "So we switched plans from hybrid to virtual and I would say lunch was the deal breaker."

If APS implemented outdoor dining for all county schools, Pizer said that would eliminate a major obstacle for her family about whether her children could return to the classroom.

"I believe that they need to properly mitigate risk when they reopen," she said. "APS has put a lot of other measures in place but this is a big hole in the plan."

Under the current APS return-to-school plan, students participating in hybrid, in-person learning can eat lunch in their classrooms with six-foot distancing between desks and physical barriers (clear partitions) at each desk. They can also eat in gymnasiums or cafeterias with 10-foot distancing or six-foot distancing with physical barriers. Where feasible, students can eat outside with six-foot distancing. In all instances, students are supervised by school staff.

"We are following the guidance provided by CDC and VDH (Virginia Department of Health) for appropriate distancing and safety procedures during meals, including 6-foot distancing with partitions in classrooms and 10-foot distancing in larger spaces such as cafeterias without partitions," said APS spokesman Frank Bellavia. "In some cases, schools are using partitions in larger spaces as well."

In its guidance for school systems on creating reopening plans, CDC recommended that school nutrition professionals protect themselves and others by having students eat in their classrooms or outdoors where feasible rather than in a communal dining hall.

APS did consider allowing outdoor dining when it was writing its reopening plan, Bellavia said. While not adopting outdoor dining for all schools, APS did provide guidance to administrators, strongly encouraging outdoor lunch as an option when weather and other conditions allowed.

"Many schools are implementing outdoor dining plans currently and others are working to adjust plans to allow for outside options in the hybrid model as they adjust to the new schedules and the available staffing," he said. "Weather, space and seating, and staffing conditions are some of the factors that schools need to take into account."

Not all Arlington schools have covered areas outside to protect children during inclement weather, according to Bellavia. Any changes APS would have to make to implement outdoor dining would have to address funding to provide structures, permanent or temporary, at those schools

Although Pizer started the petition on her own, she is a member of Smart Restart, which advocates for safety improvements in schools and safe dining is one of the group's main concerns. As of 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 278 people had signed Pizer's petition.

"APS has gotten to the point where they now have encouraged schools to hold outdoor lunch, but encouragement is not enough," Pizer said. "That leaves it to a principal by principal decision. So what we have now is some schools who are holding indoor lunch, in the cafeteria, feeding kids at desks, and they have up to 100 kids or maybe more in the cafeteria at one time and they're not even trying to do outdoor lunch."

APS does not comment on petitions, according to Bellavia. But, he did say the school system welcomed feedback from families on its return-to-school plan.