Hoover school board calls special work session to discuss reopening plan

The Hoover Board of Education has scheduled a work session for 5:30 p.m. Thursday to discuss the school system’s reopening plan amid heightened concern about a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the state and Birmingham-Hoover area.

The meeting is scheduled to be in the auditorium at Spain Park High School, and while the public is welcome to attend, there will be no opportunity for public participation in the meeting, school officials said.

The current reopening plan for Hoover City Schools allows masks to be optional and eliminates the school system doing contact tracing and quarantining of students who had close contact with people who tested positive for COVID-19 unless health authorities require it.

There also will be no health-related restrictions on seating and no partitions between students’ desk unless parents request them for their children. Everyone once again will be allowed to eat in the cafeteria, after-school care will be offered and academic and extracurricular field trips will be allowed, but parents can opt out of field trips for their children without any penalties.

Some parents have applauded the current reopening plan, favoring a return to normalcy and some saying masks are ineffective. But others have renewed concerns about the reopening plan given the uptick in COVID-19 cases with the new Delta variant of the disease.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Alabama Department of Public Health and Jefferson County Department of Health all are recommending that all students, faculty and staff in schools use masks when indoors (even if vaccinated) and that schools keep students at least 3 feet apart in classrooms.

State and Jefferson County public health and hospital officials also are strongly encouraging people to get vaccinated to help prevent further spread of COVID-19.

“We’re in a big, scary surge right now,” Jefferson County Health Officer Mark Wilson said Wednesday. “I know we’re all really tired of this, but … the most important thing we can do right now is to get vaccinated as soon as possible if you’ve not yet done so.”

Dr. Timothy Bode, the chief medical officer for Ascension St. Vincent’s Hospital, said Ascension hospitals are feeling the surge with nearly 100 COVID-19 patients admitted. There has been a 700% increase in COVID-19 cases in the past three weeks, and 88% of those admitted have not been vaccinated, Bode said.

The number of COVID-19 patients at UAB Hospital has risen from 26 on June 22 to 105 on Wednesday, Aug. 4. All of them have the Delta variant of COVID-19, and 83% of them are not vaccinated, UAB CEO Anthony Patterson said. One-third of them are in intensive care units, he said.

Dr. Jeremy Rogers, an emergency physician and director of clinical services at Grandview Medical Center, said he is very concerned about the direction things are headed.

In the past month, the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations at Grandview has doubled every seven to 10 days and increased more than 500%, Rogers said.

And in this surge, more of the patients are younger than during the peak of the pandemic in January, he said. In January, the majority of COVID-19 patients hospitalized were over 60 years old. Now, 57 to 66% are younger than 60, and on Tuesday, a 19-year-old was admitted with COVID-19, he said.

“This is absolutely heartbreaking. What we’re seeing is tragic, and unfortunately it’s largely preventable,” Rogers said. “The bottom line is — get vaccinated.”

He has heard a lot of talk about people being hesitant to get a vaccine, “but I’ve seen a lot of vaccine regret in patients and family members that wish they had been vaccinated sooner,” he said. “Vaccines are widely available, so now’s the time to get vaccinated before it’s too late.”

Tom Shufflebarger, the CEO at Children’s of Alabama, said Children’s also is seeing a surge in COVID-19 patients. Two weeks ago, they had four to five children in the hospital with COVID-19, and Tuesday of this week, there were 14, he said. However, only a couple of those are truly being treated for COVID-19 symptoms, he said. The rest are in the hospital for other reasons, he said.

That said, Children’s Hospital is seeing a surge in employees with COVID-19. There were as many employees testing positive last week — 25 — as there were in all of May or June combined, he said. “That’s also frightening as we move forward.”

Patterson, the CEO at UAB Hospital, said in October and November, it took eight weeks for the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations to rise from 750 to 1,600. The Delta variant surge took just 10 days to make the same leap, he said.

As more COVID-19 patients are admitted to hospitals, it’s like a vice grip on the hospitals, Rogers said.

“It really hinders your capacity to take care of every other patient that comes in,” he said. “We’re all afraid it’s going to get worse in the coming weeks with what we’re expecting to come.”

Bode said this time, hospital staff are more exhausted due to the labor shortage. “That’s just piling on top of everything else,” he said.

Some other nearby school systems, including Birmingham, are requiring universal masking. The Homewood and Mountain Brook school systems this week reversed their policies and decided to require universal masking when indoors.

Thursday night’s Hoover school board work session is supposed to be livestreamed on the school district’s YouTube channel.