The country’s school system, paralyzed a year ago by the spread of the coronavirus, is showing promising signs of a rebound in recent days.
From U.S. News & World Report
By Lauren Camera, Senior Education Writer
March 19, 2021
DON’T LOOK NOW, BUT THE country’s public school system, which grinded to a halt when the coronavirus pandemic first hit the U.S. more than a year ago and has since existed largely in a state of paralysis, is tiptoeing back to life.
Educators and school staff are being prioritized for the coronavirus vaccine in every state. The federal government just wrote a $140 billion check to help K-12 schools cover the cost of reopening, including $10 billion for testing and tracing students and staff. Pharmaceutical companies are ramping up vaccine trials for young children, whom Dr. Anthony Fauci said should be able to be immunized as early as this fall.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its recommendation for social distancing in schools from 6 feet to 3 feet – new guidance that stands to alter the ability of dozens of big city school districts to reopen for in-person learning.
And the latest data now show that just 20% of students remain learning virtually.
“We’re at a critically important time in our nation’s history in education,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said this week. “My goal, my priority right now is to safely reopen as many schools as possible as quickly as possible.”
As the landscape becomes riper for schools to reopen for in-person learning across the country, the Biden administration is set to hold a national school reopening summit March 24, where educators, school leaders and policymakers will come together to learn about what’s working, how to effectively implement the CDC’s reopening guidelines and how to address the mental health crisis and the academic, social and emotional learning loss that’s been steadily building since schools first shuttered last March.
“This spring we’re wanting to see schools reopen using the mitigation strategies and getting students an opportunity for in-person learning,” Cardona said. “In the fall, I would anticipate if the continuation of vaccinations happen – and we have every reason to believe we will be able to do that by the fall – then schools can reopen in-person for all students.”
The gears are beginning to turn even in places that have been the most difficult to architect in-person instruction – especially among the country’s biggest city school districts, which have grappled with more challenging circumstances, including older school facilities with poor ventilation systems, less indoor and outdoor space, more poor students and students of color, whose communities have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, and higher rates of COVID-19 transmission.
Philadelphia schools began reopening for in-person learning earlier this month for students in pre-kindergarten through second grade. Schools in Los Angeles begin returning their youngest students to classrooms in mid-April. High school students in New York City are set to return next week, and high schoolers in Chicago could return as early as April 19.
While the majority of students learning through a hybrid model, which involves in-person learning one to two days a week and virtual learning on the others, still outweighs those who are fully in person, five days a week, the portion of students learning only virtually continues to shrink – as it has for the last two months.
“There have been many, many schools that have been reopened,” says Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the politically powerful teachers union that represents educators in most of the country’s biggest school districts.
To be sure, it’s not coming up all roses. Weingarten, for example, is concerned about the CDC’s revised guidance for social distancing, arguing that the majority of the research on whether to use 6 feet versus 3 feet comes from rural or suburban school districts that not only have more space but also have more resources to apply other risk-mitigation measures and whose families have been less impacted by the pandemic.
Those fears aren’t unfounded, as the change in guidance comes as new variants of the coronavirus seem to be infecting children more than the original strain. Yet even Weingarten says she and other educators and school leaders she’s talking to are beginning to feel more hopeful and confident about their ability to safely reopen schools for in-person learning.
“I’ve started to turn my attention to recovery and how we actually help kids recover from a year without normalcy,” Weingarten says. “You’re getting to the point where the vast majority of K-8 schools are open for in-person learning. The vast majority of kids have access to some in-person school if they so choose. So now it’s about recovery, now it’s about how do we recover socially, emotionally and academically.”
Photo Credit: JON CHERRY/GETTY IMAGES
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