What Should Schools Do

Pandemic Reality

We are in the middle of a global pandemic.  As much as many American leaders have tried to deny it, the growing number of COVID-19 diagnoses, over three million, and deaths, almost 133,000, tell the tale.  The infection rate is growing, particularly in those states that seemed to try to deny that the virus was serious.  The newest “stat” that helps to reveal the increase: the number of new infections diagnosed in each state per 100,000 people every day (WAPO).  Arizona is the “winner” right now, with fifty-five new cases per 100,000.

By the way, I’ve used the quote from my old boss, Pete Nix, before, “Figures lie and liars figure”.  And yes, I’m figuring.  So do the COVID deniers, who now are boasting on social media that the “death rate” is going down:  “Woo-Hoo”!!!  As more and more folks get infected, yes fewer of them are dying.  But drop by any hospital in Houston or Phoenix.  They are at capacity, and physicians are making life and death treatment choices multiple times a day. Doesn’t sound like a “Woo-Hoo” moment to me. 

We Blew It

The European countries seem to have the virus under control.  So does Canada.  Mexico seems to be in trouble.  But the big world “failure” in COVID-19 control is the United States of America.  How do we know for sure?  Well, for the first time in my memory, Americans can’t travel out of the country in most cases.  Europe doesn’t want us, neither does Canada, and Mexico is moving to block the border as well.  They don’t want Americans, because they don’t want the brushfire of COVID to spread.  Can’t blame them.

But we are desperate to get back to normal.  We want baseball and football; we want to go to restaurants, beaches and bars.  And for many Americans, we absolutely want our kids to go back to school in the fall.

School Bells

There’s good reason for that.  I spent a career as a public school teacher.  Most kids learn better in a classroom in a school.  They need to be around their peers, and taught be professionals, in person. And most parents need their kids to go to school, so they can go to work.  Every good educator can make a strong case that schools work, and kids need to be there.

I had the surprising “honor” of being back in a classroom when the COVID crisis began.  I took on a long-term substitute position, and started on March 9^th.  A week later, we were checking out of the building, and I entered a whole new world of online teaching, Google’s classroom application, and Zoom meetings.  So I have some first hand knowledge of what it’s like to be a “remote” teacher.  And, for most kids, it’s not as good as the real thing in person.  It’s not as good for most teachers either.

So, in a normal world, school bells should be ringing in August.  Parents should be shopping for back-to-school, and teachers getting their classrooms and lesson plans ready for the year.  But it ain’t a normal year.

Egg Crate Incubators

We know that when we put people together in close groups, we dramatically increase the rate of COVID-19 infection.  Most have carefully tried to control their “circles” of exposure, but “normal” school will throw all of that out the window.  Try passing through the hallway of any school at the beginning or the end of the day – there is no such thing as “social distancing” there.  

And our schools “egg-crate” design puts dozens of kids together in relatively small rooms.  Sure there’s the new nursery rhyme: “Your mask helps me, my mask helps you, social distancing helps us both, and staying at home helps us all”.  And teachers are capable of keeping masks on kids, particularly in middle and high school.  We stopped them from chewing gum for years, and the mask won’t stick to the bottom of the desk.

But in the end, it doesn’t seem like just wearing masks will be enough.  We can reduce the number of kids in a building, but by doing so, we are keeping kids at home.  “Educationese” has a new term: “hybrid learning”.  Two days in school, three days online at home:  that’s the proposed new school week.

We can all “rest easy”.  The kids are going to transmit COVID-19, until we have a vaccine there will be no way to avoid it.  No matter the prevention efforts, there are going to be outbreaks.  Any given year’s flu season is evidence of that.  But kids don’t seem to be too impacted by COVID, so it’s OK – right?

The Staff

There are two major issues that make this NOT OK.  Issue one:  kids go home after school.  Sure it’d be all right for most kids to get COVID and get through it.  But when they go home, they’re going to give it to Mom and Dad, and maybe Grandma and Papa.  That’s not going to be OK, as Mom and Dad head to work before they know they are infected, and increase the spread. And while kids normally have good outcomes from COVID, their parents, well not so much, and their grandparents may be facing death sentences.  So there’s that.

Issue two:  what about all of those adults who are standing in front of those kids in class?  What about the teachers, and the custodians, bus drivers, principals, and support personnel?  They are the age of the parents and grandparents.  How much risk are they supposed to assume?

Get a Shot

I know medical personnel have been assuming risk for COVID for months.  So have other “essential workers”.  But few other workers are set into the “hotbed” of a school environment.   As a substitute teacher last year, I got a flu shot for the first time.  I did it for three reasons.  First, I hadn’t been in a school environment for a few years, and I lost my “natural immunity” built up through forty years of hanging out with kids, sick or not.

Second, as an older teacher, I know I’m more vulnerable to the illnesses that I would have ignored in my earlier years.  And third, I have a wife at home, not seasoned by years of exposure.  I needed to protect her from whatever was floating around the building.

But there is no vaccine for COVID.  And all of the risks that convinced me to get the flu shot last year are compounded by the potentially fatal illness, for me, and my family.

So that’s easy for me, don’t substitute until there’s a vaccine.  But what about the other teachers who aren’t retired, and are required to go back to work?  What sacrifices are we asking them to make?

Public Education

It’s public education in the United States.  You know there won’t be the resources to reasonably protect the kids or the adults.  Will there be a new mask for each kid each day?  Or even for the kids who “forgot”?  And when they take kids temperatures at the front door, how are the kids getting off the bus going to get back home?  For parents already stressed by a shaky economy, whose going to leave work because the kid’s at 99.7?

What happened in the “old days” before last March?  Kids went to school with fevers, and when the school personnel found out, the kids hung out in the “clinic” until parents arrive to get them – maybe for hours.  But you can’t do that in a COVID world; they can’t be in the building.  

I don’t have many good answers to all my questions.  What I can say is this.  We better be ready to do online schooling, and we better be ready to do it better than we did before.  Because we didn’t do what Europe did.  We didn’t make the sacrifices to stop the disease.  And the price to pay is that we are going to live with it until the vaccine arrives.

So better get a decent computer and high-speed Internet.  Your kids are going to need it.