Because almost all of California’s schools are participating in the new academic year with virtual learning, everyone wants to know how soon it will be safe for students and faculty to return to real classrooms.
While some experts – from Stanford researchers to the Centers for Disease Control – say that the earlier schools can reopen for personal instruction with proper precautionary measures, the better, many teachers and their unions in the state advocate for more cautious approaches.
Accounts and images from other parts of the country where students have returned to classrooms – such as rural and suburban areas of Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi – can tell a cautious story to get the timing and circumstances wrong.
In Cherokee County, Georgia, for example, nearly 1,200 students and staff were instructed to quarantine earlier this week when a coronavirus outbreak forced the closure of two high schools less than two weeks after they reopened, according to the New York Times.
Sohil Sud, an associate professor at the UCSF School of Medicine, says the single biggest predictor of a successful return to personal learning within schools is what happens with COVID-19 transmission outside schools.
“With a lot of evidence of substantial transmission from the community in Cherokee County, GA, it was sadly almost inevitable that they will struggle with the resumption of personal training, despite measures taken within the school,” Sohil said in an email. “To put some numbers around, Cherokee County’s throughput is nearly five times higher than what the state of California recommends for school wins.”
Under current California restrictions imposed by Govin Newsom last year, schools in counties on the state’s “watch list” – where more than 90 percent of Californians live – are banned from opening doors to classes without a special deviation. A province may jump from the governor’s waiting list and allow schools to reopen if it meets certain thresholds for 14 consecutive days, including at least 80% ICU bed availability, a positive test rate of less than 8% and business rates below 10 per 10,000 population.
State Schools Superintendent Tony Thurmond said that unlike other states California is happy in that its metrics for a safe opening of schools are “really clear.”
“While we know there is nothing better than instructions for individuals because it relates to the needs of the students, that is the safest thing we can do right now,” Thurmond said at a news conference. on Friday.
But once schools are allowed to reopen because a province has been removed from the checklist, if they have been granted an exemption to reopen, not everyone agrees on the criteria that should be used to determine if it’s really safe to bring students back.
Before the governor announced new restrictions on the opening of schools, teachers’ unions in the state were in resistance mode, saying districts did not have enough resources, personal protective equipment or physical space to ensure all necessary safety measures were in place. were.
Some California teachers’ unions have joined a growing national movement calling for schools to remain closed to personal classes until there is no new COVID-19 case in their area for 14 consecutive days.
“To follow the CDC and OSHA and Provincial Bureau of Public Health guidelines – this seems to me super logical,” said President Ann Katzburg of the San Ramon Valley Teachers Association, which supports the now-14-day rule. “I think we need to get rid of the worries first and then we can go back.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a statement late last month in agreement with President Donald Trump training an official to reopen schools.
“Schools re-create opportunities to invest in the education, welfare and future of one of America’s greatest assets – our children – while taking every precaution to protect students, teachers, staff and all their families,” the agency wrote. in the statement.
Dr. Naomi Bardach, an associate professor of pediatrics and health policy and a pediatrician at the University of California-San Francisco Benioff Children’s Hospital, pointed to that same sentiment during a teleconference this week when she said the state “should think about schools to open before bars and restaurants. ”
Bardach, a parent himself, notes that although the threat of the disease is real not only for children but also for their teachers and parents, “We do not pursue harm related to school closures,” such as loss of learning, obesity , mental health and child abuse of parents claiming job loss and orders to stay home.
Bardach said safe schooling can easily be done in elementary schools because research has shown that preadolescent children are less vulnerable to COVID-19 and less likely to spread it than adolescent teens and adults.
A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May found that preadolescent children produce less of an enzyme that serves as an entry for the virus than older children and adults. Younger children also have smaller lungs and are lower to the ground, so if they became infected they would spread the virus less to adults and others, according to Bardach.
Experience in other areas of the country and the world shows that where school outbreaks have occurred, they mostly involve older students and lax observations of basic public health facilities, such as social distance and mask mandates. The outbreaks in high schools in Georgia earlier this week, for example, came after photos showed students walking full distance from high schools without wearing masks. The neighborhood was encouraging ‘students’ to wear masks instead of the mandate.
Bardach said observations of indoor summer camps in San Francisco over the summer showed that if young children wear proper masks and observe basic hygiene practices, outbreaks can be prevented.
“Schools should probably be considered as adult workplaces,” Bardach said. “The implication is that it is possible to follow public health principles, and it can lead to limited or zero infections.”
Staff writers Erin Woo and John Woolfolk contributed to this story.
