US leaders have failed schools on COVID-19
Where is the testing and data? We’re on our own.
The fall coronavirus surge has arrived, and with it another wave of school closures. As a physician and local school board president, I have heard from parents who desperately want schools open regardless of community rates of COVID-19, and parents who are terrified of the disease infecting their households. I’ve seen teachers working hard to adapt to the times when education as we knew it is just not possible. It feels like we are back in August, when we were making very tough decisions about how to open and stay open.
Amid a huge surge in COVID-19, staying open is the greatest challenge facing local school leaders. What makes it even more difficult is the absence of any national leadership or policy to support schools. Nearly all decisions have been punted to local leaders with little guidance, limited funding and grossly inadequate testing access.
Last spring, I was convinced that by the fall, our nation would have addressed many of the issues that are now causing schools to close again. Let’s start with access to testing.
Professional sports leagues have managed to “stay open.” How have they done it? Teams have access to regular and frequent testing — not just when a player gets sick, but every week as routine surveillance. In many cases, it has allowed teams to stamp out outbreaks.
In my district and many others, not only do we not have access to surveillance testing, we also must often wait days for test results of students who are symptomatic or had an exposure.
Inexcusable shortage
As we saw in the outbreak in the White House, testing is not a magical solution. Even so, it would go a long way to keeping COVID-19 out of schools and preventing building closures. In September, we heard the White House had bought 150 million rapid testing kits that would be made available to schools. We are now in December facing a huge national surge and we still do not have testing kits. This is inexcusable nine months into the pandemic.
School districts have also been left on their own to determine the mitigation measures needed to reopen. Since August, schools across the country have reopened with different rates of COVID-19 in their communities and different mitigation measures in their school buildings. The federal government could have been leading a national effort to collect data on the mitigation measures to learn what works in schools to prevent COVID-19 transmission. Yet here we are in December with little to no such data, and thus the strategy for us and other nearby districts has been to do everything — regardless of the cost or operational challenges.
We have missed an opportunity to bring new science to school decisions to help districts focus resources on the most effective measures. We are still debating critical questions. Does closing schools reduce community rates? Does it differ by the age of the students? How far apart do students need to sit to prevent transmission when universal masking is in place?
The answers to these questions would vastly simplify local decisions.
It is not too late. We are less than halfway through the school year and have a long way to go until we can relax our coronavirus mitigation measures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should be given the authority and resources to generate more evidence for our nation’s schools.
Disappearing resources
Schools that have reopened have spent enormous resources to create a safer environment and address educational needs. Schools have had to invest in upgrades to ventilation systems and purchase personal protective equipment. Schools have rented tents, bought new technology and adapted special education staffing to address hybrid and virtual education. The list goes on and on.
Federal dollars have not come close to covering these expenses. States are managing their own deficits and unable to help.
In my district, near Philadelphia, we are lucky to have some reserves to cover these costs, but these disappearing resources were intended to provide longer-term stability. This short-term surge in costs has compromised the future for my district and most others. As Congress considers additional stimulus and recovery investments, K-12 schools need to be at the top of the list — to keep schools open and create an opportunity for a meaningful recovery.
As a physician, I volunteered to serve on my local school board to engage in my community. I felt the same sense of responsibility when I assumed the role of board president. I never imagined I’d find myself in this role during a pandemic — when public health and public education have become so intertwined.
While I never thought leading during this extraordinary time would be easy, the absence of national leadership has made it so much harder. But it is not too late to address these gaps. The outgoing Trump and incoming Biden administrations, along with Congress, need to realize that the clock on the 2020-21 school year is ticking.
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