The critical attribute of school in a global pandemic is not education; it is day care and lunch. In the face of COVID, these two functions top the list of “what the pandemic taught us about schools and our national health and economic crises” and “what does your community and state need its schools to do”.
Simultaneously, unforeseen consequences of COVID are carving the nation with demonic swaths. The national box score this morning showed nearly 100,000 deaths and more than 1,500,000 positive cases of the virus. These numbers dominate the news. Pandemic not only makes people sick, it sickens all of life’s activities. People shut down. Businesses shutdown. Community activities shut down. Employees become unemployed. Unemployment data shoots upward from less than 5% towards 20% and governments focus on how to pay massive unemployment benefits and keep businesses afloat.
The crisis has quickly grown geometrically in two daily graphs – cases and deaths, and, unemployment numbers and economic failure. These represent the status of public health and the status of economic health. The urgency to deal with the pandemic has taken two dimensions – how to restore the health of the nation’s people and how to restore the health of the national economy. After two-plus months of crises, the need to restore the economy is overtaking the restoration of public health.
We remember from our history lessons that President Coolidge unabashedly said in the 1920s “… the business of America is business” and not even a pandemic has altered his truth.
COVID quickly exposed the critical attribute of public school. Schools are by far the nation’s largest day care provider. When children are not in school for an extended period, the urgency of day care becomes a state and national crisis. In order to return to normalcy, schools must resume day care operations. It is not the loss of reading, writing, and arithmetic or the cancellation of winter and spring activities and athletics that our governments and communities lament. It is day care.
I believe that schools will never return to what they were like in March 2020 and before COVID.
The fall 2020 school term will begin with all children in a school setting. Repeat – in September, all children will be in school and parents will be available to return to work. The need for a working nation trumps the need for general public health. But, schools will be different. Even as businesses race toward normalcy, day care/school will be held to CDC guidance on phased practices.
- Overarching public health advisories will require social distancing in school, in classrooms, in hallways, and every area of the school. Guidance abandoned by business will be upheld for schools.
- Children will have their temperature taken at the school entry each morning and will not congregate with their friends.
- In order to space children safely with a six foot radius between, class sizes in a standard classroom will max at 16 children per class, four rows by four rows, outer rows next to walls.
- Schools will need more classrooms, almost twice the current number. All spaces in the school will be considered for conversion to classrooms.
- School boards will rent “big box” buildings in the community for temporary classrooms that will then become semi-permanent in the next five years.
- More classrooms will require more staff. Boards will hire more support staff to supervise children in classrooms.
- Teachers who mastered remote instruction will use their new pedagogical skills to stream grade level and subject area lessons to children in school and Big Box classrooms. A new category of teacher will emerge – remote instruction designers.
- Speaking of teachers, there will be a shortage of classroom teachers. COVID and remote education will have been more than many current teachers can handle and they will leave the profession. The current shortage of prepared teachers will be magnified.
- Children who became acclimatized to screen time during the remote education will continue to learn through their screens. Restrictions on in-school movement will keep children at their desks and screens.
- Physical education and music instruction will be personally contracted between teacher and student, because large group instruction in gyms and rehearsal halls will be not be safe. Children will video their PE and music practice time and submit these to their teachers. Some gyms will be repurposed as classrooms.
- School athletic programs will narrow to individual, non-contact sports with limited spectators. Outdoor programs will be safer than indoor programs. Major team and contact sports will not be safe. Locker rooms and shower rooms will be converted for other purposes.
- School lunch will be distributed to children at their desks. Massed feeding programs in cafeterias and lines of children moving from classrooms to the cafeteria will be unsafe. Cafeterias will be repurposed as food prep areas or classrooms.
- School auditoriums will be repurposed as classrooms.
- The most significant problem will be school transportation. A 72-passenger school bus normally carrying three children per seat will carry 12 – one child per alternating seat row. School buses will make multiple runs every morning and afternoon to transport children from home to school and home again. More routes and each route will be shorter in time duration. Activity and athletic transportation will require multiple buses per trip, if they are allowed.
Across the board, the cost of school will increase at a time when state revenues have been deeply diminished by the pandemic. This will be a conundrum for state legislators. In order for business to return to normalcy, children need to be in school. In order for schools to follow prevailing pandemic safety guidance, each of the bullets above needs to be in daily practice. This will cause legislators to find the money or return children to school without CDC guidance.
Watch the box scores. The critical attribute of public school will be on display.