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This photo, shared to me from a Mississippi elementary school, (blurred to protect identities) is a perfect example of why many plans are insufficient. No masks, no distancing- who gets quarantined when an infection arrives? And here's the thing: I don't blame the school! (cont.)
Seriously sit down and imagine an institution that serves hundreds of kids. Imagine being told you must: get the kids to properly wear facemasks around others, guide them through a full school day while keeping them over six feet apart, and watch them for symptoms of coronavirus.
Every single one of these requirements is basically, from the jump, impossible. Masks suck. They are uncomfortable. Kids remove them. What are you gonna do, arrest the kids? Fine their parents? Get out of here. Not possible. So the adherence to mask wearing is limited at best.
Distancing is also impossible for so many of the teachers I speak to. 20+ kids, one room, 6 feet becomes 3 feet. Max. Then you add things like lunchtime, incompatible with masks. Okay. Congregate them in big rooms, like the picture? Or in their packed classrooms, 3 feet apart?
Finally, you have a bunch of parents and teachers "screening for symptoms." Well, even if we do that perfectly, unless you equip every school in the state with a CT scanner, it lets 100% of asymptomatic cases into the school. There's no way around that. No one pretends there is.
The real solution to this crisis came and went months ago. It required foresight and hard decisions- and not on the part of 138 random superintendents- but at the highest levels of authority. It required acknowledging that schools represent a unique danger in a pandemic.
It required starting every single one of the state's districts from the STARTING point of virtual education, and ASPIRING to in-person classes for the neediest kids with targeted support for just these instances. Special needs kids. Poor districts with limited digital access.
Instead, these sorts of haphazard, in-person experiments are the norm. We have no idea what the outcome of those experiments will be. We can only pray that the real work Mississippians have done to limit the spread of the virus prevents worst-case scenarios.
