SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU C5
“Since the beginning of the
COVID-19 pandemic, we have
based our decisions on science
and data,” Gayles said in a state-
ment. “At this point the data does
not suggest that in-person in-
struction is safe for students or
teachers.”
Less than 24 hours after the
order came out, Maryland Gov.
Larry Hogan (R) denounced it on
social media. In a statement post-
ed to Twitter, Hogan wrote that he
“strongly” disagreed with closing
private and parochial schools.
“As long as these schools devel-
op safe plans that follow CDC and
state guidelines, they should be
empowered to do what’s best for
their community,” he wrote. “This
is a decision for schools and par-
ents, not politicians.”
Schools affected include St. An-
drew’s Episcopal School, the posh,
private prekindergarten through
12th-grade institution in Potomac
attended by Barron Trump, the
president’s youngest child. The
order creates the awkward specta-
cle in which President Trump’s
son could begin the fall semester
online, even as his father ramps
up pressure on school districts
nationwide to reopen their doors
as normal. St. Andrew’s officials
did not respond Saturday to a
question asking how the order
changes their plans for the school
year.
A day before Gayles’s decision,
Trump argued at a White House
news briefing that children are
not affected by the virus. “The
younger, the better,” he said.
“They’re stronger. They have a
stronger immune system.”
Despite these calls from the
president, reinforced by strong
words from Education Secretary
Betsy DeVos, many of the nation’s
largest, most prominent school
districts — including those in Los
Angeles, Atlanta and Nashville —
opted for online-only starts in
recent weeks. So has every major
public school in the Washington
region.
Like Gayles, school leaders
elsewhere argued that they had to
act because the United States has
failed to contain the coronavirus.
The country recently hit a dark
milestone of at least 150,000 vi-
rus-related deaths, according to a
Washington Post tally, and at least
4.5 million cases have been re-
ported.
In Maryland, there have been at
least 89,000 cases and 3,500 vi-
rus-related deaths, per a Post
count, and rates of infection rose
steadily throughout the month of
June. Montgomery County has
been especially hard-hit, report-
ing the second-highest number of
cases (more than 17,600) and the
highest death count (at least 789)
in the state.
As infection rates ticked and
then soared upward over the sum-
mer, politicians, scientists, teach-
ers’ unions, parents and school
administrators went to war over
whether and how to reopen
school buildings. The science is
inconclusive: Although many
children do not appear to become
seriously ill or die of covid-19, the
disease caused by the novel coro-
navirus, it is unclear how easily
they spread it.
A recent report from the Cen-
ters for Disease Control and Pre-
vention found that more than
three-quarters of the children and
staffers at a Georgia sleep-away
camp in June became infected
after spending less than a week
together. Still, guidance on the
CDC website recommends that
schools reopen, although critics
have charged that government
health officials are buckling to
pressure from the president.
Gayles’s announcement left
some parents reeling. Leslie
Zarrelli, mother to a junior high
student at St. Andrew Apostle
School in Kemp Mill, said she feels
bewildered and disappointed.
Zarrelli had watched the Cath-
olic elementary and middle
school take exhaustive precau-
tions to ensure the safety of its
roughly 300 students, preparing
for health screenings and spacing
out desks. The school, which
charges roughly $8,400 per stu-
dent, had offered families a choice
between three models, Zarrelli
said: 100 percent in-person learn-
ing, three days of in-person learn-
ing each week and fully virtual
learning.
Zarrelli, confident in the prepa-
rations, had picked the first op-
tion.
“I know social distancing
would have been possible, be-
cause I went up to the school and
saw the classrooms with the desks
apart,” she said. “I felt very com-
fortable — and now it seems like at
the 11th hour, they’re just pulling
the rug out from under these
schools.”
It’s unfair, she said, that St.
Andrew won’t get a chance to try
to prove it can hold classes safely.
The order also fueled a fresh
SCHOOLS FROM C1 explosion of the polarizing debate
over school reopenings on social
media, a conflict that swiftly split
along political lines. Some Twitter
users wrote that they were out-
raged and threatened lawsuits.
