the AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school .
…
SARS-CoV-2 appears to behave differently in children and adolescents than other common respiratory viruses, such as influenza, on which much of the current guidance regarding school closures is based. Although children and adolescents play a major role in amplifying influenza outbreaks, to date, this does not appear to be the case with SARS-CoV-2. Although many questions remain, the preponderance of evidence indicates that children and adolescents are less likely to be symptomatic and less likely to have severe disease resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infection. In addition, children may be less likely to become infected and to spread infection. Policies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 within schools must be balanced with the known harms to children, adolescents, families, and the community by keeping children at home.
…
Evidence suggests that spacing as close as 3 feet may approach the benefits of 6 feet of space, particularly if students are wearing face coverings and are asymptomatic. Schools should weigh the benefits of strict adherence to a 6-feet spacing rule between students with the potential downside if remote learning is the only alternative.
…
In Pre-K, the relative impact of physical distancing among children is likely small based on current evidence and certainly difficult to implement. Therefore, Pre-K should focus on more effective risk mitigation strategies for this population.
…
Elementary Schools
Higher-priority strategies:
Children should wear face coverings when harms (eg, increasing hand-mouth/nose contact) do not outweigh benefits (potential COVID-19 risk reduction).
Desks should be placed 3 to 6 feet apart when feasible (if this reduces the amount of time children are present in school, harm may outweigh potential benefits).
Cohort classes to minimize crossover among children and adults within the school.
Utilize outdoor spaces when possible.
…
There is likely a greater impact of physical distancing on risk reduction of COVID in secondary schools than early childhood or elementary education. There are also different barriers to successful implementation of many of these measures in older age groups, as the structure of school is usually based on students changing classrooms.
Based on this set of guidelines, I’m leaning more heavily toward thinking that reopening with mitigation measures is the best approach.
Based on this survey, the opening of schools is likely to impact low-income people and people of color more than other respondents in the survey.
Now that the US is seeing record cases of coronavirus, it remains to be seen how people’s attitudes will change if the case numbers don’t decrease by the Fall.
Maybe I need more coffee, but how are you getting that conclusion? If low-income and POC are less likely to send their kids back to a reopened school, wouldn’t they be less affected by whether the school reopens?
It assumes that the in-person educational experience is helpful to the student keeping up with their peers. I doubt that low-income people will be hiring tutors for their children.
Right, but they aren’t going to send their kids regardless, if it doesn’t feel safe. There may be all sorts of reasons for this . . . Elderly relatives living in the household, the understanding that COVID disproportionately affects African Americans, lack of faith in their school system to protect kids, etc. And frankly, a lot of school districts aren’t going to do anything to mitigate those fears because what they really want if for half the kids to opt in to the on line option.
LHOD’s link to the AAP statement (which I had not yet seen!) is indeed very important. Of note they don’t see physical distancing as effective in young kids either, and express strongly the position that the in younger children the harms of trying to do are in exchange for very little possible gain. Going into the elementary grades they encourage schools to space desks at least 3 feet when possible but, they state:
This a very strong work of advocacy by the AAP. Catches me off guard it does!
BTW I get H&R’s take on the reported poll. Going to school again is a huge benefit and at this point in time, according to that poll, low income and minority families are saying they would decline that benefit more often than more economically advantaged and white families say they would, so relatively the they would fall behind even more than the current closings have disproportionately caused them to, while the white and economically advantaged kids would start to regain their lost ground. Hence inequity would increase.
One take would be to intentionally disadvantage all, or perhaps disproportionately disadvantage the white and economically advantaged children more, in order to not increase the gap. The other is to provide the information (that few yet know and some decline to believe) that there is in fact very little risk to school attendance and emphasis on the importance for their kids to have the chance to begin to make up the lost ground rather than to be further pushed down.
That said, as stated in what was quoted, improving the quality of distance learning alternatives for those children who need them must also be a goal.
Looked through our school district’s website and found nothing about anti-covid plans for the fall. Doesn’t really bother me, as my kids are in their 20s, but they ought to have at least tentative plans noted by now.
