School openings need….
Via Diana Ravitch’s blog on a Time magazine article What the U.S. Can Learn from 3 Countries About Reopening:
TIME Magazine just published a story about school reopening in Denmark, South Korea, and Israel, with lessons for the U.S.
Lesson #1 from Denmark: Get the virus under control before reopening schools. Unlike Denmark, the United States is bungling that, and the virus is spreading in the south and west. Perhaps states that have taken the necessary steps and flattened the curve can begin to reopen, with caution.
Lesson #2 from South Korea: Prepare to delay reopening if cases spike. Older students returned to school fumirst.
Lesson #3 from Israel: Infections increase when schools don’t take every safety precaution. Expect to close down again if you don’t follow the protocols of masks, social distancing and other precautions.
The necessary health and safety protocols require extra funding. No extra funding is available. Trump threatened to cut federal funds from schools that don’t open fully even without the small classes, masks, PPE, extra nurses, etc. He wants the schools open without regard to the health or safety of teachers and students.
This will work just as well as reopening the country did. Expect these schools tat do reopen will close again in a short period of time.
All due to the total lack of leadership from the top combined with ignorance at the state level.
On Lesson 3: Just tell them to use the spending earmarked for teachers getting guns to fight the enemy…
The national dialogue regarding the schools now and always takes as a given that everyone loves their children. Sadly…
The schools that my children attend have committed to in-person education on their normal calendar. They had a lot of parent input and I think two big points were that the quality of education this spring was inadequate and the prior few years of influenza were harder than normal but without any major outbreaks among teachers. Lots of kids got sick and some quite sick (all recovered) but only one staff member in 3 years got flu and it was kind of ambiguous as it was a “specials” Mandarin teacher who taught at several schools plus had her Army reserve weekends. As for the quality of remote instruction, one parent (not me) made a point that others agreed with that the current teachers are not generally the right ones for remote teaching. No fault of their own that 17 years of classroom experience turned out not to be that useful on-line, but it wasn’t. One of the teachers with the least classroom experience seemed to be a standout in remote with keen understanding of the technology. She was able to help parents get everything running and that turned out to make a significant difference for her class. Even then, the education was very hostage to parental knowledge and IT resources. Not sure but I suspect that was the key input to the teachers: if your teaching skills are attenuated by your minimal IT knowledge, it is a major defect if on-line is going to be the education mode because the school does not have enough resources to straighten this out in a timely manner. A lot of near-horror IT stories among families that on paper should have been in better shape than most, particularly grades 4 and younger, where it was unusual to have a dedicated device for such young kids. Families with more children were very disfavored. And there was a “light-bulb” moment when math turned out to be a relative success attributed to the fact that kids in all grades did most of their work “paper and pencil” in workbooks they were able to get from the school.
The decision was communicated to parent with a lot of “context”, but most parent believe that was simply that unless COVID is known to be worse for kids than flu, back to school then.
With hospital directors and physicians drawing on the Chinese experience, Israel was prepared for identifying and isolating coronavirus cases and the government was quick in isolating communities where clusters were found. The spread of infections was coming under control fairly quickly, when the government subject to political pressure chose to open community businesses and schools. The result has been a dramatic growth in cases, many coming from schools.
July 21, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 54,042)
Deaths ( 425)
Deaths per million ( 46)
———————————–
July 4, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 29,170)
Deaths ( 330)
Deaths per million ( 36)
Nobel laureate Michael Levitt said he would be surprised if COVID-19 deaths would exceed 10. As of today, the number is 430 with no sign of abating. Classic Dunning-Kruger.
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Nobel-laureate-Israel-will-have-no-more-than-ten-coronavirus-deaths-621407
Joel
Lots of naysayers who are politically connected and intelligent and should know better.
July 22, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 55,695)
Deaths ( 430)
Deaths per million ( 47)
The “quality of education” mantra totally ignores reality.
Barbaric.
An uncontrolled medical experiment with children. Have your children sick for the Dow.
