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As @BillHanage has written, hybrid schooling may be the worst of all worlds. I'd like to walk you through a week in the life of my first grader to illustrate why. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/08/14/hybrid-learning-coronavirus-risk/
For context, my city has very low community spread: test positivity is 0.16%. Public high schools are fully remote, middle schools will be remote until at least November, and elementary schools are using a hybrid approach. (Many private schools are opening full-time in person.)
On Mondays and Tuesdays, my 6-year-old will be learning remotely while cohort A attends school in person. He can't handle remote learning on his own and both parents work, so he'll probably be with a paid sitter, likely one that's shared with at least one other family.
On Thursday and Friday mornings, he'll be learning in person at school as part of cohort B, in a reduced class size of about 10 kids. Those afternoons, he'll be in paid childcare at the school in a group of 26 kids, including kids from other cohort B classrooms.
On Wednesdays, he'll be in paid childcare at the school, again with a group of 26 kids, but this time mixing with kids from *both cohort A and cohort B.* (He'll be doing "remote" learning during this time, but the staff can't assist beyond helping the kids turn on their devices.)
Hybrid allows distancing in the classroom. But here's the result: in one week, my kid will have interacted with 1) the teacher and kids in his class, 2) childcare staff, 3) kids in other cohort B classes, 4) kids in cohort A, and 5) a sitter and other families on remote days.
What about research on the hybrid approach? One model found that hybrid could reduce the risk of outbreaks in elementary schools compared with full-time in-person learning, but the study didn't account for social contacts on remote days. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.08.20190942v1
There are obvious educational, health, and equity costs to kids doing most of their learning remotely. But setting those aside for the moment, it's hard to see how the hybrid model makes sense even from an infection prevention standpoint.
