Schools vague on closures
Many cite ‘case-by-case’ decisions on outbreaks
Across the nation, many districts’ reopening plans skip details on shutting doors if students or staff fall ill, saying they plan case-by-case decisions.
Even as they recommended working on in-person reopening of schools, the nation’s science academies warned: “It is likely that someone in the school community will contract COVID-19.”
But largely missing from the reopening protocols in states and schools around the nation are concrete plans for what administrators are to do when coronavirus infections enter a school.
The prospect of schools reopening in the fall is already looking less likely in much of the nation. Confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. have rocketed past 3.7 million, and more than half of states have paused or scaled back efforts to reopen their economies.
A growing number of school districts have decided to start the fall semester online. California’s districts with high cases or transmission must begin the academic year with distance learning, the state’s governor announced Friday. In other states, districts are pushing back their start dates.
But many still plan to hold in-person classes. They’re releasing plans that include implementing social distancing, closing school buildings to visitors and, in some cases, splitting students into groups that attend school on some days and study from home on others.
How a school would handle multiple coronavirus cases across the building, and how many infected students or teachers would raise alarms, are details often left up to parents to guess. Typical plans include only references to “caseby-case” decisions.
For districts that do not have a plan yet, the response to an infected person in school should depend on how high transmission is in the community, said William Hanage, an epidemiology professor at Harvard University.
“If there’s one case and it’s a single introduction to the school and there’s a low rate of community transmission, it might be sensible to shift just that group to education at home for a period of time,” he said.
But that’s different than if infections show up in multiple classes, multiple times, he added.
“If you can keep community transmission low, it’s reasonable to think schools can be reopened and outbreaks within schools can be controlled,” he said. “Once community transmission
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USA TODAY Network reporters reviewed 35 schools’ reopening plans. Most plans didn’t include specifics on decisions that would lead to closing school buildings and putting learning online for all students.
Instead, most schools echoed basic recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: deep-cleaning the area where an infected person spent time, quarantining the person, and consultation with state or local health officials.
The CDC also recommends dismissing school for at least two to five days after an infected person is in the building.