Some districts and parents are pushing for in-person return to school after nearly a year of coronavirus

Staying online or returning to class has been a matter of contention for many districts. While some worry that it is not safe to send teachers and students back to campus before the virus is under control, others say the impacts on the quality of education and stress on families are more pressing.

The United States is still months away from vaccinating the majority of Americans against the virus, but doses are making their way into the public and, in some districts, pressure to reopen public schools has been reignited.

“In most states, if not all states, teachers should be eligible for vaccination now,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie today. ‘hui. Even though they can’t get the shot yet, Walensky said “they should be in the line early, so they should get it soon.”

Walensky said she hoped that with vaccinations and mitigation, schools could reopen soon, but others are calling for a faster return.

Online calls for reopening options

A father in Virginia called a county school board a “cowardly bunch” for not offering to send students back to school.

“There are people like me and a line of other people who will gladly take your seat and find out!” Brandon Michon told the board.

“It’s about finding ways to get our kids back to school and giving families the opportunity to get them back to school, to be mentally healthy and to be kids,” he said. he said in an interview with CNN.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynold on Friday signed a bill requiring school districts to offer families full-time in-person education options.

Reynolds said in the fall that a “vast majority” of schools offer full-time in-person learning. “Unfortunately, this option was not available to all families,” she said. “Many have struggled to find a balance between working from home and helping their young children with online learning.”

Study supports school safety

Some experts say science indicates schools are a safe place to send students if the right steps are taken.

Dr Tom Frieden, former director of the CDC under President Obama, said that as long as masks are used in schools, there is adequate ventilation in buildings, social distancing as well as the elimination of break rooms for children. teachers and extracurricular activities, he “would not wait for the vaccination of teachers.”

“Classrooms need to stay open as long as possible and reopen as soon as possible, in-person learning is extremely important,” Frieden said in an interview on the Axios podcast Friday.

A study of two US schools released on Friday supports the argument that schools are not a major place of spread when the proper precautions are taken.

The study looked at 3,500 students from all schools who the researchers said took the necessary precautions. With only 9% of students bringing new infections to school by infecting others, they wrote that there was “no evidence of student-to-teacher or teacher-to-student transmission in the school. ‘one or the other school’.

The majority of cases were associated with disobedience of mask rules as well as off-campus sources, including siblings returning from college, off-campus activities, parties and gatherings, they said. written.

“Children contract Covid-19 and can pass it on, but disease rates when they are in school are lower than disease rates when not in school, suggesting that children and communities may be less at risk when in school, “Dr. Darria Long of the University of Tennessee’s Department of Emergency Medicine, who worked on the study, said.

“This could be because mitigation measures in the controlled school environment (which are not possible when children are not in school) can significantly suppress transmission.”