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In the fall semester, about a quarter of school districts were fully online, about half were using a hybrid model, and less than a quarter were fully open to in-person instruction. Yet more than half of school districts had students participating in athletic programs.
In an opinion column published in USA Today earlier this week, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Dr Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, called for widespread testing to keep children safe. schools and bring children back to class. , not only for educational reasons, but to restore free school meals, give children a social outlet and provide a myriad of school services that are vital for low-income children.
The Covid-19 School Response Dashboard, a collaboration that tracks infections in school districts eager to share data, reported that rates of infection cases among staff in October and November were similar to case rates in the surrounding communities. More recently, however, staff case rates in New York have been increasing at a faster rate than case rates in the community.
The causes are unclear. The increases may reflect more frequent screening of teachers. Case rates increased among teachers engaged in in-person instruction and among those teaching at a distance, suggesting that in-person instruction was not the only factor.
Emily Oster, professor of economics and public policy at Brown University who created the dashboard, said low case rates in the community kept schools running safely.
“Putting schools first will mean limiting some of these other activities and deciding that we want to undertake some of these sacrifices to keep schools open, because we have decided as a society that schools are important over other things,” Dr. Oster said.
“The frustration of a lot of people is that you can go to a covered restaurant. In Massachusetts I could go to an indoor water park like Great Wolf Lodge – I can take my kids to the Great Wolf Lodge. But in many places in Massachusetts there was no school.
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