Were I advising any school district on the prospect of opening, I would suggest pairing with a district in a city in Europe or, better, Asia and looking at plans made and routines carried through. Also, when we are considering a country that is experiencing more than 60,000 new coronavirus infections daily we have to understand just how much more serious is our problem than in other countries.
As for the fall, and the beginning of what is ordinarily flu season, that will be a complicating factor rather. As countries in the southern hemisphere, where it is winter, show, there is no seasonal lessening of the coronavirus spread to be expected.
July 22, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 4,064,335)
Deaths ( 145,420)
About the increasing spread of coronavirus infections through Israel, beyond a politically induced early opening the spread shows a general institutional weakness in the Israeli healthcare system which is in testing.
At this point, a testing weakness will surely be a problem for a number of American school districts.
July 22, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 56,085)
Deaths ( 430)
Deaths per million ( 47)
Confirmed coronavirus cases in Israel increased by a remarkable 3.78% on July 22.
July 22, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 4,084,795)
Deaths ( 145,913)
After decades of neglect, the schools should have and still need an infusion of cash equal to the amount of money showered on corporate America during this crisis before we consider reopening them. Consider it the long awaited infrastructure bill targeted towards something that everyone says they are in favor of but no one has ever gotten around to voting for.
When the class sizes went from 24 to 35, public school teachers just bowed their necks and took the extra load. Now, we see classes where more than half, up from a third, of the students in these larger classes, have some sort of issue. So now they have larger classes with more learning and behavioral issues. This is all a consequence of charter and private school gleaning out only those without behavioral and learning issues. When COVID-19 struck, their first instinct was to again bow their necks.
The schools could use more money. Teachers should be paid at least 50% more. If a teacher gets cancer, … and can’t work, after a time they will probably lose their healthcare benefits. In States like, …, …, …, teachers didn’t even get retirement benefits until they recently shutdown their state’s government.
Teacher’s salaries are a good place to start, and while we are at it, let’s raise taxes on the rich, and raise the wages of all essential workers by at least 50%.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_069.asp
January, 2020
Public elementary and secondary pupil/teacher ratios, 1980-2020
1980 ( 18.7)
1981 ( 18.8) Reagan (High)
1982 ( 18.6)
1983 ( 18.4)
1984 ( 18.1)
1985 ( 17.9)
1986 ( 17.7)
1987 ( 17.6)
1988 ( 17.3)
1989 ( 17.2) Bush
1990 ( 17.2)
1991 ( 17.3)
1992 ( 17.4)
1993 ( 17.4) Clinton
1994 ( 17.3)
1995 ( 17.3)
1996 ( 17.1)
1997 ( 16.8)
1998 ( 16.4)
1999 ( 16.1)
2000 ( 16.0)
2001 ( 15.9) Bush
2002 ( 15.9)
2003 ( 15.9)
2004 ( 15.8)
2005 ( 15.6)
2006 ( 15.6)
2007 ( 15.5)
2008 ( 15.3)
2009 ( 15.4) Obama
2010 ( 15.2)
2011 ( 15.2)
2012 ( 15.2)
2013 ( 15.1)
2014 ( 15.1)
2015 ( 15.0) (Low)
2016 ( 15.0)
2017 ( 15.0) Trump
2018 ( 15.0)
2019 ( 15.0)
2020 ( 15.0)
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_069.asp
January, 2020
Private elementary and secondary pupil/teacher ratios, 1980-2020
1980 ( 17.7) (High)
1981 ( 17.6) Reagan
1982 ( 17.2)
1983 ( 17.0)
1984 ( 16.8)
1985 ( 16.2)
1986 ( 15.7)
1987 ( 15.6)
1988 ( 15.2)
1989 ( 15.7) Bush
1990 ( 15.6)
1991 ( 15.6)
1992 ( 16.1)
1993 ( 16.7) Clinton
1994 ( 16.2)
1995 ( 15.7)
1996 ( 15.5)
1997 ( 15.2)
1998 ( 15.0)
1999 ( 14.7)
2000 ( 14.5)
2001 ( 14.3) Bush
2002 ( 14.1)
2003 ( 13.8)
2004 ( 13.6)
2005 ( 13.5)
2006 ( 13.2)
2007 ( 13.0)
2008 ( 12.8)
2009 ( 12.5) Obama
2010 ( 12.6)
2011 ( 12.5)
2012 ( 12.5)
2013 ( 12.4)
2014 ( 12.4)
2015 ( 12.4)
2016 ( 12.4)
2017 ( 12.3) Trump (Low)
2018 ( 12.3)
2019 ( 12.3)
2020 ( 12.3)
Correcting:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_069.asp
January, 2020
Public elementary and secondary pupil/teacher ratios, 1980-2020
2014 ( 15.1)
2015 ( 15.1)
2016 ( 15.0) (Low)
2017 ( 15.0) Trump
2018 ( 15.0)
2019 ( 15.0)
2020 ( 15.0)
Anne,
It’s the class size, not the ratio of students to teachers.
