School Opening Optimism Collapses: In Midst of COVID-19 Surge, Many Districts Will Open Online Only
Until last week it seemed that nobody—apart from the school administrators and teachers considering staggered schedules this fall to ensure social distancing as smaller groups of children share classroom space and buses—seemed to be thinking about the feasibility of opening school this fall. Then last week, when President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos demanded that schools reopen full time, five days a week, everybody finally began paying attention to the sometimes competing needs of students for routine and in-person support from their teachers, of educators for direct connection with children, and parents for the supervision schools would provide when they have to go back to work. There has also been the puzzling contradiction between pediatricians who recently said kids can go back to school safely and the data in our newspapers which say COVID-19 is spiking even higher in some places than back in March, when schools shut down to protect everybody.
By Monday night, however, with a spate of press reports about schooling this fall in a number of the nation’s biggest cities, optimism collapsed. We have learned that in a number of large school districts where the coronavirus is spiking, students will begin the school year online full time. The Washington Post‘s Laura Meckler reports: “Resisting pressure from President Trump, three of the nation’s largest school districts said Monday that they will begin the new school year with all students learning from home. Schools in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Atlanta will begin entirely online, officials said Monday. Schools in Nashville plan to do the same, at least through Labor Day.”
The NY Times Shawn Hubler and Dana Goldstein remind us that a lot of students are involved, and that the government’s failure to contain the virus is the reason: “The Los Angeles and San CONTINUE READING: School Opening Optimism Collapses: In Midst of COVID-19 Surge, Many Districts Will Open Online Only | janresseger