The Center for Disease Control released two pieces of updated guidance on return to school during a pandemic. One is useful with guidance, checklists and key considerations. The other looks like an overdue draft that was written by an underperforming and over-caffeninated student on why schools are important. I want to pull out a key paragraph with my emphasis added:
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.
The key phrase is “COMMUNITY TRANSMISSION IS LOW.” Lots of things are possible when community transmission is low and proper precautions are available and followed.
Canada as a country had slightly more than 11 new cases per million residents yesterday. Parts of the United States have been fairly successful at suppressing broad, uncontrolled community spread. Per CovidExitStrategy.org, Vermont has 12 new cases per million residents. Maine has 14 new cases per million residents. These states can and are deploying the traditional public health playbook of prompt, wide spread testing, tracing the contacts of an infected individual and isolating both the infected individual and at least first degree close contacts so future spread is minimized. On the other hand, Florida is averaging 493 new cases per million and Louisiana reported 468 new cases per million residents. The median state, Delaware, has 119 new cases per million residents.
My friend and Margolis colleague, Dr. Charlene Wong writes about school re-openings today:
Where we set priorities, we invest our dollars. If we were to put the needs of children first, what would that look like? We would provide robust and generous financial support to teachers and schools. We would shut down other aspects of society, as much as we could bear, to drive down cases to allow more schools to reopen.
We would not be partying on the beaches. Disney World would not mind re-closing if that meant protecting children’s wellbeing. We would not be wasting breath debating how bars can operate if we can’t answer how schools can safely open. And for sure, we would not complain about wearing masks, if that small sacrifice was what it took for children to be taught, fed, and cared for. Kids would come first.
If we want to re-open schools (and I think we all do as our socio-economic structure is predicated on school age kids being in school while their grown-ups work for most of the year and we know that in-person instruction is usually far better than distance learning instruction and I expect I will be as bad a third grade teacher as I was a second grade teacher), we have to figure out ways to minimize community spread. It is that simple. Precautions and risk mitigation can work when community spread is low and quickly contained.
Re-opening schools is a good thing if that can be done safely. Any school that does in-person instruction will look different than it looked last February. Precautions will alter social interactions and expectations. Precautions will alter physical spaces. Precautions will alter the flow of the day. But in a context of low spread, those precautions have a reasonable chance of working. But the key question is not if we are to re-open schools, but on what conditions and how? The most important condition is suppressing community spread. From there, we can get to a new normal-ish at a reasonable level of specific and community level risk that we can mitigate and minimize with community wide efforts.
So the effort to re-open schools for in-person instruction really should start with efforts to minimize community spread. That means we need to value math class more than bars. It means we need to value reading instruction more than adult gym classes. It means we need to value 6th grade orchestra more than listening to the newest indy band at a hot, packed club. It means we need to prioritize what we value and make explicit trade-offs.
Another Scott
That’s just crazy talk!!11 WDYHASM?*
/RWNJ
(sigh)
Thanks. Very well said.
[eta:] – We know that addressing the virus comes first. The economy won’t come back until we address the virus first. Schools won’t come back until we address the virus first. We know this and have known it since January (from China’s experience). We need to address the virus. Everything else follows.
Cheers,
Scott.
—
* – Why Do You Hate America So Much?
rikyrah
Nobody came forth and said..
We should open schools the way that they are doing in China.
IF we had done that, I might take them seriously.
Until then… nope ?
raven
I have teacher friends making sure their wills are updated.
Mary G
Somewhere I read that part of the CDC guidelines were written in the White House. Hard to guess which ones.//
cmorenc
Without my adult gym being open, I am a grumpy bear indeed. Very very grumpy. My body tone is getting rather limp and lumpy, instead of strong and hunky.
But if I can grumpily put up with no gym for the good and safety of the kids and vulnerable public, everybody else can put up with no bars, nightclubs, or big parties. Be a smarty, not a dolt-y selfish fart-y.
laura
If we as a nation cared about children’s safety and schools, active shooter training would not be ‘a thing’ that we force them to do. The 2020-21 academic year is possible. There’s a way, but is there the will to do it if it’s going to require the teensiest of inconvenience of covering your mouth?
