THE CASE FOR SCHOOL BUILDINGS REOPENING; THE CASE AGAINST SCHOOL BUILDINGS REOPENING

Social studies teacher here. Two very good pieces: one for reopening buildings, one against. 

Where should we stand?

Some important points from a physican Dr. Amita Sudhir, in Slate in The Medical Case for Reopening Schools:

As a parent, I selfishly want schools to reopen. I want this mainly so that I can work without the fear of my children interrupting my Zoom calls. As a physician, I think this can not only be done safely, but after reviewing the available evidence, I have come to firmly believe reopening schools is the right course of action, not just for individual kids but for the community as a whole.

To begin with, COVID just doesn’t seem to be much of a pediatric disease. Mortality data for France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States showed 44 deaths of children from COVID in a several month period. In that same time period, the normal number of deaths from all causes for kids in this age group was more than 13,000. Less than 2 percent of known COVID cases have been in children, and children who do get it generally only get mildly ill. Even kids who get sick with the mysterious and much talked about hyperinflammatory syndrome, a tiny minority to begin with, tend to recover. So closing schools may be worth considering in order to protect the adults who work in schools, but it doesn’t really seem necessary to protect children.

With this in mind, the next question to ask is: Are adults really at risk of getting COVID from children, either their own children or children they work with as teachers, custodians, and cafeteria staff? We have evidence that children are low risk, both to one another and to adults they come into contact with. In an article in the journal Pediatrics, Benjamin Lee and William Raszka, pediatric infectious disease specialists at the University of Vermont, look at the available literature on this topic. They found multiple case reports of children exposing but not infecting up to hundreds of individuals in school settings. Household contacts of infected children don’t appear to be at risk either: Very few transmissions, when examined, appeared to be from child to adult. This would suggest that children are not only of low risk to one another and to their parents, but also to teachers.

Another useful thing to look at is what’s happening in schools that have already reopened. Israel has been facing outbreaks of COVID in schools, but their schools opened up with little or no physical distancing measures in place due to capacity issues. Israel also has poor adherence to mask laws, so what is happening may just be reflecting what is happening in the community more broadly, rather than something specific to school itself. Unless we have data demonstrating that children are getting COVID at school and transmitting it to vulnerable adults, the school outbreaks in Israel still should not lead us to close schools here.

After looking at the risks, we need to consider the benefits of reopening schools. School serves important functions besides learning. What we have learned so far during the pandemic is that the effects of being out of school will fall disproportionately on those who are already disadvantaged. My own children, I believe, will be OK. It will be a struggle for me to find child care and it will take many hours of Khan Academy to make up the math they will surely miss, but even with pay cuts, I still have a doctor’s salary and high speed fiber internet. But many kids are not that lucky. At the Title I public elementary school my son attends, many of his classmates live in public housing and get free school lunches. Some are the children of refugees who don’t speak English. What will a year of this do to them and their futures? As a shift worker myself, I feel a kinship with the parents who work the night shift at McDonald’s, but their problems far outnumber mine. Who will watch their kids when they wake up bleary eyed with only a few hours of sleep? Now they’re also being tasked with teaching their elementary schoolers to add? Not only that, but schools provide speech therapy, psychiatric support for children with emotional and behavioral challenges, and nutritional support for the millions of families in this country living with food insecurity. Children stuck at home can be the victims of abusive family members with no possibility of escape or no unrelated authority figure to intervene, and children spending additional time on the internet for their schoolwork may be vulnerable to internet predators or sex trafficking. On a less tangible level, elementary school is where our children begin the path to being functioning adults, and the social impact of depriving them of that experience, with no identifiable substitute, could be catastrophic.

Worldwide, too, schools protect the vulnerable, especially girls. During the Ebola epidemic, many girls did not return to school after it reopened, and school closures made them vulnerable to sexual abuse and teenage pregnancy. At-risk children who drop out, in the United States or globally, may forever lose the chance for an education and be doomed to a lifetime of poverty. The consequences of school closures worldwide are far-reaching and potentially irreversible.

