Jake Auchincloss presents an intriguing possibility about fall school openings in his latest newsletter. Here:
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education issued its guidance to K-12 schools on reopening earlier in June. The protocols are meant to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and they are strict. There is a limit of 10 students per classroom, plus two adults. Everyone must maintain six feet of distance. Face masks are required, with limited exceptions for medical conditions, etc, and everyone must wash their hands frequently. Districts must deep clean the schools continuously and purchase their own safety supplies.
On Monday, June 22nd at 7PM, you can tune in to the last school committee meeting of the school year to hear how officials are considering these strictures. Educational requirements from the state are still forthcoming.
My opinion: the governor has handled COVID well, but he has gotten this issue wrong. Daycares and schools are the building blocks of our society and economy. These mandates are not feasible for districts, not workable for parents and, most importantly, not fair to kids.
And they may not be necessary. In my last interview with Dr. Ashish Jha, Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and renowned COVID-19 expert, he charted a more reasonable course for re-opening schools (start around 34:00). With good hygiene, rigorous testing, and a longer winter shutdown, safety and education could go hand in hand.
I watched the segment he cites, and urge you to do so, too. (It lasts about five minutes.) Ashish suggests that with an intensive testing and surveillance program, the risks of disease transmission in and from the schools can be dramatically diminished.
One thing for sure. If the state’s requirements don’t change–or if they don’t give districts the right to try other approaches–there will be turmoil in hundreds of schools and thousands of households. Imagine, for example, a school year in which kids go to school on alternate weeks or days to meet the 10-person requirement, and then spend the other time at home engaged in distance learning or self-learning. How would families with two working parents deal with that? What if you have two or more kids in school and they are at home on different days? Or on the same days? And even if one or more parents can be around, do we really think that educational progress and children’s social interactions (and thereby community mental health) can be sustained?
As Jake suggests, this is truly the first major test of the “new normal.” A suggestion to the Governor: Permit experimentation by school districts that are willing to offer a rigorously planned and supervised alternative to the published DESE guidelines, subject to prior agreement and ongoing review by some of the state’s public health experts. A suggestion for the Mayor, School Committee, and NTA: Advocate for that, preferably with an alliance of other districts.
Very interesting perspective, and worth thinking out the costs, opportunities, and risks.
The global lost opportunity seems to be learning from the experimentation that’s already happening. As Dr. Jha says, there are countries that have started up schools now for several months. Their experience is hugely valuable, even taking into account the societal and operational details between those schools. I try to monitor the stream of research preprints coming out, and I have yet to see large-scale studies of the efficacy or experiences of these school systems and their approaches.
The US and individual states have hundreds of billions of dollars directly or indirectly riding on opening schools. If needed, we could be actively investing in international (and domestic) research into effective prevention, surveillance, reaction, and mitigation mechanisms. We need actionable information now, or in the next few weeks, so that we can be set up for the start of next year. If we wait until September to do our own observations, we will have again squandered the head start that learning from other countries would give us. We don’t want to still be experimenting during influenza season.
Ask questions now. How many teachers would work under a return-to-school system like, say, a science-based country like Germany has? How many families/students?
How do the ongoing German results fit our risk profile? Can we even hope to match their protocol? Based on their experience, can we do better in any area?
Starting with that, what does it cost to implement the monitoring/surveillance/hygiene protocol? What would it cost to pay teachers and staff and related personnel to take this risk, and for higher risk teachers to teach higher risk kids virtually? Who falls through the cracks? What’s our fallback if things fail?
This is where lack of universal health care really hurts us. There’s an equity issue that we need to worry about: the potential medical and financial risks to families are not uniform. Are we risking the health of teachers or families in a coercive way?
This is a real challenge with huge potential benefits as well as consequences. I am so sad to say I have zero faith that this approach can be handled competently at the federal level. It’s possible that that state has the resources to do it, but it’s not something we usually ask of state governments. It’s very hard to implement independently locally because of cost, resources, and mobility across municipal lines.
Time is our most valuable resource, though, and we shouldn’t squander it.
Let me repeat, schools have successfully, fully reopened in many countries. Doing so in MA is vital.
Some have mistakenly asserted that DESE advocates limiting 10 students per classroom in the fall. My wife spoke with the DESE executive who is running things yesterday. This guidance is ONLY for summer school.
