
The Woeful Inadequacy of School Reopening Plans - fortran77
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/17/the-woeful-inadequacy-of-school-reopening-plans
======
est31
It's possible to safely reopen schools provided there is a consistent and
regular testing scheme. This isn't doable with PCR tests due to the expense
and lab requirements. But in the "This Week in Virology" podcast, virology
researchers suggest deploying cheap and rapid testing methods regularly to
school children. It's possible to design cheap $1 per test paperstrips that
diagnose saliva samples that can be administered by teachers (or even
parents). The technology is there, but it's not approved by the FDA because
it's not reliable at very low dosages (where the individual isn't probably
infectious anyways). But the goal of those tests is to fight the pandemic on a
population scale, not to help with diagnosis on the individual scale, so the
criteria for the test should be different. Non-N95 masks aren't 100% effective
either, but they have an effect that does save lives. With a regular testing
scheme in place, reopening schools should be safe enough.

See also these resources:

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZWuyvBAWWQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZWuyvBAWWQ)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDj4Zyq3yOA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDj4Zyq3yOA)

* [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/coronavirus-tests...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/coronavirus-tests.html)

~~~
elliekelly
> It's possible to design cheap $1 per test paperstrips that diagnose saliva
> samples that can be administered by teachers (or even parents). The
> technology is there, but it's not approved by the FDA because it's not
> reliable at very low dosages (where the individual isn't probably infectious
> anyways).

Is this “possible” in that it exists and the FDA hasn’t acted on it or this is
test only theoretical?

~~~
est31
The tests exist in drawers of various companies but they aren't certified, at
least back when those videos were released (maybe it's different now). The
price depends on the scale the tests are deployed at, that's why I said
"possible to design".

[https://www.stopcovid.science/](https://www.stopcovid.science/)

> IMPORTANT NOTE: The STOPCovid kit and protocol should not be used for
> clinical purposes. Although we have validated the kit on patient samples,
> this test is not FDA authorized. We welcome researchers working with
> COVID-19 samples to request a starter kit for further experimental testing.

------
cprayingmantis
It feels like to me there’s no good answer to this problem. If we don’t open
schools there is two options that I can think of. One that a parent quits
their job and stays home to care for the kids which is probably what most of
the HN crowd can do, but more and more families require two incomes. The other
option is the kids get sent to a day care or study pod that we don’t have the
resources to inspect on the same basis as schools and the spread is worse. A
part of me thinks we should open school for the younger ones, halve class
size, require masks, introduce daily disinfecting, and have the older kids do
distance learning but it seems too many schools have put off prep because they
were sure that the virus would be gone.

For our daughter we are still up in the air on what to do and school begins in
a week or two and they are doing distance learning for the first quarter of
the year.

Note I am assuming kids can spread it as well as adults there may not
conclusive evidence of this but it’s the safest assumption route to go down.

~~~
generationP
This might not be very popular among the "think of the children" crowd, but
what if we plainly stop classifying 12-year old kids staying at home alone as
child neglect for the duration of this crisis? Asking kids to run a gauntlet
of bureaucratic strictures with all of the stress that school entails but not
half the socialization and fun is not going to do them any better in terms of
mental health. And parents are spending as much time with their children as
never before (see [https://www.economist.com/graphic-
detail/2017/11/27/parents-...](https://www.economist.com/graphic-
detail/2017/11/27/parents-now-spend-twice-as-much-time-with-their-children-
as-50-years-
ago#:~:text=Daily%20chart-,Parents%20now%20spend%20twice%20as%20much%20time,children%20as%2050%20years%20ago&text=PARENTS%20these%20days%20spend%20a,but%20104%20minutes%20in%202012).
); it's not like we're in danger of getting wolf children if we turn the crank
down a bit.

~~~
R0b0t1
Has that been prosecuted as neglect? I was left alone from and earlier age.

~~~
auxym
I was babysitting younger cousins at 13.

As in, I actually took babysitting classes at that age, it was common and
socially accepted.

------
papito
You have to have the virus under control to even consider a plan. Denmark
reopened schools months ago, after painful negotiations with the government,
parents, and faculty. There were new rules and lots of remodeling (I think
they even added bathrooms).

We don't have any of this, and it's aggravated by a large population of
aggressively ignorant and anti-science parents.

Israel was one of the models for controlling COVID-19, and school reopening
completely wrecked their progress.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
If people think school is so important that it needs to open even though the
virus is spreading, then we need to help them find the best way possible to do
that. Throwing our hands up and saying there's no way to even consider a plan
won't stop schools from opening - it just means they'll open with bad plans or
no plans.

