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It’s not just that people are gathering in schools again, by the hundred or thousand, in the middle of a new wave of COVID-19.

It’s not just that some students, teachers and staff members are testing positive, forcing them to stay home.

It’s not just that their close contacts also must be informed of the positive test and figure out what to do.

It’s not just that the protocols for handling cases, contacts and testing have been changing on the fly.

But it’s also that this is taking place during a preexisting shortage of teachers and staff. So even if schools do everything right, they’re likely to end up short-staffed, shuffling students among subs and stand-ins, if they can find them. The schools can do only so much as cases rise and their numbers dwindle.

“It has been incredibly complex to operationalize COVID protocols for staff and students as guidelines continue to change from the national and local level,� Alli Benjamin of the Marana Unified School District told me. “It’s incredibly challenging for our schools when staff members are out.�

The relatively mild symptoms usually caused by the omicron variant make no big difference when a positive test means at least one absence of at least five days. The schools end up in the same bind as before — worse now, actually, because this variant is so easy to pass around.

Pandemic politics

Against that backdrop — this complex, evolving challenge for schools — politicians have, of course, inserted politics. In ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, most pointedly, Gov. Doug Ducey has tried to turn the schools’ challenges into a political wedge issue that benefits him.

This appears to have started Monday, when Joe Thomas, the president of the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Education Association teachers union, responded to a report of a high positivity rate in COVID-19 testing by saying this on Twitter:

“Parents should be preparing for a temporary shift to remote learning. It will be due to not enough staff being able to report for work.�

You might think, from reading that, that he was warning parents to get ready for a period of remote learning because of school personnel testing positive for COVID-19. It certainly reads pretty straightforwardly to me. But the politicians found just enough of a crack of ore there to start mining.

Karrin Taylor Robson, a Republican candidate for governor in the GOP primary race, tweeted: “Now the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ teachers union is threatening a sick-out?! Enough is enough!â€�

That seems like a misinterpretation at best, a misrepresentation at worst. Thomas told me that he only meant to say what he said, nothing about a sickout.

This message of fighting teachers unions that want to close schools is proving politically useful as a national issue for the GOP, though. Indeed, there are some cities, notably Chicago, where the teachers union has demanded a return to remote learning during the omicron surge.

But that hasn’t been the case locally at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Unified School District, nor at the state level.

Nevertheless, Ducey, the leading member of Robson’s faction of the GOP, took the baton from her and ran with it.

He puffed up his chest in calculated umbrage and tweeted “Once again, teachers unions are playing political games with no regard for the social and emotional impact on our kids. Parents shouldn’t stand for it — and will remember these antics at the ballot box.�

Ducey went on to unveil a program that would pay up to $7,000 to parents whose schools close even one day due to COVID-19. The money could go to child-care or transportation costs, or — and this is the real meat of the matter — tuition at a private school.

Yes, once again Ducey is trying to use federal pandemic relief as a tool to steer students away from public schools and toward private schools.

This is, of course, reminiscent of his disgraceful display this summer. He offered bonus federal money to school districts that obeyed his order not to impose mask mandates. The Treasury Department has said this is an illegal use of the federal money. Certainly it was immoral, because it rewarded schools for ignoring one of the mitigation measures that has proven helpful in stopping the spread of COVID-19.

Still, he seems determined to keep riding this wave toward whatever political goal he has. On Thursday, he told Fox ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ host Harris Faulkner: “We’re not going to let the union thugs play Chicago-like games in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥.â€�

Who’s vaccinated and who isn’t?

That shouldn’t be hard, since nobody is playing games like this in the schools these days. They’re just struggling to keep the boats afloat.

For now, the Marana district has 55 active COVID-19 cases among both faculty and students. Each of them has to stay away for at least five days. And that number will likely continue to rise.

The close contacts of each of those people must quarantine at home if they’re not vaccinated or use a mask at school if they are vaccinated, under new guidelines put out by the Centers for Disease Control and passed on by Pima County’s Health Separtment.

But who is vaccinated and who isn’t? That actually changed last week, as Kat Davis, program manager for the Health Department, explained to me Friday.

“CDC did not change their technical definition of fully vaccinated. But in practice their guidance has changed to make a booster required for fully vaccinated status.�

“We changed ours to match that, but then this week more guidance came out for students and children that only the primary series is required.�

Confused? So was I. And so were people at Marana and other school districts. But the gist is that, if you’re a student, you must only have the initial series of two vaccines to be considered fully vaccinated. If you’re a staff member or teacher, you must also have the booster. And that determines whether you can stay at school, masked, if your close contact got a positive test.

But you can also “test-to-stay,� a new protocol from the CDC. If you are a close contact of someone who tested positive, then you may take COVID-19 tests on the first, third and fifth day after the exposure is known and stay in school, masked, as long as your tests remain negative.

It’s a helpful development in the effort to keep schools open, but unfortunately it relies on testing materials being available, and in this surge they are increasingly unavailable.

The Marana district’s adaptation is this: If you are a close contact of someone positive for COVID-19, then you must either quarantine at home or follow the test-to-stay protocol. But the testing is on you. The district doesn’t provide it.

And of course the district — every district, every school — is supposed to keep track of all these permutations: Who’s tested positive, who’s a close contact, who’s vaccinated among the close contacts, who’s following test-to-stay protocols, who’s not. And they’re supposed to keep educating children, too.

It’s the kind of thing that a leader with a plan could perhaps fix. But instead we have leaders using the pandemic to exploit a political opening.