The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that schools can safely open as long as a range of precautions are in place, offering a comprehensive and science-based road map for a return to classrooms that in parts of the country have been shuttered for nearly a year.
- The Centers Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and Donna Harris-Aikens, senior advisor for policy and planning at the Department of Education, unveiled the sweeping new guidance on a conference call with reporters this afternoon.
- Director Walensky said that “I want to be clear, with this operational strategy, CDC is not mandating that schools reopen,” adding that “These recommendations simply provide schools a long-needed roadmap for how to do so safely under different levels of disease in the community."
- The much-anticipated release includes a 35-page operational strategy guide to safely operating schools, an 11-page review of the science, and highlighted five mitigation strategies and said they all help prevent virus transmission but emphasized that there is more protection if multiple strategies are used.
- The agency said the most important strategies were the mandatory and proper use of masks for students, teachers and staff, and maintaining at least six feet of distance between people, to the greatest extent possible, and to ensure this distance, recommends schools group students in cohorts to reduce the number of exposures.
- Other important steps outlined to help mitigate transmission include handwashing, keeping facilities clean and improving ventilation, and contact-tracing when exposures occur, combined with isolation and quarantine of people who may have been exposed.
- The agency noted that the guidance might need to be updated as new, more contagious variants of the coronavirus spread across the US.
- It also released a scientific brief to accompany its new strategies for schools, which includes references to CDC data and separate studies published in journals such as Archives of Disease in Childhood and Lancet Infectious Diseases, as well as some pre-print research.
- The agency recommends shifting to a combination of in-person and remote learning to minimize the number of people in school buildings at any given time when infection rates in a community are high, with fully remote learning is recommended only in certain cases when virus rates are very high.
- The agency reiterated that states should prioritize teachers for vaccination but said it is not a prerequisite for reopening, and warned that even when schools take precautions, there will be infections and that schools need to be prepared to handle them.
- It advised that elementary school students appear to face lower risks of in-school transmission, and recommended school leaders prioritize instruction over extracurricular activities, citing certain indoor sports as particularly risky.
- The agency recommended that school leaders engage with the entire school community in developing plans, which teachers unions have strongly advocated.
- In its new guidelines, the agency offered a color-coded rubric, based on community infection rates, to help systems determine what level of in-person learning is appropriate, but made clear some in-person schooling can be available even when rates are high if mitigation strategies are in place.
- It recommends assessing transmission in the community based on total number of cases per 100,000 people in the past week, and percentage of tests that come back positive, and based on these two factors, classify communities as in one of four color-coded zones:
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Communities in the “blue” and “yellow” zones, those with the lowest levels of infection, can operate with full in-person learning.
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Schools in the “orange” zone, those with “substantial” transmission, operate with reduced attendance, which could mean a hybrid system where students are in school part of the time and at home the rest.
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Schools in “red” zones, the highest levels of transmission, can operate hybrid programs for all grades as long as they conduct screening tests for the virus, and if they don’t do this testing, the agency suggests red zone districts offer hybrid programs in elementary school and keep middle and high schools virtual only.
- The guidelines for K-12 schools are not that different from those issued last summer by the White House, but the new administration hopes a retooled, more clearly written version will be seen as more credible by concerned teachers and parents.
- Education experts and public health groups, including the World Health Organization, have warned of the lasting consequences of keeping students out of the classroom, and data from Burbio, a service that tracks school opening plans, recently reported that almost 65% of K-12 students are already learning in person to some degree.
- The guidelines arrive in the middle of a debate that is already highly fraught, with some parents whose schools remain closed becoming increasingly frustrated, and public school enrollment declining in many districts across the country.
- President Joe Biden has said he will work to reopen most K-12 schools within his first 100 days in office but has stressed he will rely on health and medical experts to dictate the national guidance in order to reopen safely.
- Annette Anderson, a professor in the Johns Hopkins University School of Education and serves as deputy director for the new Center for Safe and Healthy Schools, said today that "It is a challenge to guarantee, or to say that our schools could open in 100 days - because of the deep investments that need to be made around what it takes to get schools ready and prepared to reopen.
- Anderson added that overall, more research on the public health impacts of holding in-person learning during the pandemic remains needed, and ""The challenge is that we've had so many stops and starts around what research to follow.”
References
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/12/health/cdc-covid-19-reopening-schools-recommendations-bn/index.html