~~~
papito
Schools are not an island in this plan. Any strategy, without proper federal
plan, resources, money, tests, and tracing is going to fail. A municipality or
a city is not going to single-handedly solve this while a pandemic is raging
all around, with the President golfing for the 9th weekend in a row.

With our level of infections, and essentially none or useless testing, there
is no need to plan. We are all agreeing we are creating a massive spike.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
The point of a school reopening plan isn't to "solve this" \- as you say,
there's no way to escape the fundamental problem that the coronavirus will
spread at school. The point of a plan is to make targeted reductions in the
spread while accounting for the likely secondary effects. Paulding County has
chosen to allow the virus to spread, and whether or not we agree with that
choice, it would still be better if they didn't have students jammed shoulder
to shoulder in interior hallways.

------
colmvp
I live in Ontario, Canada. To be honest, I'm going to be pretty pissed if
schools are a major reason why a second wave happens in the fall largely
because the government basically did nothing to help schools reduce the
likelihood of transmission via decreasing classroom sizes. Where I live, they
even had the gall to say that schools should use cafeterias as spaces for
teaching in spite of the fact that most schools here don't have cafeterias.

I also dislike the fact that they haven't even bothered to experiment with
different ideas, but are instead just going full steam ahead with normal
school schedules in spite of the fact that literally every sector in the
province is doing things very differently to suppress the spread of the virus.

~~~
ThomPete
not sure what you are expecting. We wont be able to deal with this unless we
get a vaccine and if we dont exactly what are you expecting us to do? The
consequences of keeping things in lockdown are plentiful and we already know
children arent being affected. So protect old and frail and lets get back to a
semi normal reality taking all the precausions we can.

~~~
WalterGR
Lots of teachers are old and/or vulnerable. Lots of people who work or
volunteer at the schools are old and/or vulnerable. Lots of parents are old
and/or vulnerable. Lots of grandparents - same.

And then all of the people those people interact with.

Children do not exist in a vacuum. This is the point.

~~~
ThomPete
lots of teachers are young. Lots of people who work at schools are young. Let
the old stay home, there is no reason to keep the young and healthy home.
Again what are you going to do if we dont get vaccines?

~~~
WalterGR
_lots of teachers are young. Lots of people who work at schools are young._

[https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/how-
man...](https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/how-many-
teachers-are-at-risk-of-serious-illness-if-infected-with-coronavirus/)

"one in four teachers (24%, or about 1.47 million people), have a condition
that puts them at higher risk of serious illness from coronavirus. This
percentage is the same as the one we found for workers overall"

 _Let the old stay home_

How will the 1.47 million teachers mentioned above pay their bills and put
food on the table?

 _Again what are you going to do if we dont get vaccines?_

That's what everyone is trying to figure out. Telling the old and frail to
quarantine themselves just _isn 't the answer_, because old and and frail
people work for a living, and live with relatives who have children, and live
alone but have family members that come to care for them, etc. etc.

~~~
ThomPete
the old and frail teachers can teach from home for some of the classes.

its still 75% who are not in danger and even among the 25% there are still
many who would teach anyway. Of course its the answer to tell the old and
frail to quarantine just like we are now. putting the eorld to a stop is what
is not an answer

------
lr4444lr
There is an organized labor fight brewing at the New York City Dept. of Ed.:
[https://www.badassteacher.org/bats-blog/dear-uft-
president-r...](https://www.badassteacher.org/bats-blog/dear-uft-president-
represent-your-members-by-dr-michael-flanagan)

~~~
jonahbenton
As someone who lives in NYC and follows these movements closely, there is
always a level of animus at the institutional/political level between the UFT
and the DOE. This animus does not escape the political realm, relationships
between on the ground and central admin and teachers are professional and
serve the interests of the children.