Others asked Trump officials to
take legal action on their behalf.
A nd conservative commenta-
tors were quick to weigh in with
charges of despotism.
“Now Maryland is trying to
shut down PRIVATE schools,”
tweeted Laura Ingraham. “[Gov.
Larry Hogan] and Dr. Travis Gay-
les get ready to be deposed.”
The order appeared to catch
many Montgomery County pri-
vate schools flat-footed — even
though Gayles had previously said
he did not think it safe for any
campuses to reopen.
Half a dozen private schools, as
well as the Archdiocese of Wash-
ington — which oversees the
area’s Catholic schools — did not
respond to questions Saturday
asking how Gayles’s order affect-
ed their reopening plans. Some
said they were not prepared to
respond.
“We won’t have a comment to-
day,” wrote a spokeswoman for
the Landon School in Bethesda.
Throughout the summer, non-
public schools had forged ahead
with plans for in-person instruc-
tion. Many spent months develop-
ing detailed reopening schemes,
envisioning desks set six feet
apart and regular temperature-
taking. These plans often sought
to capitalize on private schools’
smaller size and greater financial
resources.
St. Andrew’s, the school Presi-
dent Trump’s son Barron Trump
attends, had published in-depth
reopening guidelines calling for
constant mask-wearing, lunch
eaten outdoors, staggered dis-
missal from classes and “sched-
uled hand washing times.” These
plans were still prominently post-
ed on the school website Saturday
morning, along with promises
that a final decision on reopening
would come the week of Aug. 10. A
message from the head of the
school, Robert Kosasky, conclud-
ed: “I look forward to seeing you
on September 8!”
Also on Saturday, the Holton-
Arms School in Bethesda still de-
clared in a banner headline: “We
look forward to seeing students
return for classes on September
8.” The first thing greeting visitors
to the website of the Bullis School
in Potomac was a pop-up notifica-
tion asking them to fill out a
registration form so they could
reserve a seat on a bus route for
the 2020-2021 academic year.
A handful of private schools,
however, were quick to pivot, such
as Sandy Spring Friends School in
Sandy Spring. The head of that
school, Rodney Glasgow, sent a
message to families on the same
day of Gayles’s announcement,
declaring that classes would be
online-only for the first semester,
which ends in late January.
Still, Glasgow promised some
face-to-face time. The school will
create “social pods” of 12 to 16
students, each connected with
one faculty member, that will
come to campus once every three
weeks for “in-person social ex-
periences within their pods,” Glas-
gow wrote. It will also offer some
in-person programming for its
youngest students.
“When it is safe to do so, we will
return to campus in larger num-
bers,” he wrote. Glasgow closed
with a Winnie the Pooh cartoon,
quoting the bear as saying: “We’re
going home... because that’s the
best thing to do right now.”
Stone Ridge School of the Sa-
cred Heart, an all-girls institution
in Bethesda, posted a letter to
families on Friday that said school
would remain closed through Oct.
1, as Gayles had requested.
“We share your disappoint-
ment that we cannot begin the
school year as we normally
would,” wrote the head of the
school, Catherine Ronan Karrels.
“But we ask you and your families
to use this to redouble your com-
mitment to following the advice of
public health officials.... This is
an opportunity for our Stone
Ridge girls and for all of us to be
role models.”
A key question in coming weeks
is whether the enforced private-
school pivot to all-virtual instruc-
tion will affect tuition. On average
in Maryland, private school costs
close to $13,000 a year, according
to one analysis. But prices can
range as high as $60,000.
Private universities have taken
a variety of approaches to the
problem, in some cases freezing or
lowering costs. American Univer-
sity unveiled a 10 percent dis-
count on tuition after telling stu-
dents the school year would start
online, as did Georgetown Uni-
versity.
Neither Sandy Spring’s nor
Stone Ridge’s strategies for virtual
learning mentioned plans to de-
crease tuition.
