Reopening Schools Is Way Harder Than It Should Be

Of all the American institutions the pandemic has shut down, none face pressure to reopen quite like schools do. Pediatricians exhort schools to open their doors wherever possible or risk developmental harm to kids. Working parents, particularly mothers, are in crisis, worried about having to leave the work force altogether in the absence of a place to send their young children each day. And President Trump is campaigning for schools to reopen, threatening to withhold funding if they don’t.

The pressure has mounted as school districts have made it clear that they can do no such thing. Across the country — including in Phoenix, Houston and a huge chunk of California, where coronavirus cases are rapidly rising — schools are preparing their students and staffs for a continuation of the “remote learning” that began in the spring. In New York City and Chicago, where the virus is more under control, schools are moving toward a hybrid option with remote learning some days, in-person school others. Even in places like Detroit and Memphis, where districts plan to offer in-person school for those who want it, local leaders could change course if virus cases rise; they also have yet to figure out what to do if too many worried teachers or students opt out.

Outrage over schools’ inability to fully reopen should not, of course, be directed at schools themselves, but at the public health failure that makes it impossible for most of them to do so. The consequences of closed or half-open schools, meanwhile, are far vaster than the brutal economic challenge facing working parents and their employers. That’s because schools do much more than provide child care. They provide education, fundamentally. But as the pandemic has made clear, they also provide meals, social connection and health services.

Meeting any one of these needs in normal times through a single institution is a struggle. Add in an out-of-control pandemic that multiplied the number of children who are not getting enough to eat to 14 million, made in-person teaching a health gamble and threw off the learning trajectory of every child in America — all while creating huge projected budget shortfalls for schools — and you have a “train wreck,” said David K. Cohen, a visiting professor of education at Harvard...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/sunday-review/reopening-schools-coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare