During the school semester, about a quarter of school districts were fully online, about half used a hybrid model and less than a quarter were fully open for face-to-face education. Still, more than half of the school districts had students participating in sports programs.
In an opinion column on USA Today earlier this week, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Dr. Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, called for widespread testing to keep schools safe and bring children back. to the classroom, not just for educational reasons, but to restore free school lunches, give children a social outlet and provide the myriad of school services that are vital for low-income children.
The Covid-19 School Response Panel, a collaboration that tracks infections in school districts willing to share data, reported that infection rates among staff in October and November were similar to case rates in neighboring communities. More recently, however, the team’s case rates in New York have increased more rapidly than the community’s case rates.
The causes are not clear. The increases may reflect a more frequent assessment by teachers. Case rates increased among teachers involved in face-to-face teaching and among those who taught remotely, suggesting that face-to-face teaching was not the only factor.
Emily Oster, a professor of economics and public policy at Brown University who created the panel, said the low case rates in the community make it possible to keep schools running safely.
“Prioritizing schools will mean limiting some of these other activities and deciding that we want to make some of these sacrifices to keep schools open, because we have decided as a society that schools are important in relation to other things,” said Dr Oster.
“The frustration for many people is that you can go to a covered restaurant. In Massachusetts, I could go to a covered water park like the Great Wolf Lodge – I can take my kids to the Great Wolf Lodge. But in many places in Massachusetts, there was no school. “