So What are you going to do

So, what are you going to do?

 

The President has decreed that all students need to be back in school full time this coming fall.   He has even threatened to pull education funding if schools don’t comply.   Putting aside the fact that the President has no authority whatsoever regarding the opening of schools and that the money for education is appropriated by Congress so he can’t pull that either, there are some serious decisions regarding the return to school that need to be made by local authorities.

In the United States, unlike some other countries, the control of schools is a state and local affair.  Each governor and local school board needs to decide what the opening of school will look like in the next month or so.  Each family will need to decide if it feels safe to allow the children to return to school buildings.  The gains versus the losses need to be carefully considered.

In Maryland, if your school district is Garrett County, there aren’t a lot of issues  The county only has a total of about 27 cases.  So schools can probably re-open there.  But if you are in one of the metro areas, D.C. or the Baltimore metro area, the instances of the disease are much higher.

Distance learning has significant costs.   Children are losing their social connections.  There is evidence of serious emotional issues because of the continued isolation.   Learning is dramatically depressed.   Many distance learning lessons are boring and kids are just walking away from the technology.  Teachers are not as easily available to re-teach and help kids.

There are also costs to being in the school building.   The most obvious is the possible risk to health.  How safe are the buildings for students and staff?   How safe is the bus ride to school.   The American Pediatric Association has indicated that in many instances the risk to emotional health and learning is greater than the health risk.  Young people are not as likely to get the virus and when they do, they get well.  This situation may be different for their teachers.

Then there are the economic costs.   Salaries and benefits are being paid to public school teachers at the in-school rate.   But many teachers have made it clear that distance learning does not begin to require the level of time investment that in the building teaching does.   Yet teachers and unions would be highly offended were they asked to take a commensurate cut in pay.

There are also expanded economic costs.  Like it or not, one of the bigger functions of school is universal  child care.   As the economy opens up who is going to care for the children if they are not back in school?   The economic cost of the pandemic has already hit women much harder than men.   If school buildings remain closed most likely it is the women who will stay home to do child care.  

It has been several months since the shut-down.   We are not all that further along in figuring out how to manage so much.

Every school system, every school, every family is going to need to do a very concerted cost-benefit analysis and decide “whatcha gonna do”