In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Friday night that Chicago Public Schools is reopening for face-to-face learning, although an agreement has not been reached with the Chicago Teachers Union.
“We still plan to welcome our pre-K students and students with special needs back to safe personal learning on Monday,” said Lightfoot. “We also plan to … reopen face-to-face learning for our kindergarten to eighth grade students on Monday. Therefore, we expect these teachers to be present for their students.”
“However, given the current state of negotiations, we owe it to our students and families to prepare for a scenario in which CTU’s leadership continues to advise its members not to return to schools to receive face-to-face classes.”
It is a problem that the School District of Philadelphia also faces: the district is now launching a plan to bring back 9,000 students from pre-primary to second grade from February 22, Superintendent Dr. William Hite announced in an interview virtual collective conference on Wednesday. But it is not yet clear whether the teachers’ union is in line with the plan.
Staying online or returning to the classroom has been a controversial issue for many districts. While some worry that it is not safe to send teachers and students back to campus before the virus is under control, others say the impacts on the quality of education and stress on families are more pressing.
The United States is still months away from vaccinating most Americans against the virus, but doses are reaching the public and, in some districts, pressure to reopen public schools has resumed.
“In most states, if not all states, teachers must be eligible for vaccination now,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie on Today. Even though they cannot be vaccinated yet, Walensky said that “they should be at the front of the line and therefore should be vaccinated soon”.
Walensky said he is hopeful that, with vaccines and mitigation measures, schools will be able to reopen soon, but others are calling for a quicker return.
Hardline calls for reopening options
A father in Virginia called the county school board “a bunch of cowards” for not offering options to send students back to school.
“There are people like me and a line of other people out there who will be happy to take your place and find out how it is!” Brandon Michon told the board.
“It’s about finding ways to get our kids back to school and giving families the option to get them back to school learning, mental health and being kids,” he said in an interview with CNN.
Iowa Governor Kim Reynold signed a bill on Friday requiring school districts to provide families with full-time, face-to-face education options.
Reynolds said that in the fall, the “vast majority” of schools offer full-time classroom teaching. “Unfortunately, this option is not available to all families,” she said. “Many have struggled to balance work at home with helping young children navigate online learning.”
Study supports school security
Some experts say that science points to schools as a safe place to send students, if appropriate measures are taken.
Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director in the Obama administration, said that while masks are being used in schools, there will be adequate ventilation in buildings, social distance, as well as the elimination of rest rooms for teachers and extracurricular activities, he “I would not wait for vaccination of teachers.”
“Classrooms should be open as long as possible and reopen as quickly as possible. Personal learning is extremely important,” said Frieden during an Axios podcast interview on Friday.
A study by two US schools released on Friday supports the argument that schools are not an important place for propagation when proper precautions are taken.
The study examined 3,500 school students who, according to the researchers, took the necessary precautions. With only 9% of students who brought new infections to school infecting others, they wrote that “there was no evidence of transmission from student to teacher or from teacher to student in any of the schools”.
Most cases were associated with non-compliance with mask rules, as well as off-campus sources, including siblings returning from college, off-campus activities, parties and meetings, they wrote.
“Children contract Covid-19 and can transmit it, but disease rates when they are in school are lower than disease rates when they are out of school, suggesting that children and communities may be at lower risk when children are at school, “Dr. Darria Long, from the University of Tennessee’s Department of Emergency Medicine, who worked on the study, said.
“This may be because mitigation measures in the controlled school environment (which are not possible when children are not at school) can significantly suppress transmission.”
CNN’s Maggie Fox, Raja Razek, Kelsie Smith, Andrea Diaz, Elizabeth Stuart, Amanda Watts and Naomi Thomas contributed to this report.