Besides all of these known, established roles of the school in the community, COVID has created the need for another one: the role of schools in disaster recovery. COVID is a disaster like no other the world has experience in our lifetimes, and children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of disasters. Damon Coppola, who advises the United Nations on COVID recovery, details the critical but often overlooked role of schools in recovery in the book Managing Children in Disasters. Restoring the infrastructure that protects children in a situation that causes them stress and anxiety is crucial for their well-being. But also, for the economy to recover, parents have to be able to go back to work, and public education is not just education but free child care. We’ve seen this before. After Hurricane Katrina, Chevron, recognizing the lack of federal funding to enable parents to go back to work, partnered with Mississippi State University to rebuild child care infrastructure. Free, public, K–12 education is a huge component of child care. As governors talk of rebuilding and restarting the economy, ignoring the role of public educational facilities in this endeavor is a crucial misstep. Rather than keeping schools closed or opening them partially, we should be discussing additional funding for additional staff and temporary buildings, to allow them to safely open full time with appropriate class sizes and adequate physical distancing.

Parents will quit the workforce without child care. And just as girls will disproportionately drop out of school worldwide, women will be the ones to quit their jobs when schools don’t reopen. The setback for women’s equality on both fronts, for perhaps even a year of closures, will take decades to rectify. The risk to children, parents, the economy, and progress in gender equality seems to outweigh the risk of schools being a major center of spread for COVID.

The other thing about reopening is that we can take steps to make it as safe as possible. For the more risk averse, we can still provide the option of online learning. Kids that are old enough to comply can wear masks. Teachers, since they are both higher risk if they do get it and at higher risk of giving it to one another, should wear masks always. Physical distancing should be enforced, although the American Academy of Pediatrics believes that 3 feet may be adequate, a recommendation that makes it easier to allow a school’s entire population to continue to attend school every day. Children should be cohorted in smaller groups on the playground to enable reasonable tracing of contacts if a child or adult does test positive, and teachers should maintain strict precautions in interacting with one another (teacher appreciation breakfasts, for example, may need to go by the wayside for a little while).

For public education, especially, this makes sense. To buy into the concept of public education, but perhaps for any school-based education, is to buy into a belief that we belong to a community that can only thrive with the participation of others. The environment is never tailored to the individual child but to the education of a community. Children with specific vulnerability to COVID, and children with high-risk parents, should have the option to stay home and continue to learn remotely. But for the vast majority, there is as yet no evidence that going back to school carries a great deal of risk, and we know that not going back to school could lead to a great deal of harm, maybe even a lifetime of harm, to individual children and the community as a whole.

As with everything else with COVID, we are constantly learning. If we start with schools open, and contact tracing indicates they are a huge factor in community spread, we will have to reconsider. But if we start with schools closed, or with limited in-person attendance, we will be forced to continue to assume that’s the only safe path, as we will have no further data to tell us otherwise. Given the enormous cost of keeping kids out of school, even part time, the rational solution is to reopen. As with everything else with COVID, we have to make sound decisions based on what we do know, and right now, the available data mostly suggests that the risk to reopening schools is low and the benefit is high.

Now the opposition from Dr. Michael Flanagan at BATS:

What if we reopen the schools but nobody shows?

*I preface this article by stating that remote teaching is not real education. Period. No matter how good the teacher is at the tech, it is still children stuck in front of a screen trying to educate themselves, with only the support of stressed and overworked parents to help them. It is even more difficult for children with special needs. I am not saying I WANT to continue remote teaching. At all. I am just arguing that until things are safe, it looks like we may have to. 

Despite the spikes in coronavirus contagion, politicians and media are moving full steam ahead to reopen schools in the Fall. Mayor de Blasio of New York City just announced on July 2nd that schools would be reopened in September. That’s right—with some as-yet unspecified hybrid model and socially-distanced programming. We’re hearing promises of the school buildings being “deep cleaned” every night, and “touchpoints” like door knobs being cleaned throughout the day. Oh, and masks will be mandated “at all times” because “the health and safety of students and staff are the top priorities”. 

Priorities? 

Broadway shows will remain closed till January 2021. Gyms are not reopening. Restaurants have no eat-in dining, but, schools will be open?

Yeah; you gotta have priorities.

