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Nov 19

Open the Schools – The Atlantic

Six feet is also more than most European countries require. In some parts of Switzerland, children are not required to distance while at school, though staff and students 12 and older must wear masks. Even as Switzerland reintroduced rigid national restrictions in early November, its classrooms have remained open with no changes to the distancing requirement. England has also reopened schools and done so without a universal distancing or mask requirement. Its government has implemented other safety measures: Children are kept in distinct groups throughout the school day, and arrival and pickup times are staggered.

Norway and Spain have imposed age-based distancing rules for students over 13 and 9 years old, respectivelybut still mandate less than six feet. Italy and Portugal both recommend keeping students and adults three feet apart. Likewise, France, which has returned to national lockdown, recommends distancing of three feet and masks in schools for students 6 years and older.

What public-health institutes, including the United Nations University International Institute of Global Health, where I worked on a report on distancing in schools, have observed from these countries data is that school reopenings have not increased the level of transmission in the communities they serve. Child-to-child transmission in the classroom is uncommon, and children in school settings are not the primary transmitters of COVID-19 to adults.

New York Citys own data on its partial reopening show similar results: Schools reflect the prevalence of the virus in the community, but do not drive community spread. According to New York City government data provided to me (I served as a resource for the school district in an informal, unpaid capacity), the city performed more than 74,000 tests in 1,224 schools during a three-week period in October, and just 45 students and 63 staff members tested positive. The percent of students and staff estimated to have had COVID-19 during this period is nearly 40 percent lower than the estimate for the general New York City population for the same period. In other words, both teachers and kids are at less risk of getting COVID-19 in school than they are elsewhere in their day-to-day lives.

From the December 2020 issue: School wasnt so great before COVID, either

Following the data, schools can clearly be reopened safely. Officials must pair that evidence with another well-known fact: Keeping schools closed causes countless children to fall behind. Numerous studies demonstrate the negative effects of being out of school for younger and older childrenincluding a widened achievement gap, mental-health issues, increases in violence and abuse, and even early pregnancies. When schools closed in some Gulf states during and after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Maria in 2017, as many as one in five students never returned. Long-term remote learning, despite being well intentioned, likely isnt sufficient to meet the needs of a large majority of students. Going to school is far more than a tutorial on the assigned material; it is a process of learning and socializing, in which schools provide children and adolescents with other services and support, including meals, physical-exercise programs, health care, and mental-health services.

Read more from the original source:
Open the Schools - The Atlantic

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