Supposing that the public schools in a city have a ratio of students to teachers of roughly 15, then at a time when small class sizes are especially called for for safety sake there should be no reason for classes of 30. Possibly there should have been no reason before for classes with relatively large numbers of students, but now should be different.
Possibly, likely, I do not understand elementary and secondary school structures, and classes I was in were sized so that social distancing would have been easily managed. I am then just wondering.
We are in a time when there have been important structural changes through the economy. I am impressed by the changes just in my neighborhood, though my neighborhood has so far been little affected directly by the epidemic. The changes I notice strike me as likely lasting, so I am trying to anticipate what will last.
I think many analysts are underestimating the impact and persistence of structural changes in the economy, so I am playing with ideas.
Anne
Here, in the SF Bay Area, most classes have at least 30 students/class. It is not at all unusual for there to be 35 in middle school and high school classrooms; beyond 35, you have to start stacking – the rooms are sized. I suspect that Special Day Classes, Special Ed, and teachers who teach 4 periods or less (teachers with health issues and those who teach AP) skew any meaningful pupil to teacher ratio
Here, in the SF Bay Area, most classes have at least 30 students/class. It is not at all unusual for there to be 35 in middle school and high school classrooms; beyond 35, you have to start stacking – the rooms are sized….
[ Understood and important. However, the logistics of classes in the midst of the epidemic will have to be changed if teachers and students are to be protected. A sitting class of 30 or 35 students must be reconsidered. There would seem to be no choice.
Austria, I remember, opened schools by having half the students in class every other day. So 30 becomes 15. Half in class by video, half actually there and switching each day.
I am just playing while being unacquainted with primary and secondary school structures from the perspective of a teacher. ]
July 23, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 4,150,887)
Deaths ( 146,975)
July 23, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 57,982)
Deaths ( 442)
Deaths per million ( 48)
———————————–
July 4, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 29,170)
Deaths ( 330)
Deaths per million ( 36)
just expect this school year to become a complete clusterf*ck before it’s over because re-opening the schools in this country is not about the children or their education but is rather about providing state supported baby-sitting so the parents can get back to work…those in charge are still trying to impose their will on the virus and it ain’t gonna happen…it is not an accident that that Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Narendra Modi account for almost half of the coronavirus cases on the planet…
Anne,
My daughter and I brainstormed this back in March, she teaches AP Sci.
It’s the classrooms, the hallways during passing periods, the cafeterias, the ventilation systems, behavior, prep periods, PPEs, … And, in the end, no one knows what the situation will be in the fall, the states are broke, and we have a sociopathic idiot for president.
Anne
http://angrybearblog.com/2020/05/what-to-do-about-the-schools.html
—How to safely get 3,000 high school students to and from school; from class to class; to, into and out of classrooms; to, into and out of the cafeteria; … while maintaining social distancing?