[email protected]
Virtual-learning decision
yields online blowback
BY JONATHAN M. PITTSEvery time Amber Green
walked past the Wicomico Coun-
ty Courthouse in Salisbury, it an-
gered her to see the historical
marker on its grounds dedicated
to a notorious Confederate gener-
al.
Gen. John Winder wasn’t just a
military leader who used his tal-
ents in service of the white su-
premacist South. Many histori-
ans consider him a war criminal
for directing a Confederate prison
system in which more than
13,000 Union soldiers died in one
camp alone, chiefly of diarrhea
and scurvy.
Even worse, the tribute to
Winder — a native of a rural
Eastern Shore enclave with no
known connection to Salisbury or
Wicomico — stood within feet of
where a mob of whites is known
to have lynched a Black resident,
Matthew Williams, in 1931.
“If you asked yourself why that
sign should be there, in that place,
the only possible reason left is the
one people want to shy away
from: to show that justice is truly
not equal,” said Green, an African
American community activist
and youth counselor in Salisbury.
“And some people wonder why
minorities haven’t felt comfort-
able coming downtown.”
Now a broader range of people
in the Eastern Shore county can
feel a little more welcome in its
biggest city.
One Friday afternoon in June,
four years after Green and a few
dozen friends started a grass-
roots campaign to have the sign
removed, Wicomico County offi-
cials arrived in a van, threw the
marker into the back seat and
drove away.
With no fanfare, a memorial
that had stood in Salisbury for
more than half a century — a
signpost of history for some, an
emblem of hate for others — was
gone.
Though a cadre of local resi-
dents remains upset at the deci-
sion, an increasingly vocal seg-
ment of the community, includ-
ing the 38-year-old mayor, Jacob
Day, hopes the removal foreshad-
ows more enduring changes in a
part of the state never known for
its progressive racial politics.
The sign in Salisbury was in-
stalled in 1965, at a time when
civil rights activists were leading
high-profile marches for equality
in various places on the Eastern
Shore.
Enslaved people were traded in
front of a tavern that occupied the
site before the courthouse opened
in 1878.
A mob of whites lynched an
18-year-old African American
man, Garfield King, in front of the
jail on the courthouse grounds in
1898.
In 1931, another mob pulled
Matthew Williams, a laborer ac-
cused of killing a white man, out
of his second-floor hospital room,
dragged him to the courthouse
lawn, hanged him from a tree and
set his body on fire.
But a debate was stirred when a
handful of local residents got in-
volved in the efforts of the Equal
Justice Initiative, a nonprofit or-
ganization working to remember
the more than 5,000 Black people
killed nationally in “racial terror
lynchings” between the end of the
Civil War and the 1950s.
While helping to organize a
Williams vigil, Salisbury resident
James Yamakawa began digginginto the life of Winder, a man that
he learned had jurisdiction over
Andersonville Prison in Georgia,
where conditions were so cruel
one historian dubbed it “Ameri-
ca’s first concentration camp.”The camp’s commander and
Winder’s direct subordinate,
Capt. Henry Wirz, was tried and
hanged for war crimes in connec-
tion with the camp. Most agree
that Winder would have met the
same fate had he not died of a
heart attack in 1865.
Yamakawa shared what he
knew about Winder at the vigil.
He then organized a local chapter
of the national group Showing Up
for Racial Justice, wrote letters to
the editor of the local paper, and
wrote a petition calling for the
sign’s removal that drew dozens
of signatures, including Day’s.
The effort met plenty of resis-
tance, Day and Yamakawa say,
some of it from county officials,
some from longtime residents,
some in the form of anonymous
threats on the Internet.The discussion percolated over
the next three years, with a grow-
ing contingent arguing online for
removal.
But as the national conversa-
tion around race changed this
year, and young activists staged
anti-racism rallies around Salis-
bury, momentum developed.
