One of the most contentious issues in the hyper-contentious debate over COVID-19 involves whether public schools should offer face-to-face classes to all children whose parents want them back in the classroom.
Due to the educational, social, emotional and even physical damage, distance learning can cause students – as well as the way it affects parents who cannot work when they have to become part-time teachers – is also one of the most important.
Therefore, as COVID infection rates remain alarmingly high and school districts across the state refuse to reopen after the Christmas holidays, we feel it is important to borrow a megaphone for a report published last week by the MUSC in-house newspaper.
According to the January 19 article in Catalyst News, researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina found that only about 500 of the 38,000 students and staff participating in face-to-face learning in the Charleston County School District tested positive for COVID-19 among the start of face-to-face classes on 8 September and the beginning of winter holidays on 18 December. This is just over 1%, and less than a sixth of what we experience in the general population.
This will not come as a surprise to people who pay attention to the Charleston County School District, because it is based on ongoing research that MUSC is conducting for the district – some of which were reported in The Post and Courier and referenced in our editorials . The research contributed to the school board’s decision to continue offering face-to-face classes and, just before Christmas, to temporarily suspend competitions and athletic training.
But the results were apparently a surprise to the 16 districts that, according to the SC Department of Education, still offered only remote classes on Monday. And perhaps for most school districts, which still operated on a hybrid schedule, which usually means that students are in the classroom only two days a week.
Evidence from Charleston County schools suggests that most of the 500 cases of COVID were contracted in the community, according to Allison Eckard, an infectious disease pediatrician at MUSC Children’s Health who is working with the school district on pandemic prevention measures.
Here’s what she told Catalyst News: “There were only a handful of cases that may have been broadcast in schools and in the classroom. There have been cases, there is no doubt, but most were acquired outside the classroom. Those that took place inside the classroom most often involved a teacher giving to a teacher or a teacher giving to a student. And I don’t have examples of students giving to teachers – the thing that everyone was so concerned about. “
Read again: no example of students infecting their teachers.
This may help explain why half of the 744 teachers who participated in the Charleston Teachers’ Association’s mid-winter survey disagreed with the idea that “all classes are best online during the pandemic.”
“In most cases,” continued Dr. Eckard, “the infection can be attributed to a family member or friend where they spent time together outside of school. In some cases, sports activities, rides and social gatherings have been identified as sources of infection ”.
This helps to explain why she believes, as an increasing number of medical experts, that “the risk to students is much greater if they are not in school”.
Oh, and another important point from Dr. Eckard: she started by opposing sending students back to classrooms, but “now I am a believer. Children need to be in school and it is safe. “
It is difficult to think of anything more important for our state to be working on now than ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to return to school.
