Still no simple solutions on schools

To people only half paying attention, it probably seems like a moot issue, what with vaccinations ramping up and new leadership taking over national recovery efforts. But it’s worth pointing out we still don’t have a good answer to one of the most pressing questions of the past year, which is whether children should be in school or not.

That hasn’t stopped people from having dug- in opinions on the issue.

The debate is well worn by now, and the effects of months on end of remote learning have been devastating. Not only to the students who are falling behind and being denied what they need as kids to thrive, it’s also been difficult on teachers, who are having to adjust to continually changing demands, and parents, who are still being asked to supervise their children in school while also going about their lives as usual.

Nothing about it is sustainable, and the longer it goes on the worse the damage becomes. There’s no secret why so many people are eager to see schools reopen, full time, as soon as possible.

But neither are we sure whether doing so is leading to unnecessary deaths. It might be. This is the tradeoff we’re being asked to make, and we’re doing it with highly imperfect information.

This debate has been muddied by a succession of studies that don’t give clear indications one way or the other, but are nevertheless held up by proponents of various arguments as the last word on the topic.

One widely cited report not long ago that led to many calls for reopened schools appeared at first glance to be promising. It found that, in general, reopenings in the fall did not have a clear correlation to increased hospitalizations from COVID- 19. It further said school did not play a major role in COVID’s spread when community transmission rates in general were low.

But where the rate of spread was higher, the link was harder to determine. In fact, there was no clear pattern in the results, and considering nearly the entire country was facing a high rate of transmission in the general population as of early 2021, there may not be much of anything to be drawn from the study.

The federal government weighed in again, as well, and this time it was under a president who is apparently interested in public health and not just in using public school reopenings as a bludgeon against opponents. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently said communities should move toward reopening schools as soon as they can, provided proper precautions are taken.

But it’s not, of course, that simple. The CDC reiterated previous advice about maintaining social distance, though school is held in buildings that were not designed to keep people apart. Ventilation may not have been modernized in many school buildings in decades. What the report was advocating was something like a hybrid schedule, where no more than half of students are in person at any time. That’s an improvement over full remote, but doesn’t solve the problem.

Then there is the issue of student mental health. It’s not just faculty putting their lives at risk.

The New York Times reported recently on Las Vegas schools, where a jump in student suicides prompted the district to move quickly toward reopening, reasoning that the COVID- driven lockdowns are cutting children off from the support they need and increasing isolation and despair.

For anyone who has spent time with school- age children, this is obvious. The emotional toll on students is simply devastating, and it comes from denying them nearly all social contact for months on end. It’s an untenable situation, but neither is it tenable to ask teachers and faculty to risk their own lives.

Anyone who says this situation has a simple solution is lying. Everyone wants schools open, but there is risk. For the strongest pushers of the open- immediately argument, chances are high they simply don’t like teachers unions, and want to put the blame there. The physical risks are immaterial in this point of view.

For everyone else, the only option is to continue muddling through. We need to make the best choices we can with the data we have, as most districts continue to do. What we shouldn’t do is pretend we know for certain what those answers are.