In-person classes resume after Detroit school district wraps up testing for students

DETROIT - As classes resumed for Detroit Public Schools, so did protesters demonstrating against the district's decision to resume in-person teaching during the pandemic. On Monday, they picked Renaissance High School as their latest picketing place.

The latest chapter of Detroit-based protests continued as students returned to summer school after a four-day hiatus due to two of their own testing positive for the virus. Depending on you ask, that's a great tally to report - or evidence of what can go wrong.

"We have no idea what the longterm implications of this virus are and we are exposing students to risk without having any idea of what's going to happen," said teacher Benjamin Royal on FOX 2's Let It Rip Weekend. "We've gotta have a vaccine, we've gotta have mass testing and make sure it's not spreading before we talk about reopening."

Since the first two students tested positive, no other kids who have been screened have been confirmed to have the virus. To put it in state health official terms, that's less than a 1% infection rate.

For a city scarred by thousands of deaths and one of the country's worst early outbreaks, those are reassuring numbers. The district's superintendent has lobbied hard to reopen schools, arguing in addition to the precautions of face masks and social distancing being taken, the benefits of going to school outweigh the threats offered by the pandemic. 

The original reason for the testing started after a judge ruled the district must screen its students if it plans to resume summer school, which concludes Aug. 6. Superintendent Dr. Nikolai Vitti disagreed with the order and the protesters cheered the decision, despite calling for all in-person schooling to close. 

It was the latest update in what's been a tense early start to the school year. Bus routes will have been disrupted, protesters have been arrested, and the district has fended off litigation from activists to remain open. The tensions that led to legal and physical challenges from protesters represent the stark division that many districts around Metro Detroit will eventually have to answer to as they wade into the school year debate.

RELATED: Federal judge rules Detroit summer school can continue with mandated COVID-19 tests for students

The question of when and how schools should return to class doesn't really have a good answer at the moment. Some districts like DPSCD have attempted hybridized options that mix in-person learning with virtual sessions - but of course that ran into its own bumps along the way.

The path forward for education remains an ambiguous one. Its continuation into the fall is dependent on the state of the pandemic at the time classes resume.

It's tough to dissect where Michigan might even find itself in another month. As it stands right now, the coronavirus has been steadily climbing for the last month-and-a-half. Not anything like the exponential increase that March rocked the state with - but cases have continued to rise. 

When cases did begin to rise again, certain kinds of rules went into place. Instead of closing all diners and service businesses down, indoor service at bars was the only part of the business that closed. As the consensus around the airborne transmission of COVID-19 became better understood, face masks became an increasingly popular article to wear to prevent the spread. 

On Sunday, health officials reported more than 1,000 new cases. Some of those cases carried over due to a delay in the state's reporting system and its unclear how many belonged on Sunday vs. Saturday. The next week will offer a more robust idea of how effective Michigan was at quelling its second climb in cases.