“It was something that was
clearly dividing our community
unnecessarily,” said Wayne
Strausburg, the director of ad-
ministration for Wicomico Coun-
ty until his retirement at the end
of June. “We felt it was the right
thing to do to remove it, and the
right time to do it, and in doing so,
we hoped it would help this com-
munity heal itself and have a
positive discourse with regard to
race relations.”
— Baltimore SunMARYLANDWicomico County removes Confederate marker
MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/THE WASHINGTON POST
S alisbury resident James Yamakawa, in hat and greeting Steven Williams several years ago, began
digging into the life of Gen. John Winder, below left, who directed the Confederate prison system.LIBRARY OF CONGRESSTribute to general
in Salisbury had been
in place for 5 decadesBY BLAINE P. FRIEDLANDER JR.It’s no dream that midsum-
mer’s bright planets, shooting
stars and a comet populate the
heavens.
When the curtain of night falls,
Jupiter and Saturn lollygag be-
tween the constellations Capri-
cornus and Sagittarius. Jupiter
— at a brilliant -2.7 magnitude —
is closer to the handle of Sagittari-
us’s teapot shape in the southeast
early in the night.
The ringed Saturn — closer to
Capricorn — is 0.1 magnitude,
bright, but noticeably more dim
than Jupiter.
Sunday night, the gibbous
moon has slipped by the two
planets, and the moon becomes
full M onday, according to the U.S.
Naval Observatory.
Buckle up for the brightness.
Late in the evening, around 11:15
p.m., Mars ascends the eastern
heavens in the Pisces constella-tion. The Red Planet seems bright
now at about -1.1 magnitude,
bright enough to see from the city,
and strengthens to -1.5 magni-
tude near Aug. 20 and -1.7 magni-
tude at month’s end, according to
the observatory. Since Mars is
relatively close to Earth now, by
October and November, our
neighboring planet will be as
bright as Jupiter.
By mid-August, Mars rises near
10:45 p.m. in the east. Around
midnight, as Aug. 8 turns into
Aug. 9, see Mars and the waning
moon reign over the morning
heavens. Predawn dog walkers
and beachcombers can find Mars
high in the south before day-
break.
Mars will see NASA’s
(nasa.gov) latest rover Persever-
ance and its tag-along, drone-size
helicopter Ingenuity l and in mid-
February 2021. They left Earth on
Thursday.
Earth’s other neighbor, Venus,rises around 3 a.m. in the east,
standing at the intersection of the
constellations Orion, Taurus and
Gemini. The dazzling planet is
quite bright at -4.5 magnitude to
start August. Find it in the morn-
ing heavens before sunrise, in the
east. Wake early to catch the last
quarter moon’s fingernail sliver
passing the dazzling planet Aug.
15 in the Gemini constellation.
Hope for clear skies as the
Perseid meteors zip through the
night heavens to peak A ug. 11-12,
according to astronomer Geoff
Chester of the Naval Observatory.
At the peak hours, after mid-
night A ug. 12, you may be able to
see 20 or 30 shooting stars as the
last quarter moon rises just after
midnight, which could wash a
few shooting stars out, Chester
said. When you go outside to hunt
meteors, avoid streetlights and
porch lights, and acclimate your
eyes to darkness.
This shower’s parent comet isSwift-Tuttle, discovered in July
1862 by Lewis Swift and Horace P.
Tuttle, who became a Naval Ob-
servatory astronomer after the
Civil War. Tuttle died in 1923 and
is buried in an unmarked grave at
Oakwood Cemetery in Falls
Church.
When comets swing by our
sun, they heat up and leave a
dusty trail behind. Earth smacks
into these trails, and the dust
strikes our atmosphere and burns
up. We get treated to meteors.
To find the shooting stars, “just
look up,” Chester suggests.
Comet Neowise still faintly
graces our evening heavens, but it
is below naked-eye visibility in
the northwest evening sky, to the
left of the Big Dipper. You’ll need
a telescope to find it in the
constellation Coma Berenices,
Chester said.Blaine Friedlander can be reached at
[email protected].SKYWATCHIn August, expect a bright Jupiter, meteor shower
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