Capitol Hill Blue Forums Life and Moral Issues Education opening schools

If you want to open schools for in-person teaching, there is a right way and MANY wrong ways to do it. The big problem is maintaining some distance between students. That's why many schools only have half their students there at any one time. First of all, the ideas that kids don't catch it, and then don't spread it are pure BS. They have few symptoms (at least to the original variant), but they catch it at the same rates as adults, and spread it just the same, but for fewer days. Still enough to give it to their entire family, easily.

Some of the new variants result in more symptoms for kids, but that may just be because they spread more. More victims = more symptoms. So it's masks, distance, hand washing, lunch delivered to their desks or outside tables, lots of ventilation, half day there & half day remote, for now. Schools with enough funding can run $5 tests on anybody with any symptom or exposure, to find the infected before they spread it a lot. Teachers should be required to be vaccinated, or just work via zoom.

One useful idea is no lunch on-site. Remote morning kids can eat before they come, and remote afternoon kids can eat when they get home. Free lunch kids can all be remote afternoons and take their provided lunch home with them.