Infighting _within_ the union, however, is new, and sad. Both are true-

* the plans that have been made are very far to the conservative- preservation of health and safety- end of the spectrum.

* any return involves risk of infection, and with that risk of death or permanent health damage. During the awful spring peak, more than 100 teachers and low level staff and administrators died.

Teachers sign up for extremely difficult work- dealing not only with the
dynamics of their children in the classroom, but because children are
sensitive lenses for their families, with the dynamics of the families as
well. That emotionally difficult work is fundamentally different from work
that is risky from a health perspective.

In an ideal world, all workers would continue to be paid, and those who
decided to subject themselves to these new hazards would receive hazard pay
for doing so, as well as additional insurance and care protections, but would
not be required to and could work fully remotely. That's what would be right,
but that's not what is happening, and that it's not happening is not the DOE's
fault, nor the union's fault. It's the fault ultimately of the US political
leadership.

------
MattGaiser
I am really surprised that we haven't seen some high quality remote learning
platforms. I expected that problem to have been aggressively solved over the
past few months.

A lot more resources should have been put into that instead of 100 COVID
tracker apps.

~~~
yellow_postit
A younger ages I don’t see it as a platform problem — humans rely on a
plethora of non verbal social and environmental cues which are not replicable
when every interaction is disintermediated by a screen.

~~~
jonahbenton
Speaking as an ed-tech advocate and practitioner, having written games and
platforms for kids, worked in schools, have kids who program- I can't align
with this perspective enough.

We are biological/physical/chemical/etc embodied entities, with a spectrum of
interactions, especially sub-teen- the range of which far exceeds present
understanding.

Children need literal human contact, on real-life modalities, to survive and
thrive. A child raised by screens would die.

For the later high school set, potential improvements within the limited
screen modalities have some value, but still- this all reminds of early AI
framings, where a machine playing chess was thought to be the sum total of
human engagement capability. Those making the argument didn't even know how
not-even-wrong they are.

------
fortran77
Also, let's face it, people who are stakeholders have a bias.

Parents who can work at home who have children may want the schools closed.
Parents who can't work at home may want them open. And full-time teachers and
administrators would want them closed because they'll still get paid.

As a 57 year old who never had children, I wonder why can't they have some
sort of compromise. A-L goes to school from 8-11, M-Z goes to school from
12-5. Classrooms are half-empty and separated, and they don't have lunch
service in school (except for needy famillies) to minimize risk of spreading
COVID. I've never seen things like this proposed. Certainly the teachers won't
want it--because they'll have to work.

------
aazaa
> If there is to be any hope for in-person schooling not only in the fall but
> in the spring—when a safe vaccine, even if one exists, might not be fully
> available—a rapid change in course is necessary.

Consider how much is riding on a vaccine now. The CDC is a non-player at this
point and hasn't been since March. The three pillars of rolling back a
pandemic (testing, contact tracing, and isolation) lie in shambles. Other
countries' success in rolling back infections point to a massive failing
within the US.

And that leaves the vaccine. The consensus is that early next year one will be
available.

What if that doesn't happen?

It wasn't too long ago that Americans were being asked for "15 days to stop
the spread." What if the actual time turns out to be measured in years?
Decades?

