社区黑料

One of the (only) nice things about being a climate change voter is that you grow accustomed to living with urgent, compelling and 鈥� yes 鈥� facts. There鈥檚 nothing pleasant about facing about the consequences of our collective choices.

奥别鈥檙别 , as the song says, and it hurts to face the fact that our cars and air conditioners and dietary choices and air travel, etc., are driving the problem that鈥檚 putting all of us at risk. Still, you build up a certain inoculation against self-deluding, motivated reasoning, and that鈥檚 useful when you encounter persistent counter-evidence in other arguments.

For instance, if, like me, , you might really want to believe that child care centers and schools will be able to normally reopen this fall. Four months into lockdown, my kids are desperately lonely. Shoot, I am lonely. Even as a privileged, highly educated dad, I鈥檓 only kind of holding up under our family鈥檚 daily grind.

What鈥檚 more, as a researcher who works on educational equity, I鈥檓 gutted by the pandemic鈥檚 on Black and brown . , and that will have enormous consequences for their futures.

I am desperate for a hint that the fall could bring a return to normalcy. I鈥檓 living a version of of the pandemic鈥檚 work-family juggle: 鈥渁 crushing burden that鈥檚 destroying careers, mental health and family relationships.鈥� And yet, despite the Trump administration鈥檚 in demanding that all states and school districts for in-person education in the fall, the country’s otherwise scattered response to the pandemic is bearing predictable fruit 鈥� a first wave that never really ended amid recent local and state spikes in new cases. that most schools and child care centers won’t be able to reopen safely in the fall, perhaps not even part time.

The facts on this aren鈥檛 just inconvenient; they鈥檙e brutal. The United States鈥� failure to comprehensively respond in the spring has left us with . We鈥檝e lost more than 130,000 lives鈥�. Meanwhile, because states like Georgia, Florida, Arizona and Texas flounced early out of their loose, short lockdowns, . Given that there鈥檚 no reasonable likelihood of sealing states鈥� borders, their ineptitude means that the success of relatively healthier states is also at risk.

As of July 9, . We are not on a course to . We have little evidence that federal leaders have any plans to ever get us on such a course 鈥� let alone in the next eight to 10 weeks.

I want to believe that our pandemic situation will look better by the fall, but right now it looks likely to be worse.

How can we open schools if we haven鈥檛 actually contained the pandemic? Some in education 鈥� especially we exhausted parents 鈥� have taken refuge in findings that children appear to be less likely than adults to contract the virus or suffer particularly severe infections. The American Academy of Pediatrics relied heavily on this claim that schools should open for in-person instruction this fall.

And yet, that infected children appear to be able to transmit the virus, even when they do not exhibit symptoms. 鈥淰iral loads in the very young do not differ significantly from those of adults,鈥� . 鈥淐hildren may be as infectious as adults.鈥�

Further, even if COVID-19 may pose less of a risk to children than to adults, schools can鈥檛 reopen without . Some believe that delayed closing of schools . Even under proposals for partial in-person school reopening, educators and school staff would face additional risks. that large percentages of Americans 鈥� perhaps as high as 60 percent of families and 20 percent of teachers 鈥� aren鈥檛 yet willing to return to K-12 campuses. It鈥檚 hard to imagine how to re-establish in-person public education when large chunks of the public 鈥� and public school teachers 鈥� .

I want to believe that children are not a vector for the virus. I want to believe that they鈥檙e not at particular risk. I want to believe that their teachers and parents and grandparents wouldn鈥檛 be endangered by a rush to reopen schools in person. But right now, none of that seems certain.

Indeed, research suggests that the virus spreads most easily when people gather together indoors. 鈥淪haring indoor space is a major [COVID-19] infection risk,鈥� . Another found that COVID-19 was almost 19 times as likely to be transmitted via indoor gatherings as outdoors. And last week, that airborne transmission of the coronavirus may be possible 鈥� particularly when people gather in poorly ventilated indoor spaces.

Schools have reopened in other countries, but early returns about safety are mixed. Again, most have dramatically better public-health statistics than ours. On May 11, the day that France, which has a population of more than 65 million people, began reopening schools, . On the same day, New York state, which has a population of not quite 20 million people, . To date, about 300 virus cases per 100,000 residents. about 2,000.

Second, even if the U.S. manages to improve its public-health situation, it鈥檚 not clear that this will be enough to ensure a safe reopening of schools. Aside from , France has been able to keep schools open. But other communities have not been so lucky. after a spike in COVID-19 cases. as the pandemic returned. What鈥檚 more, data from open American are not . Texas recently more than 1,300 new cases of COVID-19 among child care workers and children in the past month. And school sports practices have recently been halted again in some of the U.S. communities that restarted them.

Meanwhile, states like and are still insisting that they鈥檒l somehow just figure it all out. It鈥檚 hard to see how. As state and local education budgets shrink in the pandemic鈥檚 economic swoon, education leaders across the country will likely lack to retrofit schools to make them safer.

Without dramatically more funding, will these states be able to launch something that they can credibly call 鈥渋n-person schooling?鈥� Maybe. But it won鈥檛 be safe, full-time, full-enrollment schooling. Assuming they can pull something off, it will be tightly disciplined, highly regimented and light on the social aspects that are so critical to making in-person schooling function. We don鈥檛 just want in-person schooling to help us work. We want it to advance children鈥檚 social and academic development. Why would we expect part-time school (at most a day or two each week, in many districts鈥� proposals) conducted by tense, masked teachers charged with maintaining tight social distancing controls to meaningfully deliver on those goals?

Believe me, I get the yearning to set these facts aside. But I鈥檓 not willing to let my wants filter out these facts. The pandemic is far from over in the United States, and we鈥檙e a long way from a public-health scenario where in-person schooling is likely to be safe.

To be clear, we have no good choices. We know that large-scale online instruction . We know that the mental well-being and academic development of kids 鈥� especially historically marginalized kids 鈥� will suffer during lockdown. We know that most working families are in vulnerable situations. We know that the economy until schools provide something close to full-day, full-time, in-person care. We know that many more teachers, children and families will be exposed to the virus if we ignore the risks and demand that schools reopen. We know that, as medical experts and epidemiologists have argued in the and , we probably won鈥檛 see rapid improvement in our outbreak numbers if we insist on simultaneously reopening other parts of the economy that facilitate transmission (bars, restaurants, other indoor gatherings). We know that keeping those parts of the economy closed will further punish many working families who were already navigating economic precarity.

: There鈥檚 no way to pretend our way around flattening the curve. Until we , efforts to reopen schools in most communities will fail.

It鈥檚 worth noting that the desperation of our current situation is largely a result of willful self-delusion. Leaders in Washington, D.C., were 鈥� and still are 鈥� unwilling to acknowledge and address the gravity of the pandemic lest it upset their political standing or the state of the economy. Now that that ruse has predictably, catastrophically failed, the least the rest of us can do is insist on being honest about our remaining terrible options.

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