Keep schools closed if safety is not certain

Rising coronavirus numbers and the push to bring youngsters back to Marin classrooms are on a collision course.

Unless a safe and healthful return to the classroom can be guaranteed, it would be wiser for local schools to start the new school year with online learning.

Teachers and parents are questioning whether it’s going to be safe to reopen classroom teaching in mid-August.

Unless a safe and healthful return to the classroom can be guaranteed, it would be wiser for local schools to start the new school year with online learning.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond agrees that many districts will need to make that decision. On Wednesday he said rapidly changing conditions mean that many districts should focus on distance learning. Still, some school districts are feeling pressure from leaders in Sacramento and Washington to reopen schools or risk losing their funding.

But the safety of children and teachers have to be the primary concern.

California’s two largest districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — have already announced they will start school with online instruction. So has San Francisco and several other Bay Area districts.

There doesn’t appear to be much debate that classroom learning is superior to the online teaching that teachers and students were moved into last spring when the coronavirus crisis began.

Of course, we should be reminded that some children don’t have access to online classes. Still, now five months later, the question must be asked: Is it safe to return to classrooms? Who are parents going to trust to answer that quest? In this case, it is likely the teachers. But most teachers are wary of reopening plans.

Age is a factor to consider with coronavirus. Many teachers, especially older teachers, due to having contact with kids from many households, fear they could be working in the coronavirus bull’s-eye. Any safety plan is further complicated by lagtimes in getting COVID-19 test results and problems with coronavirus tracing measures.

School districts are going to have to present a more convincing case than finances.

The Marin County Office of Education and county public health officials have been working closely to come up with “best practices” for keeping students and faculty as safe as possible.

Initially, that might include a combination of online and classroom schooling with classes reduced in size to allow for meeting social distancing requirements.

Even the specifics of those measures appear to be changing. The county office’s online reports are a solid step toward improving communication between parents and schools.

But county Superintendent of Schools Mary Jane Burke says the decision to reopen classrooms is a decision to be made by local districts. Communication is going to be vital and will grow in importance as schools approach their midAugust start.

“Do the benefits outweigh the risks — even if the risks are not yet known?”

That’s the question Kent Middle School teacher Tim Lentini recently raised during an online forum sponsored by Marin Educators for Safe Schools, a newly formed group of local teachers and union leaders. That’s the question that many teachers and parents are also asking.

State lawmakers need to be asking the same question and be willing to look at the financial pressure they are putting on districts to reopen their classrooms.

From the standpoint of the pace of the COVID-19 infection rate in mid-July, the answer to this question appears to make the return to classrooms a lot more uncertain than it appeared several weeks ago. At that time, the rate of the pandemic looked like it was slowing, if not diminishing.

That’s far from the trends and measures we are seeing as we are coming to Aug. 15.