The New York Post cited a recent parent survey that said 75% of parents want their children to return to school in September. Of course parents want their kids to return to school. That is a given. The question is, should they? 

The pressure to reopen schools, and return to work, will continue to intensify, no matter how many new cases of Covid-19 there are each day, and the numbers are growing. Businesses, politicians and even health professionals are in the process of trying to convince us that sending our kids back to school will be safe. 

And these calls are being echoed by far too many anti-mask wearing conspiracy theorists. The hypocrisy of these science-deniers and anti-vaxxers, who all of a sudden take it as fact that children can’t get sick from this virus is glaring. Selective science to suit their political agendas. Stuck on stupid is more like it. Children can and will get sick from Covid-19. That is the fact. 

I’m a teacher. And as a teacher I may return to the school when they reopen. I am also a parent. And as a parent I do not feel safe—not now, anyway—sending my child back to a school building. I don’t care what the politicians say. My daughter wants to return to school, and I want her to be able to. But I also want her healthy. And alive.

Parents will have to make a very hard choice in September. Keep our jobs or try to protect our children? It will be incredibly difficult for any parent to try to figure out how to keep their younger children home if they feel it is too big a risk to send them back to school. 

What is also clear is that the lowest income communities—especially families of color—will have the fewest options to keep their children safe. We are talking about the essential workers who cannot afford childcare; who would be forced to choose their jobs over their children.

It is a privilege to be able to keep your child home, even in the face of financial hardship. A privilege that far too many will not have. 

What is also clear is that racism is helping to drive this reopening movement. Wealthier people—most of them white—who have the means to keep their children home are content to see poorer people risk their children’s lives, so they can eat out at restaurants and get their hair and nails done. 

Covid-19 has already disproportionately targeted people of color. Now the same people claiming it is “their right to choose not to wear a mask” want to sacrifice children of color to the same school systems that they themselves will not let their own children attend, in the very cities they white-flighted from decades ago. 

Whenever I see the New York Post advocating for the reopening of schools I know they have jumped the shark. Rupert Murdoch has never cared for the most vulnerable of our cities. Donald Trump calls Black Lives Matter a message of hate, and cages the children of undocumented immigrants. The only colors they are concerned with are white and green. 

The unsafe reopening of the schools during a pandemic will disproportionately harm communities of color. That is not by accident, it is by design. It is American racism at its worst.    

Most politicians and corporations do not care about people of color having to leave their children in dangerous schools, to potentially get them and themselves sick. They are counting on it. They will use all means—media propaganda, unemployment cuts, funding cuts, healthcare cuts—to divide and conquer. 

Forcing people of color to send their kids back to school before it is safe is not only racism, it is attempted genocide. 

I want the schools back open. I want to teach my students and I want my child in her classroom. I want her to learn and play sports with her friends. But we cannot let greed and systemic racism force us back before it is safe. Our government predicts hundreds of thousands of us will die. We should not be helping them meet that quota. 

So, let the politicians and pundits climb on their high horses and tout the reopening of schools. But we teachers and parents will not be blind sheep. When our children’s lives are threatened—as they will be if they are forced to return to unsafe schools—we will be wolves. We have teeth and will fight back if they try to sacrifice our children to the gods of capital. 

Lawsuits will rain down, and the names of the very people pushing to open up the schools will be at the top of those class actions. They will have bodies on their hands, souls on their conscience and lawyers at their throats.  

People, if you really want the schools to reopen, then start by wearing your damn masks. Then worry about those among us struggling the most...before you complain about not being able to go to Olive Garden or being able to get your nails done. 

As far as I can tell, many in this country cannot even do that. Every day there is a new video of a “Karen,” screaming and attacking store clerks after being told to wear a mask. These are the same Karens that want our schools reopened. 

So, what if they reopen the schools but no one shows? What if we, as parents, refuse to send our children back to school until it is safe for all of them? I know that will be an impossibility in this divided country, but if we could all coalesce on just one issue, I have to believe it would be the safety of our children over racism and greed.

#BlackLivesMatter

(Please go to the pieces themselves for links in the articles. This is a smartphone piece which doesn't always work out so well pasting as plain text. I am learning as I go along sometimes.)