Schools have remained shuttered not for any rational calculation but because they’re easy to close and difficult to open. Closing can be done with an order by a governor or public official. Opening requires negotiating a gamut of government guidelines, negotiation with often recalcitrant teachers unions, and persuading parents who have (in some cases) come to see in-person schooling as a serious risk.
An important dynamic is that when authorities first closed schools, they were operating in an atmosphere of extreme uncertainty. It would be an exaggeration to say that schools pose no risk, or even that public-health authorities have a perfect understanding of the risk they pose. It can be said, however, that the weight of evidence strongly suggests in-person schooling, especially of younger students, poses a small health risk. One of the most recent additions to the literature finds “in-person learning in New York City public schools was not associated with increased prevalence or incidence overall of COVID-19 infection compared with the general community.” A New York Times survey of 175 experts drew the same conclusion.
Many schools have been held back by CDC standards saying that they only permit in-person classrooms if students sit no closer than six feet apart. This requirement makes full-time schooling impossible, because schools simply don’t have enough room to teach every student while spacing them so far apart.
But that requirement, chosen hastily last year, turns out to be useless.
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