Time to rethink coronavirus school policy

America’s schools are in trouble. There may be no other sector of American life where the secondary effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are being more keenly felt.

Massachusetts, with a patchwork of remote, hybrid, and in-person learning and frequently canceled classes due to a handful of cases in a district, is no exception. And despite the urging of public health experts and government officials that risks to and from school-age children are manageable, and that educational disparities are ballooning for vulnerable populations, things show no signs of improving going into a long New England winter.

Last week, in an interview with the Harvard Gazette, Joseph Allen, associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public

Health described the situation as a “national emergency” and said school districts are wasting valuable time before the colder weather hits with poorer ventilation options, a potential uptick in the spread of the disease, and a plethora of ordinary coughs and colds infiltrating the classroom.

“When community spread is low, kids should be back in school. There’s a lot of agreement between the public health community, epidemiologists, building scientists, engineers, and educators on the importance of getting kids back to school and on what controls need to be in place,” Allen said.

“When the metrics are met, as they have been in Massachusetts, but schools in some districts stay closed, I think that’s a problem. If they don’t open when community spread is low and the weather has been perfect for the past two months and school and the buildings are ready, when will they open? In some ways, I feel like we squandered the two nicest months of the year for learning. It has been a time when all the windows could definitely be open, where classes can be held outside or on a walk or on a ball field. I think schools that have stayed closed have made a mistake,” he said.

Making public policy based on the well-supported scientific advice of experts in the field has brought Massachusetts this far through the pandemic, and this must be the principle that guides school reopenings. The phrase “out of an abundance of caution” has been used for months to justify an approach that flies in the face of everything that scientists are telling us about the risks.

And that “caution” comes with its own risks for children. Cobbled-together remote learning is failing those who have the most to lose. Working parents are struggling to come up with childcare as school schedules change without warning

More parents than ever who have the capability have chosen simply to homeschool, potentially disrupting district funding formulas for the future.

For more than half a year now, we have sidelined a generation of children, forcing them into isolation, limiting their access to education and other public services.

We have determined that their needs, and the needs of their parents, are not as “essential” to our society as Walmart and casinos, while ignoring the science that says otherwise.

It is time for the commonwealth to put kids first and find a way to ensure our next generation will not be permanently set back while their education remains on hold indefinitely. Politicians must listen to the experts and find a way to safely keep the schools open consistently for the remainder of the school year.