In Kirkland, the Radcliff family has three little boys, ages 10, 7 and 4.
Matt Radcliff said his 7-year-old is a special education student at Peter Kirk Elementary and struggling with remote learning. Radcliff shared photos of his son on the floor during remote learning.
“My 7-year-old, who has some learning disabilities, has more teacher-led instruction during the day, about three hours, of which an hour plus is dedicated to special ed time. The challenge here is he can’t sit still for two minutes,” said Radcliff.
Radcliffe would like to see the Lake Washington School District take an intermediate step to get students with learning disabilities back to school. He said his second grader and fourth grader suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
“Every day he loses ground, not compared to his peers, but for himself. His emotional state is suffering and we, as a family unit, are suffering,” said Radcliff.
Another parent told KIRO 7 he’d like to see the district consider the COVID-19 case numbers in the district’s attendance area instead of using the King County totals. The Washington State Department of Health has made it clear it is up to each district to decide when to bring students back. He would like the Lake Washington School District’s superintendent to take control of the decision and only consider the cases in Kirkland, Redmond and Sammamish.
The Lake Washington School District told KIRO 7 it is following the state recommendations.
"King County schools continue to be listed as high-risk per the Washington Department of Health Decision Tree. These data help us in our planning to know when conditions are such that we can begin to bring back students for in-person learning, " wrote Shannon Parthemer, the communications director of the Lake Washington School District. “Public health officials have continued to state that their guidance will be focused on county data vs. regional/local data. They state this is due to mobility throughout the county.”
Today, the Washington State Department of Health and the Institute for Disease Modeling (IDM) released models that show how various diagnostic screening scenarios could help mitigate the risk of COVID-19 transmission associated with reopening schools.
The new models show children can go back to school safely and keep COVID-19 from spreading with the right precautions and testing. The models are based on an average of 75 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents over a two-week period, as they were in October. But experts acknowledge COVID-19 cases have jumped since then and are unsure how this impacts the model.
Radcliff would like to see some steps taken in the meantime, even before cases fall back down, to help children who are not having success with online learning. He acknowledges the teachers are doing all they can to keep his sons engaged. But he said those efforts just aren’t working.
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