Murmurs from the Springs #4 - Back to School Daze - Again ! : Tom McDermott

 

Back to School Daze - Again!

My daily walk often takes me past Pioneer Elementary (our local elementary school).  It was nice this Monday to see (and hear) the kids back in the playground after several months of closure.  By my informal count this is the fourth time this school year that the district has tried to open the school.  Each reopening has lasted for not more than 3 to 4 weeks.  Then someone - a teacher, staff, or student - tests positive and the school closes again.  

Colorado Springs and most municipalities in Colorado make decisions on opening and closing of schools  at a district level, meaning that the city and county are a patchwork of open schools and closed schools, often located quite close to each other.  

The Biden Administration has come into office committed to reopening schools.  The Trump team had similar aspirations.  So too state and local officials - each vowing to put kids back in their classrooms - 'soon'.  This seems one of the very rare issues on which political parties and officials at federal, state and local levels agree.  

So much for the politics.  But will it actually work this time?  

The question of course depends on whether anything has changed since the last round of closures.  On the one hand, the pandemic is still raging.  True, infection, hospitalization, and death rates are slowing slightly, but they are still at record levels.  On the other hand, there have been some modest improvements in testing, social-distancing, and vaccination.  

But, have conditions improved enough to keep teachers, students and their families safe?  

Most schools do seem to be managing better with regard to physical and social distancing.  A recent study by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on schools in Wisconsin showed that compliance on wearing of masks and distancing was high.  Out of 5,530 students and staff, there were only 7 cases of transmission of COVID in schools which had prepared properly and carried out mitigation steps.   

Teachers and their unions, however, are resisting demands of local officials that they resume in-classroom teaching.  In Chicago a major teachers' union voted last week to reject plans to resume most classes.  So far only limited numbers of children who need special attention have returned to classrooms - about 3,200 out of the city's 355,000 school age children.  The city wants another 70,000 children in the age groups from kindergarten to 8th grade to return next week, but there is no certainty this can happen without an agreement with the teachers' union.  

Public schools serve a disproportionate number of students from low-income families, who often cannot afford computers and internet services to support regular classwork at home.  Various approaches have been tried - take-home laptops, free internet hotspots, use of outdoor areas near libraries and public buildings, and even equipping of unused school buses which park in low-income neighborhoods to act as free internet providers.  None of these measures, however, seem to fill the internet gap between rich and poor.  Even beyond the questions of internet access, there is the fact that electronic classes often fail to deliver equivalent results in terms of learning for students - rich or poor.

Teachers remain skeptical over their safety and the safety of students.  This is partly because they see a major gap between the promises of officials and the reality on the ground.  The Governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, tried to reassure parents last week by stating that all teachers are being tested for COVID-19 twice a week.  The statement was immediately denounced by teachers' associations which said that testing is still erratic and occasional.  

Many educational authorities believe that the dispute will only be settled once teachers are vaccinated.  This brings up the thorny question of who is or isn't 'an essential worker' who has a priority for vaccination.  Colorado's list of priority groups gives first place to 'high-risk' health workers and individuals, second place to those 70 and over.  (I got my first shot two weeks ago and are scheduled for the second next week).  Teachers and child care workers come next, followed by people over age 65.  

Shortages of vaccine, however, are making this a slow process.  So far out of an estimated 530,000 people over age 70 in the state, only 156,000 have received one does of the vaccine.  The state receives about 80,000 doses a week, meaning it will take around five weeks before this priority group has been covered, and coverage can begin for teachers.

Making it worse, Colorado decided to give grocery-store workers a higher priority than teachers for vaccination.  Outbreaks and hotspots over the past 10 months leave little doubt that workers in groceries are a high-risk population. Yet, given the importance of getting children and their teachers back to schools, there seems to be a strong argument in favor of modifying the list of priorities.  So far 23 US states have included teachers in their high-priority group, while many others like Colorado have not.  This is one more example of how the absence of a clear national plan for handling the pandemic has led to a haphazard recovery.  The US has around 3 million school teachers, and the process of getting them all vaccinated is expected to take until late summer.

What about kids?  Many experts suggest that giving some priority to vaccination of children makes sense.  On the one hand, while children do get sick from COVID and COVID induced illness, they do so at much lower rates and with lower severity than other groups.  (Of course, that may change as the virus mutates and the pool of unvaccinated people shrinks.) On the other hand, children appear represent a significant reservoir for the virus, and are able to spread it easily from school to other family members.  Yet work on a version of the vaccine suitable for children is still in its very early days both for development and for testing.  Meanwhile, several cities and school districts have already indicated that they will make vaccination against COVID a requirement for the next school year, assuming that vaccines have become widely available by then.

There is another priority group for whom testing has lagged - pregnant and breastfeeding women.  In general, experts argue that current vaccines are safe during pregnancy and lactation and that it is better for the mother and her child to be protected from the virus, than to risk a serious infection.  Yet, there is a lack of solid test data to confirm this guidance.  Without such evidence, many mothers are likely to refuse the vaccine.  Already demographers and physicians are noting a sharp drop in pregnancies and deliveries, more or less the opposite of what was predicted to be a 'pandemic baby boom'. 

Almost since the beginning of the pandemic early in 2020, UNICEF and other UN agencies have urged authorities and parents to find ways in which children can safely return to classrooms. (Framework for Safe Reopening Schools, April 29, 2020). The reasons are obvious, not just in terms of losses in learning, but also in missed school meals, and opportunities for socialization and play.  See the Innocenti report "Missing More than a Classroom" issued recently by UNICEF and WFP on these concerns.

Yet here at ground level those responsible for educating children have their doubts.  What really does 'a safe return to the classroom' mean?  Safe for whom? - for the children, the teachers, the families? - or is just safe for politicians who want to get their economies 'back to work'?  The gap of trust between experts, politicians, officials, and those on the ground remains wide.  

After all, this is not the first time that elementary school has opened, only to close again a few weeks later.  Confidence comes with experience - and experience has not been good so far.