Superintendent outlines COVID threshold, family and staff surveys, and vaccine rollout plans

The Detroit Public Schools Community District superintendent delivered a comprehensive COVID-19 update on Jan. 12, urging a data-driven, phased approach to returning students to in-person learning and announcing district tools to measure family and staff readiness.

In a presentation that covered infection trends, student attendance and academic metrics, the superintendent said the district tracks a seven-day average and has used a 5% infection-rate threshold as the standard for in-person instruction: "We have said 5 percent is too high, and that's the number that we have, remained focused on." He recommended opening learning centers first and bringing students back to classrooms only when the infection rate is steadily below 5%.

The superintendent said the district will release a short survey to families and DFT employees the next day to measure preferences for online, hybrid or in-person learning and to ask whether staff are willing to take the vaccine. "We'll also ask about their willingness to take the vaccine," he said. The survey will be tied to student email accounts so responses can be mapped to specific schools and grade levels to inform master scheduling.

To support remote learners, the district said it will continue free internet access through at least June, run hubs across city quadrants for device repair and connectivity, and expand home visits and outreach for students who have not logged into class. The superintendent reported the district has deployed hubs to repair devices on-site and, where necessary, provide laptops with hotspot capability.

On vaccines, the superintendent said the district is not running the public vaccine process but is negotiating a memorandum of understanding with the city health department to schedule vaccinations for employees and contracted workers at district sites once supply is secured. He said the district would use Microsoft scheduling tools and start with a small set of schools: "We are hoping to start at the latter part of next week or the beginning of the following week," and emphasized supply constraints would limit capacity.

The superintendent also described the online learning task force (more than 300 applicants received), intended to recommend a minimum attendance threshold to prevent automatic failure, limit screen time and consider broader grade-band definitions to reduce failure rates under pandemic conditions.

Board members probed the criteria for returning to in-person learning and suggested tiered or phased approaches that prioritize learning centers, special education centers, and lower grade levels. They also discussed using vaccinated staff as public examples and ways to incentivize early vaccine uptake among employees.

Next steps the district announced: deploy the family and staff survey, expand outreach (robocalls, text messages, home visits) to achieve high response rates, align bus notification timelines with proposed reopening, and continue updating COVID data publicly on the district website.

The board later approved the superintendent’s report by voice vote.