Predicting autumn school responses to COVID-19 isn’t getting any easier
As summer progresses and the COVID-19 situation gets more confounding—with cases in the U.S. near their high but deaths sharply down—predicting what schools will do in the fall, or what they should do, is not getting any easier.
We tend to focus on the instructional issues related to school closures, so perhaps our view is skewed, but it seems like relatively little media and policy attention is being given to the costs that schools will face related to health measures and social distancing. These are ultimately, of course, related to instructional issues, because if keeping physical schools open is cost-prohibitive, the only instructional option will be online or remote learning.
About a month ago, the Centers for Disease Control released guidelines for re-opening schools, as both a detailed website and an infographic. But as CNBC reports, they did so “quietly,” with details “posted on the website without a formal announcement.” That may explain why the guidelines seem to have gotten little attention. Whether or not most people are aware of them, however, the guidelines are quite cautious. They call for schools to open only if they can “protect children and employees at higher risk,” as well as promote healthy hygiene, encourage social distancing, and implement ongoing monitoring.
This won’t be easy. One Ohio district estimates that hand sanitizer could cost $4 million, and disposable masks $2 million. (The time period being discussed is not entirely clear, but these seem to be estimates for the school year.) A district member of the Digital Learning Collaborative told me that her busses, with a normal capacity of 70 students, would be able to carry eight students under CDC guidelines.
These are among the many challenges that make returning to “school as normal” in the fall appear challenging at best. And that’s not even accounting for emerging evidence that “Thoughts that the young are not much affected by SARS-CoV-2 look wrong.”
That’s not to say that shifting from the types of remote learning that we saw in the past few months, to effective online learning, will be much easier. But at least examples and models for online and hybrid learning exist.
The patterns that are emerging also seem to suggest the possibility of some bad—if not worst-case—scenarios. The recent emergence of cases in southern states, while cases in northern states are subsiding, suggests that we are seeing exactly the type of pattern that would lead to rolling school closures in the fall and winter. In fact, Israel’s experience with many school closings, only two weeks after they were re-opened, may be predictive of what will happen in US schools as the weather turns cold.
Depending on where you are in the U.S. these days, it’s not too hard to look outside and feel like the worst of the pandemic is over. A closer look, though, makes clear that schools’ struggles with the pandemic may still be in the very early stages. I’m sure the large majority of school and district leaders are well aware. But schools are going to require patience from parents and others, and it’s not clear that society as a whole is correctly anticipating the coming school year.