When should schools open?

Opening schools might be safer than you think

How quickly we open society depends partly on the day cares, schools and summer camps that parents rely on for child care. Nearly all schools in the United States are closed until August or September; some child-care centers have remained open, and others are scheduled to start back up. The fate of summer camps is ambiguous.

Parents, meanwhile, can’t go fully back to work until their children are looked after.

Anxious parents are divided on what these institutions should do. On one side are those who worry that at any large gatherings of children and adults, the coronavirus will spread uncontrolled. On the other are those who are concerned about the mental, physical and academic tolls that school closures are taking on children (and adults); they contend that schools are a unique case, because so few young people appear to get covid-19, or at least its worst symptoms. Perhaps opening schools and child-care centers would be safer than opening adults-only workplaces.

Such a choice certainly involves trade-offs. And the only way to make a good decision is to understand those trade-offs. At present, the data suggest that schools might be one of the least risky kinds of institutions to reopen, and that doing so would have tremendous benefits.

We’re lucky it’s only May: Summer-camp season offers the chance to test the idea that bringing young people together may not spur a significant spread of the virus. School administrators could draw on the resulting data as they contemplate a broader reopening.

Opening up the economy in an unconstrained way — as many seem eager to do — will increase cases of covid-19, possibly by a lot. When adults begin working closely together again, many of them will get infected; see, for example, the extremely high infection rate at meatpacking plants.

But there is increasing data

ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN DEERING