Class schedules, school hours, the school year, … these all involve time. To allow for social distancing in the classroom, class size will need be cut in half. More classes and more classrooms will be needed. Requiring perhaps more teachers, certainly more hours per day, per week.
To avoid jam-packed hallways, to achieve social distance spacing, class periods will need be staggered by groups. Security will need be enhanced to enforce between class traffic rules, to eliminate wandering about during class, congregating in bathrooms, …
Now is the time to work out the kinks in online teaching.
Students and Teachers may need to wear masks. Teachers make need to be miked.
All these things are more difficult in the lower grades, in the more troubled schools.
All these problems and more have to be dealt with in the context of pressure from parents to reopen schools and pandemic depleted state budgets.
Should schools be reopened?
Is any return to ‘normal’ delusional?
It is simply just another catastrophe caused be a dysfunctional government.
Trump has decimated our government in almost every single area.
Look at the nonsense caused by the CDC bowing to him.
“Donald Trump has gotten his wish: The CDC just released a note suggesting that schools should reopen next year. But check out the waffling in the section about the dangers of COVID-19:
‘Scientific studies suggest that COVID-19 transmission among children in schools may be low. International studies that have assessed how readily COVID-19 spreads in schools also reveal low rates of transmission when community transmission is low. Based on current data, the rate of infection among younger school children, and from students to teachers, has been low, especially if proper precautions are followed.’
Even in a letter caving in to Trump’s school reopening demands, the CDC is only willing to say that it might be safe among younger children in areas where the virus is already under control. This is considerably less clear-cut than Trump might have hoped for, but you have to read carefully to see it. Put it all together and I’ll bet it applies to no more than about 5-10 percent of all schoolchildren in the country.”
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/07/the-cdc-says-we-should-reopen-schools-but-theres-a-catch/
Ken Melvin:
Excellent; the comments frame and outline a range of problems in primary and secondary school openings.
This curious OpEd appeared in the Boston Globe
a few days ago, as an example of how they can
be ‘fair & balanced’ perhaps.
I’m not buying it.
Listen to the science and reopen schools
… listen to the science, which says that schools can — and should — reopen for in-person learning with appropriate risk reduction strategies, while officials also implement aggressive steps to keep community transmission low.
Listen to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which argued for focusing on science and not politics in supporting a return to in-person schooling with new investments in safety, describing in-person school as “fundamental” to the well-being of the nation’s children.
Prolonged time away from schools has led to months of lost learning and widened gaps in educational achievement, especially for some students of color and those in lower income households. Adding months more to this toll will be an educational disaster that some children may never recover from. School closures also threaten some children’s safety, due to increased child neglect, hurt children’s mental health, and keep many from getting enough to eat.
The harms of school closure are clear. What about the risks of reopening?
Multiple studies show that children are not only less likely to become seriously ill from COVID-19, they are also only half as likely to get infected in the first place. Overall, the rate of infection requiring hospitalization among US school-age children (5 to 17) since the beginning of the pandemic though July 4 was roughly 1 in 20,000.
What about the risk to teachers and staff? Again, listen to the science. A report led by the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Obama concluded that children appear less likely than adults to transmit COVID-19 to others — unlike other viruses like influenza — though this evidence is still limited and preliminary. Studies examining schools with known cases of COVID-19 have shown low transmission rates — for instance, in one case, just two students and no teachers infected out of 863 close contacts. Others show zero confirmed infections even among teachers and students who sat in the same classroom with a symptomatic child. …
Fred
Obviously written by scientists who have never been in a classroom during a flu season.
American Academy of Pediatrics clarifies stance on reopening schools
New statement says science, local experts should help decide school reopenings
The American Academy of Pediatrics recently came out with an updated statement regarding the reopening of schools.
It reads in part:
“Returning to school is important for the healthy development and well-being of children, but we must pursue re-opening in a way that is safe for all students, teachers and staff. Science should drive decision-making on safely reopening schools. Public health agencies must make recommendations based on evidence, not politics. We should leave it to health experts to tell us when the time is best to open up school buildings, and listen to educators and administrators to shape how we do it.”