Jeffrey says: “schools have successfully, fully reopened in many countries”
Until we have essentially no more fatalities, significant hospitalizations, or chronic illness due to COVID-19, we can’t say “successfully” definitively. The book on surviving COVID-19 isn’t written yet. We still need to always be learning, always getting better, seeing what works and why, seeing what fails and why, being prepared to change quickly if needed.
There is no easy recipe. What works somewhere may not work here to the same degree. We need to understand the difference. We may have more success here, but why?
I am hopeful that our state leaders understand (or can be convinced to understand) these ideas. I see no sign that the Trump administration has any plans for an evidence- or science-based approach to reopening.
Ultimately, the public has to trust this approach and know that there are clued-in people making smart decisions each and every day. Otherwise they’ll just stay home. Or take needless risks.
I found this interview really helpful and interesting. I hope this is something we can do.
Capitalists such as myself, who are raring to go, owe a great debt to Republicans like Jake, who are able to quickly line up experts to tell us exactly what we want to hear.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/10/metro/democrat-auchincloss-seeking-kennedy-seat-was-registered-republican-2014/
As a self-anointed expert in child-rearing, I would merely add that there should be zero logistical problems in ensuring that kids strictly practice good hygiene. I was watching a really great documentary the other night entitled Kayayo, and the little girl’s father had a great quote that I think is very apropos – “You’re 8 years old. You’re not a child anymore!”
Jake says: Daycares and schools are the building blocks of our society and economy. As a privileged white male who has the most to lose from the continued hindrance of that economy, I second that and say:
LET’S GET BACK TO WORK. At full capacity. Enough of this snowflake nonsense.
#PrivilegedWhiteMalesForJake
Michael, what are your ideas regarding getting kids back to school safely? It’s a pretty popular goal among most parents. It’s also an unsolved and unpredictable problem.
Councilor Auchincloss gets great credit in my book by not just talking to experts, but introducing them to the public. Long form, not selected soundbites pre-aligned with political views.
That puts him apart from about 95% of politicians that I know of.
Children take buses, cars, and walk to school. All three increase one’s chances of dying. We never have certainty about anything. In light of this, we need to make the best decision we can based on data. We also need to acknowledge that there are real costs with underdeliving education, which affect the disadvantaged the most.
Mike, it’s certainly tough to argue with the Auchoncloss-has-arrived-to-englighten-us narrative that the Globe’s foremost fiction writer Kevin Cullen got snookered into dropping into the same cringeworthy template of genuflection that he used for another supposedly “real, decent” guy, the anti-immigrant, child-hating, racist, devil-incarnate John Kelly.
Anyway, I guess we should indeed thank Jake for introducing us to people from his family’s rolodex that we wouldn’t normally get to meet.
It’s just that if he were genuinely interested in enlightening us and not just scoring political points in the way that 95% of politicians do, then maybe he could have presented his expert conversations in a different time slot, rather than during the not-to-be-outdone competition of candidates’ FB Live and Zoom conversations on the same topic.
Getting back to the ideas that Jake has so generously exposed us to, could someone please articulate these revolutionary square-the-circle solutions? I’d love to watch the video, but unfortunately Jake isn’t generous enough to put it on an open platform that doesn’t get blocked by my browser’s anti-tracking plugins. The gist seems to be that “good hygiene” among schoolchildren is the key? And scheduling? And testing? Heavy.
Sorry, the last link to the story about the 4th district candidates (Khazei, Auchincloss, Grossman) trying to outdo each other by holding expert conversations in the same 7pm timeslot is:
https://village14.com/2020/03/19/4th-congressional-district-candidates-to-hold-facebook-live-qa-re-covid-19-and-town-halls-tonight-at-700-p-m/
The gist of Ashish’s idea was that with sufficient regular testing and other disease surveillance, you could open the schools and get early warnings of possible spread of the disease. He was modest and thoughtful in how he presented the concept, including a statement that he was more hopeful as to its efficacy than some of his public health colleagues. But he was clear in balancing that uncertainty against the educational and social shortcomings in other ideas we’ve heard so far.
Now, Michael, can you please get past your antipathy for Jake for a moment and get back to the topic? For the record, I’m supporting another candidate and did not post this to bolster Jake’s campaign, but I found it helpful that Jake linked to his talk with Ashish, a Newton resident and one of the world’s experts on this topic.
Here’s an article about procedures and experiences in re-opened schools:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/world/europe/reopen-schools-germany.html
Many of the procedures are not that different from what has been suggested here.
DESE has not yet released the guidelines/regs for a September school opening. It’s June 18th.