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NPR Education
When Should Schools Close For Coronavirus?
Cory Turner & Anya Kamenetz
March 11, 2020
The spread of coronavirus has compelled hundreds of K-12 schools in the
U.S. to close, affecting more than 850,000 students, according to an
analysis by Education Week. And those numbers are certain to increase
in the coming days, as concerned parents call for more school closures.
The growing health crisis presents school leaders with a painful
choice. Closing schools — as has been done, so far, in China, Japan,
Italy and elsewhere — is a proven measure that has been shown to slow
the spread of disease and, in turn, save lives. But it also causes huge
economic and social disruption, especially for children, millions of
whom depend on the free and reduced-cost meals they get at school.
Public officials understandably don't want to close schools unless they
absolutely have to, and many closures so far have been triggered by a
known case of infection or exposure among staff or students. Yet
research suggests the best time to close schools is before that happens.
"If you wait for the case to occur [in your school], you still have
wound up closing the school, but now you've missed the opportunity to
have the real benefit that would have accrued had you closed the school
earlier," says Yale University sociologist and physician Nicholas
Christakis.
"It's sort of closing the barn door after the cow is gone."
Christakis' Yale lab normally studies how humans spread everything from
ideas to behaviors to germs, but he says he's now all-in on studying
how coronavirus might spread. Aside from developing a vaccine and
getting everyone to wash their hands thoroughly, closing schools is one
of the most effective things a community can do to slow contagion, says
Christakis, author of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good
Society. But timing matters. He points to studies of the 1918 Spanish
flu, which suggest some cities may have saved lives by deciding to
close schools earlier.
"Closing the schools before anyone in the schools is sick is a very
difficult thing to do," Christakis acknowledges, "even though it's
probably extremely beneficial and much wiser."
Marco Ajelli is a computational epidemiologist at the Bruno Kessler
Foundation in Italy. He uses advanced math to model the course of
disease outbreaks, and he has studied school closures. Ajelli echoes
Christakis, saying that "there is scientific evidence" that closing
schools can buy time and delay the peak of an epidemic. "And it's
really important to gain time at the moment," he says, "because if you
have a lot of people that get infected all at the same time, the
hospitals and ICUs have not enough hospital beds."
But this understanding is based on the science of previous diseases.
Ajelli and his colleagues point out that there's something new and
different about COVID-19, namely that children appear to be less
vulnerable to it. And it isn't clear how that fact could affect the
usefulness of school closures.
The fact remains that canceling school is a difficult decision because
no one knows better than educators just how much some children depend
on the support they get there.
"For a large number of our students, the safest place for them to be is
actually in school," says Sonja Santelises, CEO of Baltimore City
Public Schools. That's why, she says, she resists canceling school
because of weather, too. "It gets me some angry emails during
snowstorms and inclement weather. ... I will just tell you, our mantra
continues to be: Closing schools is a last resort."
One big concern for school leaders is that many kids would be going home to empty households.
"Yeah, I think that's the hardest contemplation for our districts,"
says Chris Reykdal, the superintendent of public instruction for
Washington state, which has been hit hard by coronavirus. He's
concerned about sending "a million Washington kids home knowing that
for hundreds of thousands of them, they simply will not have any
parents at home."
Reykdal says that when his schools take a snow day, parents can
sometimes make do for a day or two, either taking the time off or
working from home. But coronavirus isn't snow, and there's no way to
know how long schools would have to close. Many employers may continue
to require employees to come to work. (Think about the children of
health care workers.) And without government intervention, which is on
the table, many low-wage workers won't be able to afford to stay home.
There's a further problem here: The effectiveness of school closures is
based on the premise that kids stay home with their families and limit
other contacts. Ajelli points out that if parents "regroup" children to
meet child care needs or if teens congregate freely outside school, the
closure won't be as effective.
One more big reason school leaders are so reluctant to close schools:
Not only will many kids go home to no parents, but they also may not
have ample food, either.
"Food insecurity is a real challenge in our community, even without an
emergency," says Alberto Carvalho, head of Miami-Dade County Public
Schools. He says roughly three-quarters of his students live at or
below the poverty level. Those children are among the nearly 30 million
U.S. students who depend on schools' free and reduced-price meals for
lunch, breakfast, snacks and, in some cases, dinner.
In Miami, Carvalho says, students will continue to eat — even if school
is canceled. Food will be distributed at schools, similar to summer
meal programs, or, if need be, the food can be taken out into the
community.
And food insecurity isn't just a city problem, says Jillian Balow,
Wyoming's state superintendent of public instruction. Many of her
students live in remote, rural communities and have to spend an hour or
more on a bus just to get to school. Balow says her districts are
thinking of ways that schools could potentially transport bags of food
out to these students in case of cancellation.
"In a worst-case scenario, we have many Wyoming [school districts] that
are rural that could look to local [food] producers for an additional
food source if needed," Balow says.
In Baltimore, Santelises says her schools often send kids home on the
weekend with a supplementary backpack full of food. She says the
district could do something similar in the event of a coronavirus
school closure, though "that only typically gets a family through a
weekend. So we have other ideas, we're just trying to see whether they
will work in the current context."
Schools also offer a safe place for the 1.5 million U.S. kids who are
housing-insecure, and in some cases, they provide medical care, dental
care and even laundry services. It's unclear how schools would continue
those services in the event of closures.
Beyond the basic public health risks that vulnerable students face when
schools close, there's one more big worry that has school leaders
scrambling right now: equity.
If schools have to close for a while, superintendents want to be sure
learning doesn't entirely stop. But educators have a legal obligation
to make sure whatever education they do offer works for every child —
and that can be expensive. In Washington state, Reykdal says some
schools are exploring online learning. That means asking: How many of
my students have a computer at home? Wi-Fi? What about appropriate
support if they have a disability?
"Those are paramount questions for our schools," Reykdal says. "And if
they can't deliver that when they choose to jump to an online model,
it's unlikely they're providing a legal basis for an equitable
education."
Of all the district leaders NPR spoke with, only one — Carvalho in
Miami-Dade County — said he has the technology to keep kids learning,
even at home.
"Enabled by a bond referendum that goes back to 2012, we have acquired
in excess of 200,000 personal devices," Carvalho says. Those are
laptops, tablets and smartphones that kids in need can take home if
schools close.
But that kind of access is unusual.
"No, there will be no one-on-one technological option ready for every
single student," says Santelises. Though that doesn't mean learning
would stop for her students: She says teachers in Baltimore are putting
together old-fashioned paper packets of work that they can send home.
"It's certainly not optimal," Santelises says, but it's better than nothing.
Having laptops and Wi-Fi routers to loan out doesn't solve every equity
problem. "A growing body of evidence suggests that online learning
works least well for our most vulnerable learners," Justin Reich, an
educational technology expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
said on Twitter. He's recommending that public schools make up days
rather than try to rely on tech-based teaching.
Moreover, some students with disabilities need specialized, one-on-one
support. This help isn't optional; it's protected by federal law.
"And this is where it really gets complicated," Reykdal says. "How does
a paraeducator get to their 20 or 30 students in their caseload if
they're distributed all in their individual homes, trying to dial in
online? It makes the bar for universal online learning very difficult
to meet."
If schools decide they can't sufficiently help all kids, then many will
likely decide they have no choice but to treat missed days like snow
days. Meaning, they'll either have to make up the lost time later this
year or simply write it off.
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