“Local school leaders, public health experts, educators and parents must be at the center of decisions about how and when to reopen schools, taking into account the spread of COVID-19 in their communities and the capacities of school districts to adapt safety protocols to make in-person learning safe and feasible. For instance, schools in areas with high levels of COVID-19 community spread should not be compelled to reopen against the judgment of local experts. A one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate for return to school decisions.”
“The original guidance was always written as being a strong advocates for the goal of kids physically being present in school with a lot of things to consider and that’s where things got misrepresented and misunderstood,” said Dr. Candice Jones.
For the full statement, click here.
it appears that we have more than one version of the ‘science’..
Teens and Tweens Are Fastest COVID-19 Spreaders, New Study Finds – In the debate over how to safely reopen schools and effective strategies to keep kids, teachers, school staff and extended family members safe, a new study from South Korea sheds light on the possible consequences of hastily reopening schools. The large study found that older children, mainly teens and tweens, are more likely to spread the virus than young children or adults, as Bloomberg reported. That means that kids going to high school and middle school are likely to pass the virus amongst each other and then bring it home, even if they do not have any symptoms. The findings suggest that as schools reopen, communities will start to see clusters of infection take root that include children of all ages, several experts told The New York Times. "I fear that there has been this sense that kids just won’t get infected or don’t get infected in the same way as adults and that, therefore, they’re almost like a bubbled population,"
Reopening Schools Is Way Harder Than It Should Be
NY Times – July 23
Of all the American institutions the pandemic has shut down, none face pressure to reopen quite like schools do. Pediatricians exhort schools to open their doors wherever possible or risk developmental harm to kids. Working parents, particularly mothers, are in crisis, worried about having to leave the work force altogether in the absence of a place to send their young children each day. And President Trump is campaigning for schools to reopen, threatening to withhold funding if they don’t.
The pressure has mounted as school districts have made it clear that they can do no such thing. Across the country — including in Phoenix, Houston and a huge chunk of California, where coronavirus cases are rapidly rising — schools are preparing their students and staffs for a continuation of the “remote learning” that began in the spring. In New York City and Chicago, where the virus is more under control, schools are moving toward a hybrid option with remote learning some days, in-person school others. Even in places like Detroit and Memphis, where districts plan to offer in-person school for those who want it, local leaders could change course if virus cases rise; they also have yet to figure out what to do if too many worried teachers or students opt out.
Outrage over schools’ inability to fully reopen should not, of course, be directed at schools themselves, but at the public health failure that makes it impossible for most of them to do so. The consequences of closed or half-open schools, meanwhile, are far vaster than the brutal economic challenge facing working parents and their employers. That’s because schools do much more than provide child care. They provide education, fundamentally. But as the pandemic has made clear, they also provide meals, social connection and health services.
Meeting any one of these needs in normal times through a single institution is a struggle. Add in an out-of-control pandemic that multiplied the number of children who are not getting enough to eat to 14 million, made in-person teaching a health gamble and threw off the learning trajectory of every child in America — all while creating huge projected budget shortfalls for schools — and you have a “train wreck,” said David K. Cohen, a visiting professor of education at Harvard.
Compounding the difficulty is the fact that schools are run locally, autonomy the Trump administration has taken to new extremes by offering reopening instructions that amount to, “good luck.” As a result, many of the country’s 13,000-plus school districts have been left alone to navigate everything from finding masks to deciding what safe classrooms look like — not to mention how to offer widespread and safe food distribution and personalized emotional support in the absence of physical gathering space.
“If you wanted to invent a really weak organization to do all of those things, it would be schools,” Mr. Cohen said. “But the reality is, schools are what families have. Especially poor families and Black and brown families.”
So if the first sin was failing to control the pandemic, the second was letting the virus run wild in a country ill-suited to handle the cascading consequences. The people left to figure it out are superintendents, school board members, teachers and parents, for whom that simple word “reopen” actually entails a dizzying array of interlocking problems. The people who will pay the eventual price are America’s children, for years to come.
