“One of
the strangest things about living through a pandemic is the lag in
understanding of how bad things are, an awful mirror of the lag in
deaths that come like clockwork after a surge in coronavirus cases.
All along, this disaster has been simultaneously wholly shared and
wholly individualized, a weird dissonance in a collective tragedy
that each person, each family, has to navigate with intricate
specificity to their circumstances.
“The
despair that has seemed to crest in recent days represents another
kind of lag—a lag of realization—and the inevitable end of
hopefulness about what life might be like in September.”
– Adrienne
LaFrance, Executive Editor of The Atlantic. August 2, 2020
Schools across the country
have been required to submit reopening plans for 2020. With strict
guidelines in place, many will begin in-person learning, even as
failures in testing, in containment, and in federal and state
leadership compound in catastrophic ways.
Scientists have warned
that a return to normalcy would take longer. Some health experts
believe in-person education is doomed to fail in the present
environment.
Peter Hotez, a
pediatrician and molecular virologist, and the dean for the National
School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, says …
“The
social-distancing expectations and mask requirements for the lower
grades are unrealistic. In communities with high transmission, it’s
inevitable that COVID-19 will enter the schools. Within two weeks of
opening schools in communities with high virus transmission, teachers
will become ill. All it will take is for a single teacher to become
hospitalized with COVID and everything will shut down.”
(Adrienne LaFrance.
“This Push to Open Schools Is Guaranteed to Fail.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/push-reopen-schools-fail/614869/
The Atlantic.
August 2, 2020.)
And now, evidence shows
that many schools in the United States have not fully complied with
state health requirements for reopening. On August 10, Governor
Andrew Cuomo released a list of 107 school districts across New York
that failed to submit reopening plans to the state. Rich Azzopardi,
senior advisor to the governor, explains …
"The list of
districts that didn't file a plan with the state Department of Health
is accurate. Despite clear guidance provided to these schools, which
included a link to the DOH portal, some districts in follow-up calls
said they filed with the State Education Department - which is not an
executive agency - but didn't file with DOH. Others filled out an
affirmation certifying that they would be abiding by the state's
reopening guidance but didn't actually submit their plan, something
many of these districts are now rectifying.”
(Statement from Senior
Advisor to the Governor Rich Azzopardi on School Districts That Have
Not Submitted Plans for In-Person Learning.” governor.ny.gov.
August 10, 2020.)
Region 7 Wisconsin
Education Association Council (WEAC) gave failing grades for
reopening to Oak Creek, Cudahy, Franklin, Greendale, Kettle Moraine
and West Bend. The grades used the following criteria: coronavirus
testing, mask mandates, social distancing, temperature checks, and
substitute teacher availability among other factors.
(Terry Falk. “School
Reopening Plans Get Failing Grades.
Wisconsin Examiner.
August 11, 2020.)
In Georgia some districts
began opening last week, even though the state is averaging upward of
three thousand new cases of COVID-19 a day – more than France,
Germany, and the United Kingdom combined. Schools opened in Paulding
County, outside Atlanta, despite there being an outbreak among
members of a high-school football team.
Students at Paulding
posted photographs of the first days of the term at the high school,
showing teen-agers jammed in two-way corridor traffic, most of them
without masks. Brian Otott, the county’s school superintendent,
said that the crowding did not violate its “protocols” and that
“wearing a mask is a personal choice and there is no practical way
to enforce a mandate to wear them.”
(Amy Davidson Sorkin.
“The Woeful Inadequacy of School-Reopening Plans.”
The New Yorker.
August 9, 2020.)
Later that same week,
three staff members and six students tested positive for the
coronavirus. All nine of those people were at school for at least a
few days last week. School official said they now have at least 35
confirmed cases of COVID-19. The school has now shut down to
disinfect.
Originally, officials
planned only to close the high school for two days, but later
extended the closure to the whole week. Officials said that when
school restarts on Monday, in-person instruction will move to a
hybrid schedule that combines in-person instruction with digital
learning.
(WSBTV.com News Staff.
“North Paulding High School to reopen Monday under new protocols.”
WSBTV Atlanta. August 12, 2020.)
The National Education
Association, the largest labor union and professional interest group
in the United States, issued a statement criticizing the lack of
federal action to help public schools. The statement reads …
“Mitch McConnell and
GOP Senators have now had 11 weeks to put forward a new round of
COVID-19 relief, and have failed. Following the House passing the
HEROES Act in May, McConnell has refused to work across the aisle,
causing insurmountable harm to millions of Americans. Over the last
three months, educators, students, and entire school communities have
been suffering, not only from personal losses caused by the pandemic,
but also with the impending dread of returning to school buildings
without proper funding for personal protective equipment or adequate
technology for students to be able to learn remotely or in hybrid
models.
“The piecemeal
approach McConnell and the Trump administration have put forward with
just weeks before the beginning of the school year threatens the
safety and livelihoods of educators and families. He is playing games
during the pandemic, using students as pawns. Now, data has shown
that the economy contracted at its fastest quarterly rate between
April and June, causing educators who rely on second or third jobs
during the summer months and throughout the school year to worry
about keeping food on the table, all while the GOP still touts a plan
for a fast recovery. In July, a record breaking number of people,
including many educators, were unable to pay their rent on time.”
(“Mitch McConnell’s
5 terrible ideas for reopening schools.
NEA Education News.
August 3, 2020.)
The NEA says, instead of
doing his job, here are the five things Mitch McConnell has
threatened in Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection and
Schools (HEALS) Act he put out 11 weeks late:
1. No funding for State
and Local
2. Vouchers that take
money away from public schools
3. Funding tied to school
reopening
4. Not extending
suspension of federal student loans
5. Stripping away workers
protections
No guarantees exist for
reopening schools during a pandemic. In-person learning seems to be a
gamble as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a
long-awaited update to guidelines for getting children back into the
classroom this fall, but it left many details of how to do so safely
up to officials at the local level.
As the Trump
administration, as well as state and local officials, consider the
best plan for putting children in harm's way, trial and error methods
seem woefully deficient. In the United States, a hodgepodge of
approaches to reopening schools fosters uncertainty. Strains of “No
one knows what will happen” echo throughout the land.
What should schools do?
Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, writes …
"The
administration and federal agencies do not need to spend time
continuing to emphasize how valuable school is. What schools and
families need is all the available info on kids' transmission risk to
each other, teachers, families, and how to most lower those risks."
(Erika Edwards. “CDC
urges in-person learning, but offers little guidance for sick
students or teachers.” NBC News. July 24, 2020.)
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