What will schools look like?
Imagine, for a moment, American children returning to school this fall.
The school week looks vastly different, with most students attending school two or three days a week and doing the rest of their learning at home. At school, desks are spaced apart to discourage touching. Some classrooms extend into unused gymnasiums, libraries or art rooms – left vacant while schools put on hold activities that cram lots of children together.
Arrival, dismissal and recess happen on staggered schedules and through specific doors to promote physical distancing. Students eat lunch at their desks. Children learn with the same peers every day – or teachers move around while students stay put – to discourage ming ling with new groups.
Teachers and other education staff at higher risk of contracting the virus continue to teach from home, while younger or healthier educators teach in-person.
Everyone wash es their hands. A lot.
Frequently touched school surfaces get wiped down. A lot.
That outline of a potential school day was drawn from interviews with more than 20 education leaders determining what reopened schools might look like come fall. New guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supports those plans and more: Teachers and older students should wear masks, especially when they have to interact in close quarters.
In the absence of a vaccine for COVID-19, social distancing and hygiene will be important to limit spreading the virus. The question is how to successfully implement those measures in schools usually filled with crowded hallways, class sizes of more than 30 people and lunchrooms of hundreds.
“The whole thing is overwhelming,” said Dan Weisberg, a former district official and the head of TNTP, a nonprofit formerly known as The New Teacher Project that helps districts recruit and hire more effective teachers.
“This is where federal dollars could help,” Weisberg said. “This is where state guidance could help. This is where galvanizing people behind the idea on how to plan for next year could help.”
The new CDC gu idan ce on re opening the economy, a 60-page document released in the third week of May, recommends that schools place desks six feet apart, serve lunch in classrooms, close playgrounds, keep children in the same groups every day and cancel field trips and extracurricular activities. It also recommends daily health checks and temperature screenings of staff and students daily, if feasible.
A few U.S. schools have cautiously returned to inperson instruction.
In California' s Marin County, three school buildings opened May 18 to serve the most needy students: those with disabilities, and those who had fallen off track in high school and were not participating remotely.
Teachers wearing masks worked with eight cohorts of 12 students across the three schools, officials said. Students washed their hands on arrival, and tape marks in classrooms reminded some to keep their distance. New cellphone sign-in systems track who comes in and out, which means contact tracing can begin promptly if an infection is detected.
In Montana ,11 schools reopened after Gov. Steve Bullock turned such decisions over to districts this month.
Willow Creek School, located 40 miles west of Bozeman, reopened on May 7. The tiny K-12 school enrolls 56 students; only 37 returned for in-person instruction.