Back to school. In the days before the pandemic, it was the most mundane phrase, a little cheesy and comical, loaded with a bittersweet wish that the chlorine-smelling summer days could last a bit longer.
Now, in the coronavirus-haunted United States, those words are a signifier of existential fear, a political lightning rod, a confusing multiple-choice question that has no real right answer, but many wrong ones.
Parents, especially those who work, are desperate for their children to return to the classroom. President Trump, eager to revive a devastated economy in the U.S., demands that schools open for in-person instruction.
But a pandemic is raging, particularly in the south and west of the country, and with the days passing by for a new school year, no one is sure how to keep the students, teachers and school workers, and, like the radiant radios of a wheel, all those who come into contact with them, safe from contagion.
School administrators are struggling, trying to figure out rules on everything from facial liners to Plexiglass dividers if students physically return, and how to handle months of online learning if they don’t. And any pattern agreed upon now could change before the school bells ring.
In tens of millions of American homes, general dilemmas are personified in small, twisted, and restless bodies: schoolchildren like Eli, Keily Mitchell’s 8-year-old son.
When schools in Vidalia, Georgia closed along with the rest of the country at the start of the outbreak in March, Eli quickly discovered that he hated distance learning. And Mitchell, a 41-year-old registered nurse who works at a local hospital, hated standing over her and teasing her into doing her worksheets.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, is leaving the decision to reopen local school districts, setting the stage for a patchwork approach as COVID-19 rapidly spreads across the state. The state has seen more than 115,000 cases and almost 3,000 deaths.
Large public school systems in Atlanta and Savannah have announced virtual-only school openings, but in many suburban and rural areas, classrooms will open in late July and early August.
Some, like Vidalia, a small city about 170 miles southeast of Atlanta, will also offer a virtual learning option. But Mitchell and her husband, while concerned, think they are likely to take a chance and send Eli and her 13-year-old sister Annika back to the classroom.
“I really, really don’t know what the best answer is,” Mitchell said. “Simply put, as a working parent, I have no choice but to send my children to school.”
In the national back-to-school debate, critics of the Trump administration see a macabre repeat of the wrong push for the early reopening of businesses and public spaces in the same states, many in the south, which are now inundated with the virus. The United States has experienced more than 136,800 coronavirus-related deaths and at least 3.4 million people have been infected.
The opening of schools will be a crucial component of any economic recovery, with or without class time, closely woven into each parent’s working life.
But Trump and his allies have tried to frame the argument in terms that essentially ignore urgent public health concerns, stating that the social and developmental risks of lost learning outweigh the risks.
Frustrated critics say the question isn’t whether staying out of school hurts kids, of course, they say, but it’s deeply irresponsible to try to arm school districts at openings in person without taking the scale and severity of the area outbreaks into account.
Florida, which has more than 300,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus and more than 4,510 deaths, issued a directive requiring that all school districts offer in-person instruction. With the state as an epicenter for coronaviruses, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has come under fire from many city leaders about the state telling school districts to take classes in person.
In Orlando, a large theme park, Adelise Berrios has taught kindergarten at Oakshire Elementary School for 20 years. She is extremely concerned about security protocols, especially with a room full of small, irrepressible charges prone to “play snot or whatever.”
“You have children who will sneeze all over the table and another child comes in and just leans on the table,” Berrios said. “You don’t know because you can’t have your eyes on every student.”
His district could ask for state permission for virtual options, but just a few weeks before school starts, “unknowingly, it’s just killing us,” he said. Like many other teachers, Berrios said he will work with the instructions they have given him, but the details, or even the general outlines, remain unclear.
“If they say, ‘OK, next month or next week, you have to be at school,’ I will be at school, taking every precaution,” he said. “But then it’s like driving blind. You don’t know who has it. If we open the school and a person has COVID, do we have to close the school because there is a case?
Trump sometimes seems dismissive of the heartbreaking dilemmas parents and teachers face. When asked in an interview that aired on CBS on Tuesday what he would say to those who choose online learning because of security fears, he replied, “I would tell parents and teachers that they must find a new person, who whether he is in charge of that decision. ” because it’s a terrible decision. “
Trump allies like Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, have suggested that keeping children out of school is a ploy by Democrats to damage the president’s reelection prospects.
“They are using our children as political pawns, and I shamelessly tell them they can kiss my ass,” he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday. “It is wrong to do that to the children of the United States.”
Schooling, like wearing a mask, has become increasingly politically charged. In Texas, where new cases jumped more than 10,000 a day, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and the state education agency have insisted that schools reopen next month, though they face mounting opposition from local officials and teachers.
The death toll in Texas is nearly 4,000, with almost 300,000 cases. Last week, officials in the border cities of El Paso and Laredo, where infections have increased, issued orders banning the reopening of schools. And officials in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas also asked the governor to postpone the reopening of schools due to the increased infection rate.
According to the state, reopening means districts can teach remotely for three weeks, but must offer options in person. If the districts refuse, Abbott and other officials have said they will lose state funds, a large part of their budgets.
“That is a form of blackmail,” said Clay Robison, a spokesman for the Austin-based Texas State Teachers Association, which represents about 65,000 school employees. Citing the health vulnerabilities of many teachers, he called the Texas coronavirus numbers “just out of control.”
Teacher unions and school officials have argued that large expenses are needed: to physically reconfigure classrooms, establish staggered schedules, establish medical-grade cleaning regimes, but no new funding has been received.
Without proper precautions, they say, not only will students and teachers be in danger, but the risk extends to everyone in a given child’s circle: parents, grandparents, siblings, any of whom may have particular health vulnerabilities. .
“It’s a scary time, no matter what we do,” said Tom Lee, 39, an eighth-grade teacher at Dalton Middle School in North Georgia who is still waiting for his school district to finalize his plans for a year. school that is supposed to start the first week of August.
He said his school district had been quite proactive in sending out surveys and inviting teachers to focus group meetings, and he is still considering three options: starting school completely face-to-face, ushering in a hybrid plan that would combine digital and expensive face-to-face learning, or have everyone switch to digital learning.
“It is just a list of bad options,” he said. “I am not comfortable with students sitting at home. I’m also not comfortable taking them to a building. “
Missed opportunities are difficult to quantify, but some parents, and students, are already feeling the sting of opportunities that might slip away.
In Seattle, public schools plan to offer at least two days a week of in-person instruction for kindergarten through 12th. grade, with the option for families to choose online-only learning. But administrators say plans could change, depending on public health guidelines. Washington state, hit hard and early, has seen more than 44,000 confirmed infections and at least 1,400 deaths.
Mercedes Diggs, 47, said her son August, a 13-year-old athlete who is about to enter eighth grade, is beside himself looking forward to returning to Denny International Middle School, a public school in Seattle.
“My son is African American, and we are very happy with all the rich programs they have,” Diggs said, citing in particular an elective class for black students, which teaches black history, cultural awareness, positive identity and literacy.
August, a sociable young man who was on two tournament basketball teams and on the school basketball team, with track and field practice about to begin when the closing began, faced the closure of the school but was “miserable “said his mother. He is happy for two days a week of school attendance, but would love to go every day, he said.
Diggs is torn, but he finally sees it differently. For security reasons, I would prefer to learn only online.
“It would be unbearable for my son not to go to school,” he said. “But as a parent, if you end up going online alone, I agree with that.”
Times King staff writers reported from Washington, Jarvie from Atlanta and Baxter from Orlando, Florida. Staff writers Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Houston and Richard Read in Seattle contributed to this report.
