“What is at stake is that someone dies”: how the coronavirus will transform K-12 schools in the fall

“What is at stake is that someone dies,” Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, a union representing more than 3 million members, told MarketWatch. “It’s not just that someone doesn’t graduate or someone doesn’t learn their schedule, someone could die.”

Work and learn in a “germ factory”

Eskelsen Garcia, a former sixth-grade school teacher, called the schools a “germ factory” that endangers not only teachers, counselors and school support staff, but also the families of the children. “These kids are going to grab him from each other and take him home,” he said. “It means they can be a danger to older siblings … their own parents and, God help me, their grandparents.”

This coronavirus does not seem to affect children as severely as other age groups. But “surely children are part of this pandemic,” Aaron Milstone, professor of epidemiology and pediatric infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins Medicine, told MarketWatch. Disease control and prevention centers say it children “can still spread this virus to other people who are more at risk” and new research suggests children can transmit COVID-19.

Health authorities are also investigating cases of a rare but potentially fatal disease in Pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome (PMIS), which may be related to COVID-19.

Once the kids are back in school, said Milstone, his exposure to classmates will expand their families’ social media. No matter how careful you are in your own actions, “children at school can quickly expand their circle of people to whom they are exposed,” he said. “This is largely due to the fact that children are not as good at social distancing as adults.”

But physically removing 30 children from a full-size class will not be possible, said Eskelsen García, who remembers being sneezed and hugged while a teacher.

“Teachers who know how close he is physically in this class say,” We are not saying that we cannot do it, we are saying that it will take a long time and will require many resources, “he said. she declared. “I think we will be back, and it will be nothing like when we left this building.”

What reopened schools would look like

American Teachers’ Federation launched a 22-page roadmap end of April for the safe reopening of schools and communities, starting with a decrease in the number of new cases for at least 14 consecutive days.

Its recommendations included increased testing and contact tracing, hand washing stations, symptom detection for children and staff, daily disinfection of schools, personal protective equipment (PPE) for teachers and support staff, and additional funding for these interventions. ; They also asked for protections for staff and students at risk, as well as considerations for students with underlying conditions, disabilities, and special education requirements.

The union presented a series of school reorganization solutions to promote physical distance, including smaller classes; divided timetable to limit the number of students present in the building; and staggered arrival and meal times, allowing students to eat in the classrooms. Eskelsen García said she has also heard of the idea of ​​opening schools for younger students while older children learn from home independently.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who oversees the country’s fourth largest school district, told MarketWatch that his district is evaluating a series of emergency plans to keep staff and students safe. , including temperature controls before boarding buses or entering leveraged buildings, gymnasiums and auditoriums to create additional classroom space, redesigned hallways to travel in one direction and for hours hand washing mandatory. The district is building up its stock of PPE in preparation, he added.

“Right now, there are so many variables at play that the best rational leader can do is take all the information, develop several scenarios and be able to rotate one according to changing conditions,” he said. .

Meanwhile, New York mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters on Monday that the contingencies in his “Plan A” for the full reopening of schools in September included alternate days, shift schedules and even pure learning. line, according to Politician.

“All of this requires planning,” Randi Weingarten, head of the American Teachers’ Federation, told MarketWatch. “You have to plan to think about patterns of physical distancing. … Planning is necessary to ensure the cleaning of schools [after] each of these sessions. Plan ahead to make sure you have handwashing stations and that you have enough PPE as a mask. “

While school administrators are appropriately concerned with protecting and achieving the health and safety of students in the curriculum, they also face the varying degrees of trauma that students will have suffered from the pandemic, a said Eskelsen Garcia.

“Fear, uncertainty and anxiety over a long period of time cause stress and trauma,” he said. “We will have to deal with these mental health issues with a long division and where the coma goes.”

Orientation from above

In the absence of extensive COVID-19 testing for tens of millions of school children on a regular basis, school administrators will likely have to resort to other measures, such as symptom detection, social distancing, washing hands, cleaning schools and other basic practices, Milstone. said.