Phylllis
Our board agreed to delay our start date by one week, and to reopen virtually for the first two weeks. We theoretically would return to face-to-face on the Tuesday after Labor Day. They made it clear their priority was student and teacher health and safety. I believe if conditions warrant and we go back to them to stick with virtual-which I think is likely, they’ll approve it. It really took a lot of fear and pressure off teachers and administrators.
Hoodie
As usual, we will exhaust all possible stupid alternatives until we do what was obvious at the beginning. Our particular district wasted several months toiling away at a comprehensive “hybrid” opening plan when it was obvious to anyone paying attention to the infection stats that we would have to re-open online due to too high a level of community spread. Now, we don’t have a good on-line plan in place for the beginning of school in August because we prioritized planning for opening the whole damn system. Of course, a lot of that had to do with small but loud handful of nutjobs.
Laziness and wishful thinking is undermining everything we do. Until you have systems in place to get and keep transmission levels down to those comparable to places like parts of Asia, Europe or New Zealand, the default should be developing the best online systems you can and targeting populations in particular need, e.g., special ed, for in person instruction, followed by incremental, controlled additional of the grades that appear to present the lowest risks (e.g., K-5) and also present the biggest issues with respect to child care. People have to stop thinking that we can be back to anything near normal in anything less than a few years, not months, and that every misstep can cost us several months and thousands of lives. Even if a vaccine becomes available, it will take a long time to distribute and we have no idea of how long it will take to achieve herd immunity. And it goes with out saying that the fucking bars and clubs should be shut down until further notice.
MelissaM
Science magazine (7/17/20 issue) had an article about schools reopening and they looked at other countries.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6501/241
Personally, in the US with our crapshoot way of addressing this virus, even the risk of one child is too much. I feel for parents who need their kids in school so they can work. Our nation is just screwed.
JPL
I don’t know the answer, but states with fewer cases should be able to have in school classes for K through 3rd grade. The rate of transmission is lower and class size could be reduced. It’s not a perfect plan, but what is.
matryoshka
The problem is that America doesn’t actually value education or children. Too many American adults behave like children, as we are seeing regarding masks and bars, but children are on their own at home, at school, and in the world in general. The “adult children” among us don’t want to set priorities and can’t comprehend trade-offs. They want everything to be like it was pre-COVID, and they are simply going to behave as though it is.
burnspbesq
@cmorenc:
‘Concept 2 is shipping. So is Gorilla Bow.
Ken
So basically, in far too many districts, there will be no alterations from what they did last year.
BruceFromOhio
We’ve done that. The fuck-you-I-got-mine give-me-freedom-or-give-me-COVID death cult have decided for all of us how it’s going to play out. The rest of us must simply endure until enough of them leave the cult or die.
Aurona
Thank you for that great website https://www.covidexitstrategy.org/, which I have tweeted out. I was able to see my state (WA) and how it is doing, which fortunately, is not a ‘runaway’ state at this time, although running ‘moderate’. Most in my city are now masked up and as I ride the bus to get groceries, everyone is. I will, however, get off the bus if there is a coughing no-masker; I’m battling (stage 2) breast cancer. Thankfully, most people are now taking it seriously. Thank you!
Another Scott
@JPL: Dunno.
Anecdatata, but a cautionary story.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffro
Everyone needs to know that if we all mask up, shut up, and suck it up we could have in person school by October 1 or November 1 at the latest. Totally do-able.
Rugosa
@matryoshka: Yes, well said. Americans like to think of themselves as rugged individualists who make their own rules. Society can’t function that way – we need to think of the group welfare as well as our own.
Betty Cracker
Exactly right, and under competent leadership, decisions about that might have happened back in February or March. But we don’t have competent leadership, certainly not at the federal level, and for many of us, not at the state or local level either. Sometimes I wonder if poorly managed districts might have to just declare this a “lost year” and give kids a do-over.
I thank the FSM daily that this public health disaster occurred after our own nestling flew the coop. My heart goes out to you parents of school-age children. I’ve been working from home for ages, and I remember dreading summers because it was so hard to work with kids in the house. I can’t imagine also trying to school them. What a nightmare!
frosty
@Betty Cracker: One of my work friends in a household of two working parents and school age children told us in the spring that the family waas scrambling from 6 AM to midnight to get school instruction done, watch the younger child, and put in two 8-hour days. Only one parent can work at a time.