Let’s start with child care, which translates, at the barest minimum, to providing every child with a safe place to go so their parents can work and so that they can learn. For schools to play that role, they require two basic ingredients: sufficient physical space and willing and capable adult caregivers. But how much space and how many adults?
That calculation starts with public health considerations. Exactly what part open schools play in spreading the virus is still unknown, but new research suggests that kids age 10 to 19 can transmit it at rates similar to adults. And with case numbers still rising in the United States, school reopenings in places like Denmark that have contained the virus aren’t fitting guides to what would lie ahead here if districts heeded Mr. Trump’s call to bring students back.
One way to mitigate concern is to enforce physical distancing rules, along with mandates for masks and strict hygiene. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has suggested schools keep students six feet apart where feasible, a caveat at the root of school leaders’ confusion. The American Academy of Pediatrics has suggested just three feet may be OK, especially with masks, citing the challenge of distancing in schools and the downsides of remote learning.
Skyrocketing cases in some parts of the country have rendered this conversation moot, with school districts and health departments deciding they cannot take the risk of opening school doors at all. But even if other districts decide they can open, superintendents have to take into account two other variables in addition to space: parents’ willingness to send their children to in-person school and teachers’ willingness to show up and teach them. …
This article in ‘Nature’ appeared before the
South Korean study linked above.
How do children spread the coronavirus?
Nature – May 7
The role of children in spreading the coronavirus has been a key question since the early days of the pandemic. Now, as some countries allow schools to begin reopening after weeks in lockdown, scientists are racing to figure this out.
Children represent a small fraction of confirmed COVID-19 cases — less than 2% of reported infections in China, Italy and the United States have been in people under 18 years old.
But researchers are divided on whether children are less likely than adults to get infected and to spread the virus. Some say that a growing body of evidence suggests children are at lower risk. They are not responsible for the majority of transmission and the data support opening schools, says Alasdair Munro, a paediatric infectious-diseases researcher at University Hospital Southampton, UK. …
A study published on 27 April in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, analysed households with confirmed COVID-19 cases in Shenzhen, China. It found that children younger than ten were just as likely as adults to get infected, but less likely to have severe symptoms. …
Why would anyone listen to anyone in this administration; especially given what’s going on right now? An extra 100k plus are going to die because a bunch of governors chose to listen to Trump and not to the scientists. Opinions, everyone has one and they all stink. Whence this giving equal credance to ill informed opinions? Who will rid us?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethcohen/2020/07/12/betsy-devos-and-the-school-opening-directives-that-could-kill-americas-teachers/“>Betsy DeVos And The School Reopening Directives
via @forbes – July 12
As coronavirus case numbers soar across the country, continuing to reach record highs in many states, the nation has begun to confront the uncomfortable questions of if and how schools should open in the fall. While there is near universal agreement on the need for the education system across America to provide classes to students, the question is how? Should schools open up physically, risking the spread of the highly communicable virus among students, teachers, and ultimately to those who they live with? Or should there be a greater emphasis on virtual and distance learning, which sacrifices a significant part of the educational experience, but has a better chance of keeping students, teachers and families safe?
For their part, both President Trump and Vice President Pence have been adamant that schools plan on physically opening. Both men have been openly advocating for an in-person start to the school year and have been dismissive of the strict guidelines the Centers for Disease Control has issued to help school leaders make decisions. On Wednesday, President Trump tweeted that the CDC guidelines, intended to protect students and teachers from the deadly virus, are “very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools.” The President also threatened to cut off federal aid to schools that don’t reopen.
During a White House coronavirus task force press briefing last week following the President’s tweet, Vice President Pence similarly addressed the CDC guidelines. “The president said today we just don’t want the guidance to be too tough,” Pence said. “That’s the reason why, next week, CDC is going to be issuing a new set of tools, five different documents that will be giving even more clarity on the guidance going forward.”
