• Live
    • Audio Only
  • google plus
  • facebook
  • twitter
News > U.S.

The US Faces Major Test in Reopening Schools Amid Pandemic

  • Image of a classroom in Wauwatosa, WI, U.S., Feb. 16, 2021.

    Image of a classroom in Wauwatosa, WI, U.S., Feb. 16, 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @tosaschools

Published 16 February 2021
Opinion

Health authorities unveiled new guidance on safely reopening schools in accordance with the severity of the outbreak in their areas.

U.S. President Joe Biden faces a major challenge in reopening schools, amid a pandemic that has millions of children staying home and grinds education to a halt. He pledged in December last year to reopen the majority of the country's schools in his first 100 days after taking office.

RELATED:

Biden Is Expected To Allow Remittances and Flights To Cuba

The closures have a particularly negative impact on minority and lower-income families, as children are missing the free meals provided at all U.S. public schools, as well as mentoring and guidance that children from broken homes may not receive from parents.

"Reopening schools is crucial because so many activities take place there. These institutions are responsible for educating young people, feeding low-income students, and providing daycare and after-school enrichment for local communities," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West said.

Clay Ramsay, a researcher at the center for international and security studies at the University of Maryland, commented that seeing schools reopen "in a big way" would be "proof-of-concept" for the  Biden administration's overall project.

But to do that, the government must pass Biden's COVID-19 relief package, which has well over US$100 billion in it for school systems to deal with the pandemic, and get that aid out and functioning. The vaccine roll-out also has to keep accelerating continuously.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday unveiled new guidance on safely reopening schools in accordance with the severity of the outbreak in their areas. It offers a color-coded chart that divides schools' reopening options into four zones: blue, yellow, orange, and red.

Districts with low community spread, which are blue with 0 to 9 new cases per 100,000 in the past 7 days, or moderate transmission, which are yellow with 10 to 49 new cases, are encouraged to consider reopening for full, in-person learning.

Schools in areas with substantial transmission, which are orange with 50 to 99 new cases per 100,000, may still consider a limited reopening, as long as they can layer multiple safety strategies in the classroom.

In hard-hit communities, which are red zones with more than 100 new cases per 100,000, elementary schools may consider limited reopening, with physical distancing required, but middle and high schools are recommended to be virtual-only unless mitigation strategies can be met.

About 89 percent of children in the U.S. live in a county considered a red zone with high levels of COVID-19 transmission under new CDC school opening guidelines.

As of Monday afternoon, the U.S. had reported over 27.6 million COVID-19 cases and over 486,000 related deaths.

People

Joe Biden
Comment
0
Comments
Post with no comments.