I’m with you, I’m glad both of mine are grown. One will be in virtual community college this fall, but that’s not nearly as hard as having elementary school kids at home.
Another Scott
@Jeffro:
Priorities, man!!
Always be punching down. Always.
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Phylllis
@Jeffro: Absolutely. We said that three weeks ago, when Governor Deputy Dawg here in SC made the momentous move of closing liquor service at 11 pm (because the virus is…a gremlin that shouldn’t get wet after a certain time?). If he’d closed the bars and the beaches and instituted a mask order then, everybody would be back in school by the day after Labor Day.
Geo Wilcox
Some morons in my town had a prom event for their high school students. it was an unmitigated disaster and sparked a big uptick in cases of Covid 19. The local golf course had to send home 6 kids who were sick, they had to cancel their biggest fund raiser (sit down dinner and auction) and they had to close the pool area to be sanitized. That was just 20 teenagers not a whole freaking school. And yes, my idiotic school district is going with F2F school starting in a month.
In the county seat, Brookville, IN, some other morons had a dance for the 13 to 14 year old kids. No word yet on how many have gotten sick because that dance was just a few days ago. The county health department didn’t know it was going on as the parents sneakily rented a hall and kept it under wraps. I would imagine a big spike in cases will show up in a week or so.
rikyrah
@MelissaM:
That evil azz bytch DeVos, talks about 0.02% possible dead in interviews.
THAT IS 14,000 CHILDREN DEAD.
PHUCK THAT EVIL BYTCH.
trollhattan
File under W for What the hell is wrong with you people?
Redding is were you move to if your neighbors just aren’t liberty-loving enough and hot weather isn’t hot enough until it’s over 110. As you can witness with this super-spreader event, heat cooks the brain, leading to peculiar decision-making. Amen.
Nicole
You have summed up the American character.
I have a friend from my teen years, who, as recently as a few years back, was a right-winger and I’m not sure what happened to make her see the light, but she’s seen it. However, a lot of her circle are still right-wingers and I read her daily arguments with them on FB about the virus. One of the talking points now is how the 2003 SARS “magically” disappeared one day, and no matter how often you say, no, in fact it was brought under control by aggressive testing, tracing and quarantining in the Asian nations where it was most prevalent, they just don’t want to believe you. Because that would mean that dealing with Covid-19 successfully would take woooorrrrrrrrrrrk (said in best Maynard G Krebs voice).
Benw
@rikyrah: thoughts ‘n’ prayers has been their official policy for dead school kids for decades. Monsters
MomSense
One of my pet peeves is the “children are our future” sentiment. In practice it is just a let’s put off addressing the needs of children until some future time while still patting ourselves on the back for our good intentions. We also have never been able to institute children and family (with all of its inclusive definitions) centered policies. The W admin literally recommended that state departments of health promote marriage as the way to address food insecurity, housing, health care, education, etc. We cannot seem to agree on the basics of a modern society like affordable and accessible childcare, paid parental leave, adequately funded schools, and even nutrition. Republicans even equate poor kids going hungry with honor. The Republicans are obviously the worst and Fight any attempts to improve quality of life for children.
Even in social situations. Good luck trying to volunteer or participate in activities like school board meetings, faith community meetings, civic organizations, local Democratic or Republican Committees without enough money or a spouse at home to make it possible for you to attend meetings. Children are still very much kept out of sight and out of mind.
So here we are in a pandemic and the schools that are the catch all for all of our societal indifference and needs are now essential for economic recovery. Are we actually going to fund them to not just provide the pre pandemic services but to be able to open safely during this health emergency? Nope.
Maybe the only way we were ever going to change is if the whole fucking society crashes and burns.
Calouste
@Hoodie:
The two core drivers of conservatism.
daveNYC
Who says that’s not what’s happening?
Soprano2
I’ve read on FB what my teacher friends are saying and listened to my fellow Jazzercize members talk about the different school system’s plans for opening, and all I can say is it sounds like a complete clusterfuck to me. One school will require masks in the classroom, another will strongly suggest they be worn but not require them (!). In Springfield, they’re going with 2 days in the classroom (with masks required of everyone), two days out and one day off strategy. How in the hell are parents supposed to manage that? Because we were unwilling to do what it took to get the virus low, we’re stuck with this shitshow now. I feel sorry for all of you who are having to deal with this, because in the present situation it’s unmanageable unless you have a parent who can stay at home and supervise online schooling. There are so many people who cannot do that, I have no idea what they are going to do.
