Just before presenting it to state officials, FIU rewrote its reopening plan
After briskly shuttering its facilities to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in early March, Florida International University tasked in mid-April a group of about 25 people, including the police chief and some of its best health experts, with creating a plan to bring students, faculty and staff back to its campuses.
In late May, shortly after the Miami Herald submitted a public records request for it, the state university released the first draft of the repopulating plan, called “Panthers Protecting Panthers.” The document specified three reopening phases and arranged for FIU to slowly move into each one when the community conditions became safe to do so.
Each phase specified criteria that would allow the university to launch it. For instance, Phase 1 would begin when the Florida Department of Health registered a 14-day downward trajectory of positive COVID-19 cases, and increased testing and contract tracing became available. Respectively, each phase listed what could happen during it. Phase 1 permitted a limited number of employees to return to work on campus with staggered shifts, physical distancing and face coverings. Also during Phase 1: Labs, classrooms and work spaces would be reconfigured to ensure physical distancing.
For weeks, university leaders repeatedly touted the plan’s flexibility, saying it allowed them to quickly return to a previous phase if the crisis worsened. The FIU Board of Trustees approved a version of that phased plan during its most recent meeting June 16.
But on Tuesday, when the public university presented the document to the Florida Board of Governors for final consideration, the plan had been edited to leave out all mention of the detailed phases and the corresponding criteria.
The Board of Governors signed off on the plan, which is still considered a “living document” and could further change, but the decision has led to faculty members feeling uneasy about the new plan and afraid to criticize it publicly.
President Mark Rosenberg first addressed the modification of the plan in an email sent Wednesday morning to the university community. “While early versions of this plan identified ‘phases’ of progressive campus opening, we are now focused on a more flexible approach to Fall learning that depends on a broad range of learning modalities intended to fit student needs,” he wrote.
The different “learning modalities” Rosenberg referred to are the four different types of ways classes will be held: face-to-face, fully online, hybrid (a combination of face-to-face and online), and “approved synchronous remote” (at the same time but not the same place). Because the different learning methods had already been included in the plan, these are not replacing the phases.
Why did FIU change its plan?
On June 16, the day the FIU Board of Trustees approved the plan, Provost Kenneth Furton mentioned that the university had already started the process of reopening, saying Phase 1 was “essentially what we’re moving into right now,” despite the fact that the local data concerning the COVID cases did not align with the criteria needed for that phase.
When asked in an interview Thursday if that disparity was the reason why FIU edited the document, Furton said no.
When asked why FIU had abandoned the progressive strategy, Furton provided conflicting responses. First he said the plan needed to be shortened to comply with the Board of Governors’ page limit (20 to 25 pages, according to FIU spokeswoman Madeline Baro). Then he said “there was a misunderstanding that nothing was going to happen until Phase 3.” When asked why the plan wasn’t amended to include more steps during the first two phases instead of getting rid of them entirely, Furton said they intended to make it easier for the community to understand. Then he said the phases were not consistent with those drafted by the local and state officials.
Finally, Furton settled on the idea that the plan was too restrictive and the health subcommittee of the FIU task force wanted to include other factors that could increase the repopulating or dial it down. What factors? He deferred that question to the chairwoman of the subcommittee, Dr. Eneida Roldan, CEO of the FIU HealthCare Network.
When reached later Thursday afternoon, Roldan said the plan hadn’t changed much because it still included the same safety guidelines: surveying for symptoms through a mobile app, increased disinfecting, social distancing, masks whenever keeping six feet apart wasn’t possible and a reduced number of people on campus, among others.
The old phases and the new ‘fluid’ plan
She said the plan just didn’t adhere to any specific criteria anymore. These are the metrics FIU planned to take into consideration to activate or deactivate each phase:
▪ Phase 1 would begin when the state Department of Health indicated a 14-day downward trajectory of positive COVID-19 cases, and increased testing and contract tracing became available.
▪ Phase 2 would begin when the state Department of Health registered a “sustainable” 14-day downward trajectory of new cases per day, and “the number of new cases and percentage of positive COVID-19 tests are in the single digits” in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Additional criteria for the second phase included the availability of increased testing and contact tracing, and “readiness” at FIU to increase on-campus workforce and student capacity.
▪ Phase 3 would begin when the DOH data indicated “little to no community spread per the number of cases reported, no evidence of a resurgence of cases, and robust testing and contact tracing is widely available” in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
So if the phases are gone, what’s the new criteria FIU will consider?
“The criteria is to have an infrastructure in place that will respond to the fluid situation,” Roldan said.
This story was originally published June 26, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
