This week, the Trump Administration urged schools to reopen and return to normal, threatening to take away funding if this does not happen. With the pandemic increasing in severity still, and as the death toll is predicted to triple by 2021 at the current rate, we must put aside our desire for life as we knew it and really consider: is reopening schools actually safe?
I want to begin by saying that I understand the desire to reopen schools from a few perspectives:
From an economic standpoint, it can - ideally - allow parents to return to work, which will decrease the unemployment rate. For many members of the workforce with young children at home, they cannot return to work until their children are set up with a babysitter, family member, or nanny, or until they are sent back to school. If it is possible for them to work from home, it can be made difficult when they have to balance their kids being home and a level of professionalism.
From the point of view of parents, reopening schools takes off the pressure of assisting their children with learning from home. After schools closed as a precaution against COVID-19 for the first time, many parents realized how difficult the job of educating their children really is - and this was with the guidance of teachers. They became tutors, assistant teachers, and managers while their kids struggled with remote learning.
Finally, from the perspective of students, many kids want to see their peers again, return to the routine that school provides, and have an in-person learning experience that benefits them more than remote learning did. Schooling remotely presents new challenges of time management, self-discipline, and unanswered questions, especially when lesson plans are designed for the classroom and transferred to a platform not suitable for the activity.
However, even with all of these valid reasons to reopen, the only factor that should result in schools reopening is that of guaranteed safety.
Pros of Sending Students Back to School
It is without question that schools provide more than just an education for many students. They also establish a routine, a network of people to support and discipline students, and fundamental opportunities for psychological development. This is true for both young children and adolescents.
In regards to the learning aspect, a physical classroom can provide a wider variety of learning styles that are tailored to students, more than remote learning can offer (at least as far as we know at this point). All of these positive impacts of schools on students, in addition to providing parents the ability to return to work, can make it seem like the question of reopening schools shouldn’t even exist, right?
Not exactly.
You see, while schools certainly provide all of these benefits, this should not be the center of the debate about reopening schools. Are they all valid points? Yes, but they distract from the real question, which is that of safety.
Ultimately, if ample safety for students, faculty, and staff cannot be guaranteed, schools should not reopen.
Complications of Reopening Schools So Early
The main reason that reopening schools before safety is guaranteed is that returning to a version of “normal” before normal is safe is incredibly dangerous.
This is especially true for young children. Imagine being an elementary school teacher, and you have to explain to your students - who associate the classroom environment with the type of socializing and learning they are familiar with - that “normal” does not really mean normal.
It requires teachers to do more than teach this year. They are also responsible for policing their students based on the new guidelines (regarding masks, physical distances, and shared classroom materials, among many other things) while teaching the lesson plans they carefully designed around the existing curriculum. Not only do they have to ensure that students understand the new rules, but they also have to enforce them constantly.
On another note, students rely heavily on breaks during their school day, in order to have an outlet for their energy and avoid burnouts. In elementary school, students have small breaks when moving to their special classes (like art, gym, and music), as well as during snack time, lunch time, and recess. In middle school and high school, break times mostly consist of switching from class to class during locker breaks, in addition to their lunch period.
However, with the precautions for COVID-19, breaks like these are supposed to be limited to avoid contact between people. Students will likely have snacks, lunch, and specials in their assigned classroom, and recess will not take place on a playground. This almost completely eliminates an outlet for their energy throughout the day, especially if socializing is minimized to prevent the spread via talking when masks cannot be warn (for example, during lunch).
It is worth noting that a new type of break is being discussed: mask breaks.
By reopening schools, we are asking students who are not used to wearing masks for long periods of time - except for any high school students who wear them in their workplace - to wear masks for six to seven hours each day. Whether these mask breaks will take place indoors or outdoors is not yet clear, but if lunch needs to be indoors, then it seems like mask breaks can be as well. While these breaks seem necessary, there is still no knowing how safe they really are.
If you think these breaks might be a waste of time, this is only the beginning of how much time could be wasted in schools that are reopened. Many educators have already begun to express their concerns that the new regulations - albeit necessary - may result in an abundance of wasted time, even for requirements as simple as students entering and exiting the building at staggered times.
The arguments and questions go on:
What will socialization look like for students?
Certainly, this is one of the most important components of psychological development for students, but can it even take place in a classroom setting during the age of COVID-19? Will students be able to socialize during breaks, when they are supposed to release most of their energy, or will they be asked to stay quiet? How helpful are these breaks, then?
If one student gets sick, the school must close.
What if a student’s parent or someone they’ve come in contact with gets sick? How can the school guarantee transparency prior to an outbreak occurring within their school, in order to prevent said outbreak from happening?
Teachers are employed to teach students, not to babysit them.
So, should the economy really rely so heavily on schools reopening during a pandemic? What happens if schools are forced to close again to manage an inevitable outbreak?
Even if teachers can police students in their classrooms, how can districts expect bus drivers to police students and maintain control while driving?
I can tell you, as someone who monitored my mom’s school bus when she was a bus driver, that kids act up on a bus more than their parents and administrators would like to believe. This is especially prevalent in the afternoon, after their energy has been controlled all day in the classroom - so how are bus drivers expected to keep kids under control and ensure they are obeying new guidelines, such as masks and distancing?
How can we expect kids with underlying health risks to attend school, which may potentially put their health or lives in danger if an outbreak occurs, to attend school like normal?
Then, even if they are given the option for remote learning, how can we expect them to choose their safety over missing out on a year of attending school and seeing their friends?
After so many districts slashed their budgets and fired their teachers, how will social distancing in the classroom even be feasible?
With less teachers, class sizes will inevitably increase, which makes social distancing more difficult; how are districts supposed to ensure the safety of these students and control the possibility of an outbreak in classrooms where social distancing is not possible?
Finally, how can we expect teachers to put themselves in harm's way when they did not sign up for a career on the frontlines?
Can we really guarantee their safety, especially those teaching students who are too young to be wearing masks? What happens when the nation begins to lose their teachers to this virus? Why should teachers with underlying health conditions put their safety at stake, just so the parents of their students can return to work?
Is it really worth it to risk lives when remote learning has proven to work already?
All of these questions deserve thorough answers before schools can reopen with confidence. After all, parents and guardians need to understand the risks of sending their children to school before schools reopen.
"But We're Taking Precautions!"
Even with an abundance of caution and obeying guidelines set forth by schools, some level of risk still remains. Only a few weeks ago, this proved to be true when a summer school teacher in Arizona lost her life to COVID-19, even with regulations in place, such as temperature checks, social distancing, and wearing masks. Before any decision is made about schools reopening or not, we all need to understand that some level of risk will be present as long as a vaccine is not available.
Ultimately, we need to understand that this “normal” is not really normal.
In fact, it is actually a dangerous assumption, as it allows us to live in a fantasy world where the current pandemic is not a threat.
The United States has high infection rates because this assumption that we can create a new normal is so widely accepted. However, if we want life to truly be safe, we need to face the facts that we are not living in a time where normal should be acceptable. While we do not need to live in constant fear, we certainly should not be living in a way that is not considerate of others - something we are seeing more and more in our individualistic society.
So, before we allow this desire to return to normal overpower our decision making, consider this:
We must listen to the opinions of the teachers, parents, and students who are at the center of this debate, in order to consider the benefits and risks before jumping to a conclusion.
We must be more considerate of others if we will ever establish a sense of normalcy in the wake of this pandemic.
Finally, we must not rush into "normal" because, in reality, doing so only puts more lives at stake.
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