Most Big School Districts Aren’t Ready to Reopen. Here’s Why. - The New York Times

Most Big School Districts Aren’t Ready to Reopen. Here’s Why. - The New York Times

Most Big School Districts Aren’t Ready to Reopen. Here’s Why.
All but two of the nation’s 10 largest districts exceed a key public health threshold, according to a New York Times analysis.

As education leaders decide whether to reopen classrooms in the fall amid a raging pandemic, many are looking to a standard generally agreed upon among epidemiologists: To control community spread of the coronavirus, the average daily infection rate among those who are tested should not exceed 5 percent.

But of the nation’s 10 largest school districts, only New York City and Chicago appear to have achieved that public health goal, according to a New York Times analysis of city and county-level data.

Some of the biggest districts, like Miami-Dade County in Florida and Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, are in counties that have recently reported positive test rates more than four times greater than the 5 percent threshold, the data shows.

Americans crave outdoor recreation more than ever. But national parks — sometimes many miles from equipped hospitals — are grappling with how to safely stay open.

The alarming spread of the virus has prompted a growing number of districts to announce they would rely on online instruction in the fall. The superintendent of the nation’s sixth-largest district, in Broward County, Fla., on Tuesday recommended full-time remote learning despite pressure from the state’s governor and President Trump. That followed an announcement on Monday that California’s two largest districts, Los Angeles and San Diego, will teach 100 percent online.

“I’m just super frustrated and really disappointed that our nation, our states and our communities have not exercised the discipline that they need in order to get the coronavirus under control,” said Robert W. Runcie, the Broward superintendent. “Now the futures of our young people are collateral damage from our inability to take this thing seriously.”

In recent days, Nashville, Atlanta, Arlington, Va., and Oakland, Calif., have also announced plans to start the school year remotely.

The broad national move to keep schools shuttered represents a deepening crisis for the nation’s tens of millions of schoolchildren, who are already falling behind academically and socially during the pandemic.

The decisions will also require working parents to continue to carry a heavy burden of ad hoc child care and home schooling, which is presenting families with impossible trade-offs. CONTINUE READING: Most Big School Districts Aren’t Ready to Reopen. Here’s Why. - The New York Times