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CLOSING ARGUMENTS JULY 27, 2020 ¦ 47

EDITORIAL BOARD

crowding situations; and providing increased missing another school term. Moreover, again,
cleaning, ventilation and air filtration, particularly the losses will not be equal as the slide will likely
challenging in older buildings. Staffing will also be be greatest among the socially vulnerable, such as
a major challenge as COVID-19 mitigation strate- children with learning disabilities and those whose
gies, such as maintaining smaller class sizes, will situation at home is not conducive to homeschool-
require additional teaching staff. ing. Further, school personnel account for more
We will also need school-based Covid-19 symp- than 40 percent of formal reports of child abuse
tom screening, testing, and contact tracing, and and domestic violence, and without the assist from
isolation but communities don’t yet have adequate school’s mandatory reporters, the concerns will go
testing, contact tracing, or isolation and schools unreported and uninvestigated.
currently have nothing. Building such infrastruc- The NASEM report suggests that education lead-
ture comes at a cost. Without it, we are flying blind ers should develop decision-making coalitions
and gambling with the health of our children, to allow for input from representatives of school
teachers, and community. staff, families, local health officials and other com-
These costs easily could lead to funding short- munity interests. These coalitions would then help
falls. While the size of the funding shortfall will decide educational priorities for reopening schools;
depend on how well-resourced a school district be explicit about financial, staffing, and facility
is, many districts will be unable to afford imple- constraints; and establish an ongoing plan for com-
menting all recommended mitigation measures, municating about school decisions and resources.
potentially leaving students and staff in those dis- Most important must be continued reliance on pub-
tricts at greater risk of infection. No doubt, federal lic health officials to constantly assess and reassess
and state governments will need to provide signifi- school facilities for minimum health standards and
cant resources to districts and schools to help them COVID mitigation. Public health officials should
cover these added costs of COVID-19 precautions. be instrumental in helping school districts monitor
States weighing the health risks and costs associ- the data to assist them make changes to the virus
ated with mitigating those risks of reopening K-12 mitigation strategies as circumstances change. And
schools in fall 2020 against the educational risks of criteria should be defined in advance and redefined
providing no in-person instruction will find no easy as necessary so that vetting will be meaningful.
solution. This modern day Morton’s Fork is leading This means that we must also be flexible. The
some to advocate for a more nuanced approach. decision to reopen schools should be iterative, and
A recent report from the National Academies of schools need to be prepared for future school clo-
Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) sures should the progress of the pandemic change
suggests prioritizing for grades k-5 and students for the worse. The decision to reopen schools must
with special needs. In early grades, children are still be constantly examined alongside the effective-
developing the skills to regulate their own behavior, ness of the virus mitigation strategies. And let’s
emotions and attention, and consequently struggle not fool ourselves- there is a decision to be made-
with distance learning. According to the report, there is no choice to do nothing, because either
young children in particular will be adversely im- way — go to school or learn remotely — a decision
pacted by not having in-person learning and may will occur and the key is to make decisions in ways
suffer long-term academic consequences should that maximize the chances of a good outcome and
they fall behind as a result. It’s hard to identify the minimize the harm if the outcome is poor. The
specific losses that will occur from not reopen- risks of reopening are uncertain but the harms as-
ing, but it’s safe to say that there will be a cost to sociated with staying home are clear.
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