Brachiator
I disagree with this appeal to “think of the children” rhetoric. Nor do I accept the narrow either/or of shutting down the rest of society so that schools can re-open.
This emphasis on bars and Disneyland is also false and misleading. Maybe this is an issue in some states, but in California, community spread has been linked more to gatherings of friends and family. And this might be exacerbated by opening schools and colleges.
It is clear that we need to focus on getting control of this virus. This is essential if we are going to do anything for children or for society as a whole.
Suzanne
I am fortunate that SuzMom lives with us and that Mr. Suzanne accepted a teletherapy job this year and that my employer is being very reasonable about WFH. Because this sucks, and there is no way I would allow my children to go to school this year under the conditions proposed. It’s so, so fucked.
When Trump got elected, I knew it would be bad. I knew it would be bad. I didn’t know it would be run-out-of-morgues-to-hold-the-corpses bad.
Suzanne
Oh, and BTW, the Arizona Democratic Party office in midtown Phoenix caught on fire last night. It looks like the building is a total loss. Police are investigating the cause.
Two Confederate memorials in AZ were removed last night.
If this is a coincidence…. it’s quite a coincidence.
artem1s
we need to value the health of kids as more than we value the profit raked in by Betsy DeVos’ charter schools.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
WTF??
I hope they get to the bottom of this fast.
Bill Arnold
@Another Scott:
Not anecdata. A fairly interesting analysis of the Israeli experience with opening schools then deliberately allowing lapses in NPI discipline:
A large COVID-19 outbreak in a high school 10 days after schools’ reopening, Israel, May 2020 separator (23/Jul/2020, open access, All Israeli affiliations: Chen Stein-Zamir, Nitza Abramson, Hanna Shoob, Erez Libal, Menachem Bitan, Tanya Cardash, Refael Cayam, Ian Miskin)
Bold mine:
Aleta
@Suzanne: Confederate memorial near the one to MLK coming down followed by fire burning out Dem Party office is a bad old feeling.
I so admire how the Dem party in Arizona (from what I’ve read) has been increasing in strength and numbers the last few years.
I like thinking of your littlest one growing strong and bringing joy. Hope she’s having a good day.
Fair Economist
I’m seeing a lot of districts delaying opening or starting with “temporary” hybrid or at-home instruction. I suspect this is a “nose under the tent” strategy to avoid a full opening without having to face the nutcases today. District that open fully are going to get the disasters that will let other districts off the hook.
Fair Economist
@Brachiator:
Social gatherings were spreading it, but spread picked up quite a bit when bars and such were reopened in June, and it’s slowing again now that they’re closed.
Kay
We’re doing a hybrid. Youngers attend full time (but with an online option) and older students attend 2 out of 5, alternating.
Our school district is 50% low income and there was a real concern that if the younger students missed something fundamental, like a year of reading instruction, they would be behind so far it would be very difficult to catch them up. The online learning for the little kids was an absolute disaster. The older kids are not doing great either, but their issues are mostly social and emotional. We took everything they enjoy about school away. My approach with my son has been not to sugar coat that- it’s a tough break he got and he just has to persevere. I just wish I didn’t feel so bad for them- I can’t help but feel we REALLY screwed them this time. I feel something close to despair when I think about the at-risk juveniles, kids who were barely hanging on. We will lose them. They’ll disappear. They were so lightly attached to school and community as it was and now they’re just adrift. Nearly the entire bottom 20% of our high school students stopped checking in completely by early May.
Feathers
Local control of everything will turn out to be the death of America. It was how things were done in the late 18th century and enshrined in the Constitution to protect the the slave states from any possibility that the federal government could end the practice. With the growth of modern technology and communications, it means that America will always be lagging behind the rest of the world, because the US cannot actually bring best practices to bear on the country. We have shitty health care, shitty public education, shitty infrastructure, shitty elections, and massive corruption. All because the federal government essentially has to bribe the states to do anything, and the states can just do fuck all with the money if they do so choose.
Kent
Here they are planning full in-person school for K-5 but with isolated classrooms (no open common areas or cafeteria etc.) so kids show up and spend all day with one teacher and don’t mix across classes. Staggered recesses and boxed lunches delivered to classrooms. Lots of emphasis on sanitation and masks. That sort of thing.