To this end, the CDC released last week a series of one page flowcharts to assist Kindergarten to Grade 12 administrators in their reopening decisions, with recommendations for safety and health measures and ongoing monitoring.

But Daniel Domenech, the executive director of the Association of School Superintendents (AASA), called the decision trees “disappointing”. US News United States World Report E that its members have found longer CDC guidelines disclosed to the Associated Press and would have been archived by the Trump administration to be more useful.

Weingarten said in a letter to President Trump last week that educators “still lack clear advice and support from the White House or its administration”, and asked the president to “work with us, not against us” . . In a statement MondayEskelsen Garcia said, “The White House has diluted the CDC’s guidelines to nothing more than a flimsy organization chart.”

Asked for comment on criticisms of Domenech and Weingarten, as well as whether he planned to issue more comprehensive guidelines for the reopening of schools, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday to MarketWatch: Clear data guides how states can reopen while recognizing that reopening decisions ultimately belong to governors. President Trump has also made it clear that he would like schools to reopen safely. “

CDC spokesperson on Monday directed MarketWatch to a document called “CDC activities and initiatives supporting the COVID-19 response and the President’s plan to reopen America” that she said it had been updated with two new appendices.

One appendix provides additional details on the “selection criteria” described in the president’s reopening plan, he said, while the other “is a supplement to the decision trees released on May 14, which lists the specific practices that schools and other settings may prove useful at particular stages of the COVID-19 epidemic. “

“These essential resources complement another guide the CDC previously published to help communities plan, respond and recover from COVID-19,” said the spokesperson. “The CDC will continue to update these resources to assist state and local government leaders to implement, adapt and adjust COVID-19 mitigation strategies in their communities.”

These plans won’t be cheap

Plans to keep students educated while preventing the spread of COVID-19 will also require money, said Eskelsen García, whose union is advocate legislation increase funds for public schools. “There are very few public schools that have many classrooms or empty spaces and the class size of a dozen children,” he said. “There are very, very creative ways people have talked about doing this, none of them come at a high price.”

April 28 letter to leaders of CongressSuperintendents of 62 major city school districts called for additional funding for public school systems in the next COVID-19 aid law, citing “significant income shortfalls” on the horizon for local school districts.

Carvalho, one of the signatories to the letter, said he was “concerned” about the funding at a time when his district needed to invest in additional protections for students and staff.

“We are not only facing the possibility of an economic recession with a significant loss of income that funds education, but we are also dealing with [with the fact] that we need to devote additional resources to protective measures to deal with a health crisis, “he said.

The potential new normal for kindergarten to grade 12 schools could also exacerbate existing inequalities between rich and poor school districts, said Julian Vasquez Heilig, dean of the University of Kentucky School of Education, as “recent research on funding for schools. ” he established that rich and poor neighborhoods already have hundreds of millions of dollars of inequality in terms of funding from all sources. “

“The availability of resources in rich and poor neighborhoods has a direct impact on the district’s ability to offer smaller classes in socially distant classrooms, the flexibility of facilities for alternative modes of education, the availability of technology for distance education and alternative education, availability of PPE for students, staff and faculty and most other circumstances related to COVID-19 responses, “said Vasquez Heilig to MarketWatch .

Carvalho said he was also concerned about students whose parental work prevented them from supervising their children during the day for distance learning, as well as food insecure children who depended on school meals.

How COVID-19 Could Change K-12 Schools in the Long Term

The crisis presents “unfortunately a good opportunity to rethink education,” said Yong Zhao, a distinguished professor at the School of Education at the University of Kansas, dropping standardized tests and placing more emphasis on supporting individual growth for students.

Meanwhile, Carvalho said “there is no way to go back to the way things were”, predicting that the education system would be much more personalized, adaptable and flexible for the needs of students and families. Some parents may decide to send their children to school for the whole school day, he said, while other families may decide that distance education is right for them, and still others may opt for face-to-face instruction every other day.

“There will be traditional side-by-side schooling with multiple options that reflect the wishes and desires of parents, the learning patterns of children, and mixed and hybrid learning environments in all areas,” said Carvalho. “Although we may have some concerns about this, and I certainly do, there is also an opportunity here.”