On Fox News Sunday, DeVos was unambiguous about the need to open schools. “Parents are expecting that this fall their kids are going to have a full-time experience with their learning, and we need to follow through on that promise,” she said. She added, “[Students have] fallen behind this spring, we need to ensure they’re back in a classroom situation wherever possible and whenever possible, and fully functioning… fully learning.”
DeVos also doubled down on the President’s threat to withhold funding. “American investment in education is a promise to students and their families,” DeVos said. “If schools aren’t going to reopen and not fulfill that promise, they shouldn’t get the funds.”
During an interview on CNN’s State of the Union, DeVos addressed questions related to the CDC guidelines. “The CDC guidelines are just that, meant to be flexible and meant to be applied as appropriate for the situation,” DeVos said in response to host Dana Bash. “There is nothing in the data that would suggest that kids being back in school is dangerous to them,” DeVos added later.
But what about the teachers?
Last week, The New York Times reported on internal documents created by the CDC, citing concern that fully reopening K-12 schools would pose the “highest risk” of spreading the deadly virus. While there continues to be reports that children are not as harshly affected by the virus as adults, the fact that adult teachers will be substantially at risk as the virus spreads has many concerned. A report last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that almost 1.5 million teachers are at greater risk of serious illness if they are infected with the coronavirus, equaling one in four teachers nationwide.
With cases already soaring across the country in the summer months, which many thought was supposed to be the “quiet period” of the pandemic, there is already heightened concern that the accelerating pandemic will only intensify in the fall. As the Kaiser report states, “assuring the safety of teachers and others at higher risk of serious illness from coronavirus is a crucial part of the calculation around reopening.” …
Ultimately there may be no choice to make. As the nation hurtles towards even higher case numbers, and more and more regions across the country become hotspots, DeVos and others may come to a sobering conclusion. In order to save teachers lives, they will need to put aside other interests, including possible reelection interests of the President, and allow schools to make the decision to remain physically closed without any repercussions. Anything less would be a gross dereliction of duty…
But what about the teachers?
Last week, The New York Times reported on internal documents created by the CDC, citing concern that fully reopening K-12 schools would pose the “highest risk” of spreading the deadly virus. …
As Trump Demanded Schools Reopen, His Experts Warned of ‘Highest Risk’
NY Times – July 10
WASHINGTON — Federal materials for reopening schools, shared the week President Trump demanded weaker guidelines to do so, said fully reopening schools and universities remained the “highest risk” for the spread of the coronavirus.
The 69-page document, obtained by The New York Times and marked “For Internal Use Only,” was intended for federal public health response teams to have as they are deployed to hot spots around the country. But it appears to have circulated the same week that Vice President Mike Pence announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would release new guidelines, saying that the administration did not want them to be “too tough.” It is unclear whether Mr. Trump saw the document, nor is it clear how much of it will survive once new guidance is completed.
(The cover page of the document is dated July 8, 2019, an obvious typographical error since the novel coronavirus did not exist then.)
What is clear is that federal health experts are using a road map that is vastly different from what Mr. Trump wanted.
While it is mostly a compilation of C.D.C. documents already posted online, it includes reopening plans drafted by states, districts and individual schools and universities. And the package, from the Community Interventions and Critical Populations Task Force, is pointed.
In a “talking points” section, the material is critical of “noticeable gaps” in all of the K-12 reopening plans it reviewed, though it identified Florida, Oregon, Oklahoma and Minnesota as having the most detailed.
“While many jurisdictions and districts mention symptom screening, very few include information as to the response or course of action they would take if student/faculty/staff are found to have symptoms, nor have they clearly identified which symptoms they will include in their screening,” the talking points say. “In addition, few plans include information regarding school closure in the event of positive tests in the school community.”
And its suggestions for mitigating the risk of school reopenings would be expensive and difficult for many districts, like broad testing of students and faculty and contact tracing to find people exposed to an infected student or teacher. …