MS and HS are planning hybrid classes with students attending every other day in two cohorts. So if you are a science teacher and have 28 students in your 4th period chemistry class you see half your class every day and the alternate days they do work from home. The idea is to be able to socially distance in class. Also no common areas open, no fall sports except cross country. Part of the idea is that it will make the transition back to full time seamless and easy since all the same kids are in all the same classes with all the same teachers. So easy to just start full time when it is safe.
They are also setting up a parallel online academy for parents who don’t want to send their kids to school at all. They don’t want to lose those dollars I guess by seeing them flee to other online academies at other districts. I’m not sure how they are going to pull that off. Whether the burden will be on existing teachers or if they are hiring new staff.
School buses will still be running but they are asking all parents who have the means to avoid school buses if possible so that they are only used by the students who absolutely need them and can be spaced out safely.
We shall see. Here in this area (Clark County, WA) the transmission rate is very low as of now.
Kay
We knew the online learning for the little kids would be a disaster, because we have two decades of experience with it in Ohio. The giant online charter school in this state is the worst performing “district”, by far.
So everyone knew how this would play out. Hence the near-despair among the professionals in schools who actually care about these kids. Little kids need teachers and older kids need other students. To think that Zoom will replace that is to delude yourself. They are not, in fact, adults. They need other people.
Kay
“Expired surgical masks. Isolation gowns that resemble oversize trash bags. Extra-small gloves that are all but useless for the typical health worker’s hands.
Nursing home employees across the country have been dismayed by what they’ve found when they’ve opened boxes of protective medical gear sent by the federal government, part of a $134 million effort to provide facilities a 14-day supply of equipment considered critical for shielding their vulnerable residents from the coronavirus.”
More stellar work by the giant money-sink that is Homeland Security.
I have an idea. Since we’ve screwed 55 million public school students out of their schools how about we bust up this behemoth federal agency that does such crap work and redirect that money to the 5 to 12 year old demographic?
They’ll need every penny.
Feathers
@Kay: Burn After Reading was a documentary. I was born and raised inside the Beltway. The not too bright kids who never left town all went into “Homeland Security” adjacent fields. Some of them have terrifying levels of responsibility at this point.
frosty
@Kay: Like the kids, this adult needs other people too. I’m glad I retired in January so I don’t have to work at home (which I hated) but it’s wiped out my minimal social life. I haven’t talked F2F with any friends since March.
frosty
@Kay: Like the kids, this adult needs other people too. I’m glad I retired in January so I don’t have to work at home (which I hated) but it’s wiped out my minimal social life. I haven’t talked F2F with any friends since March.
Minor problems in the scheme of things. We’re alive and healthy and have a good enough income unlike so many others.
Jinchi
That sounds a lot like the original plan for this area. Ours were planning half days (no lunch at school, no mixing classes). 3 days in person for the elementary schools, 2 for middle schools and 1 for high schoolers. Hardly ideal, but it would have gone a long way towards getting kids the education and social interaction they need.
As of the moment, every district I’ve heard of in the state (Ca) is opening virtually in hopes that the caseloads come down. The previous plan is presumably the next stage after the outbreak starts to come under control.
I feel for those who literally can’t stay home and have to figure out how to manage young children and work. It’s hard enough when you have older kids and a job that lets you work remotely.
l3000
@Soprano2: Yep. Here in KS Kelly sensibly delayed the start of schools. But GOP already hamstrung her efforts by allowing individual counties to flout her guidelines. The AG has already opined that he doesn’t believe that she can require masks in schools. WTF? Without masks …. It’s going to be a complete waste of time to implement any safeguards if half the state is just acting on magical thinking. So dispiriting to watch the lazy stupidity of some Americans. I guess there was always a huge percentage of anti-science, anti-intellectual *******s but having half the government empower them is mindboggling.
WaterGirl
Our job is to keep kids safe. And make them feel safe. We failed with guns and now we are failing with COVID.
Brachiator
@Fair Economist:
I didn’t read this as the judgement of county health officials. As of July 15, health authorities were urging caution with respect to gatherings with people outside a person’s household. Obviously, bars and indoor eating has been issues, but to focus on bars and Disneyland is misreading what has come from medical authorities.