As a parent of a middle-school boy, I know he needs to be back among his friends. And intellectually I know that the risks are probably low - extremely low in terms of any harm to him, and pretty low too in terms of his transmitting the virus to my wife or myself.
Still scares the bejeebers out of me. Even if the coronavirus doesn’t kill you, it can mess you up in nasty ways for the rest of your life. Probably everything would be fine, but the downside of being wrong is so enormous. If they go back to school in the fall - and I think they have to go back at least part time - I’ll be biting my nails.
In the words of Vampire Weekend,
I don’t wanna live like this but I don’t wanna die
A nice interview with one of the authors of the AAP statement.
Oh interesting point made tonight by an ID physician leading a COVID task force in a phone meeting I was on. Strongly feeling that keeping kids in class each day, cohorted, with teachers moving, is much better than a hybrid model in which kids stay out of school half the time, likely not staying home but getting gawd knows what other exposures, that they then bring in to the classroom on alternate days.
I’ve floated the idea of cohorts, and accelerated block (which would involve 4 classes a semester, instead of 8), on my campus, but there’s this terrible catch 22 where we can’t start planning anything until we know what the district’s plans are, the district can’t plan anything until they know how many kids will actually come back, and no one can decide if they want to send their kids back until they see the plans.
Cohorting kids is a huge logistical nightmare, unless we literally just toss out all choices and say we are putting you on the classes that worked for cohorting, not the ones you chose. And even that would take days to plan. We could absolutely do it, but I don’t know if we can do it, via Zoom, in a week. But everyone is frozen, in this horrible gridlock.
My wife is a teacher, and she’s refusing to go back to the classroom until she thinks it’s safe. Which won’t be for a while.
The article mentions how teachers are scared to go back. It says districts will make efforts to ensure teachers’ safety. I don’t know how other teachers feel, but my wife doesn’t trust her district at all.
My take is that people who are doing well under the status quo are eager to get back to how things were. People who were not doing as well aren’t as easily convinced, particularly when there’s a risk of death in the mix.
To me, this is sort of like how when businesses that were doing well wanted to open back up, they didn’t realize they would need to get the buy in of customers, employees and government officials. In the case of schools, unless local and state governments will be requiring attendance, in order to reopen, schools will need the buy-in from teachers, staff, parents, students and government officials.
If the infection rate in the locality is low, that buy-in might be easier to get. But if the infection rate is high, the buy-in will be harder to get.
Like in many other aspects of the economy, Covid-19 has been highlighting more of the inequities of our current systems.
That makes no sense. You’re saying the people happy with the current situation want change, the people who are getting screwed are happier sitting tight.
That’s an interesting reading of my post. I’ll try to make it more explicit. The people who were doing well under the school system before Covid-19 are eager to get back to that system. The people who were not doing as well under that system will take more to convince. Those people are generally low-income people and people of color, as was highlighted in the poll.
Yeah, that is the thing that the Pediatrics people are missing, and as cited in the other thread, they concentrate on the well-being of the kids by concentrating on how hard students can make others sick; yes, there are some bad results when kids do not go to school like regarding their educational development; but unfortunately, as other cites showed, when opening schools students increase their contacts and exposure, meaning that the advantage of being less capable of transmission or getting sick is not as big as some assume.
And that takes us to another issue I have with the Pediatric association, teachers, staffers and other workers that will be in contact with students will have their risk increased, that was found in Israel when they had to close schools again after they had accepted the advice from the ones demanding that schools should be open now only to find that the contagion increased among students and staff.
Lol, yeah. Silly doctors worried about the health and education of kids. Whereas us internet experts realize what is really important: Chasing boogeyman dangers until we have nothing to fear.
I think you missed that other experts (many are doctors too), and real life incidents like in Israel are telling us that the Pediatric experts may be correct, but in an incomplete way. As other experts report, they are missing other factors, namely the people that have to deal with the kids, and when they are affected and schools close again any reasons the pediatrics doctors point as valid become valid of course, with the difference that there will be fewer teachers available in the future…