What effect will a protracted period of wave after wave of infection
transmitted through well-meaning but ignorant school administrators have on
public education? On the fabric of society?

~~~
dillonmckay
Fortunately for the rest if the world, this is a very US problem.

For citizens of the US, it sucks.

------
jonahbenton
I am a fan of the author, but the headline is far stronger than the piece
itself, which is weak and weakly argued.

Behavior at the federal level on COVID overall-

    
    
        * refusal to engage
        * denial of reality
        * hiding of data
        * propagation of false information and fraudulent non-solutions
        * obstruction of useful state and city-level plans
    

plus indications of misappropriation for financial gain are plainly criminal.
That criminal acts are carried out by elected officials at the time of
pandemic is a level of sociopathic abuse that cannot be tolerated in
democratic society.

Actions in the context of schools derive from the sociopathy. Only one
district- the largest, NYC, operating in the context of NYC's largely self-
governing citystate bubble- has been able to even get into a position to have
a rational, non-politicized conversation about reopening.

As a parent in NYC following the conversation very closely I am engaging with
the school system to continue the discussion about return and can see best
case circumstances that permit me to feel comfortable with my kids attending
in person- which IMO is much, much better from social/emotional and
intellectual perspectives than remote. But given the chaos and worse
orchestrated at the federal level, I expect the in-person program to not last
even to the end of the first quarter, and as winter sets in, expect a grim,
difficult lockdown.

I find behavior and reports eg. from Georgia so saddening, and so utterly
astonishing. Even theories like Stockholm Syndrome fail to explain to me the
degree to which families are willingly marching to their own needless, often
permanent harm.

The bottom line is that the most important interests a community and society
serve are those of its children. A democratic society expects elected
officials not only to act in accordance with those interests but to possess
the attributes that allow them to hear and listen and respond in a balanced
way across the range of views of their constituents. That's not what we are
seeing.

Many officials presently in power at the federal level- and many of a
particular party at the state and municipal levels- are not fit for that level
of public service, should resign or be expelled, and should face the
consequences of their criminal actions, including forfeiture of their private
assets, which many have grown through graft, misappropriation, and corruption.

Whether or not one thinks these consequences can actually be brought to bear
is a different question. One has to identify the right answer first, then
fight to achieve it.

Best wishes.

------
abecode
Here's a modest proposal, an idea I got from reading Supernova Era by Cixin
Liu: we could send the kids to boarding schools in China. They have covid
under control and we already outsource a lot of industrial production to China
so why not outsource education too. Shipping kids over there and back could
help stimulate the airlines and maybe Trump could negotiate a deal to pay for
it via subsidized soybeans and other excess agricultural products. The parents
would still have an externalized child rearing service and the kids would get
a nice cross-cultural experience. There's probably excess real estate in
Chinese boomtowns that could house the American students. Then when covid is
under control here and Trump and his immigration restrictions are in the past
the Chinese can resume sending their kids back here to the US to study.

~~~
jonahbenton
Excellent- please flesh out and send to the NYT OpEd page.

------
known
No vaccine = No school

~~~
Mountain_Skies
What if there never is a vaccine? How long do we wait before deciding to go a
different direction?

------
dr_dshiv
It is such a different story to talk about prek-5 vs "old enough to learn via
YouTube".

Send little kids to school. Don't send older kids. The nuance starts there.

~~~
kingkawn
No indication that smaller children won’t spread the virus just as much if not
more so to their adult caretakers at school and at home.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/health/coronavirus-
childr...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/health/coronavirus-
children.html)

~~~
dr_dshiv
In the Netherlands, even runnynose toddlers are allowed to attend. No issues
yet. I'd say that is a pretty major indication, a test by an entire country.

[https://www.rivm.nl/en/novel-coronavirus-
covid-19/children-a...](https://www.rivm.nl/en/novel-coronavirus-
covid-19/children-and-
covid-19#:~:text=Younger%20children%20with%20nasal%20colds,do%20not%20have%20a%20fever).

------
ed25519FUUU
Amazing that the author can expend so many words without an honest discussion
of the drawbacks of leaving schools closed and children at home.

School closures are having a disproportionately negative impact of poor and
middle class families, whose parents can’t work from home. These families
relied on schools to not only teach but to supervise and feed children.

Both Cuomo and POTUS agree on this, which tells me there’s more to the story
than what the author is letting on.

~~~
inetknght
> _School closures are having a disproportionately negative impact of poor and
> middle class families, whose parents can’t work from home._

Using schools for daycare facilities isn't an honest discussion of the
drawbacks of leaving schools closed either.

~~~
dr_dshiv
Why not? What do you suggest people do with their kids, if they need to work
and don't have resources for private babysitting/tutoring?

~~~
ghaff
I know "schools aren't daycare" is one of the talking points for a number of
the unions in particular. But it sort of is (among other things). The
alternative is for the government to have someone else provide the childcare--
which doesn't really change the problem. Or parents have to figure things out
on their own however they can.

~~~
inetknght
> _The alternative is for the government to have someone else provide the
> childcare_

Another alternative is to pay workers a fair living wage sufficient for
everyone to afford private care.

~~~
dr_dshiv
How would that be different from teachers providing child care?

