In Defense of Our Children
We Must Open Schools Now
On Wednesday afternoon, November 18, my husband and I received word from our boys’ school district that learning would move from in-person to fully remote. The 7-day rolling average positivity rate of Covid-19 in Western New York is too high.
As we approach the one-year anniversary of when my kids moved to remote learning the first time, I can no longer sit idly by while New York continues to deny the basic human right of education to its youngest citizens. In the Orange Zone, indoor malls and retail can operate at up to 50% capacity, places of worship can operate at up to 33% capacity, but schools can’t operate at any capacity?
On the Covid Titantic, everyone gets a lifeboat, except for our children.
There are a number of reasons why we must stand up against the closure of our schools.
First and foremost, the science clearly shows that schools are not a major source of transmission. This important conclusion is supported by numerous studies, many of which are included in “An Evidence Summary of Paediatric COVID-19 Literature” on dontforgetthebubbles.com, by Alison Boast, Alasdair Munro, and Henry Goldstein in conjunction with the UK Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. In their summary, the authors state that the “studies of younger children in schools have found low rates of transmission.”
Brown University professor Emily Oster has also created the Covid-19 School Response Dashboard, which collects data from US schools on Covid-19 infections, reopening plans, and mitigation. In her article in The Atlantic entitled “Schools Aren’t Super-Spreaders”, she shares that “the evidence is pointing in one direction…Schools do not, in fact, appear to be major spreaders of COVID-19.”
Even Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the CDC, said in a White House briefing on November 19th, that spreading Covid-19 does not come from “inter-school transmission” and that “it would be counterproductive to close schools in an effort to contain the virus.”
I can also attest that after two and a half months of in-person school, I am not aware of one single instance of transmission at my son’s elementary school. Why? Because the school district listened to the experts. Our school created small cohorts, increased spacing between students, mandated masks, and put plexiglass around desks. They listened to the science and it’s working.
If the experts support keeping schools open, why are our leaders closing schools and sacrificing those who are least impacted by the virus?
Second, the mental, physical, and educational damage on our children is severe and long-lasting.Again, much has been written about the impact of school closures on young people. UNESCO writes in their “Adverse Consequences of School Closures” that in addition to interrupted learning, children who are confined at home can also face hunger, neglect from gaps in child care, increased exposure to violence and exploitation, social isolation, depression, anxiety, screen saturation, and a lack of exercise.
Not surprisingly, pediatricians are sounding the alarm. In the Washington Post article entitled “Remote School is Putting Kids Under Toxic Stress,” Drs. Alice Kuo and Casey Nagel wrote that there is an increased risk that this generation of kids will “suffer from and die of diabetes and heart disease,” and that their lack of school could “reduce their lifelong earning potential and cripple their mental health.”
And, in a study published on JAMA Network, entitled “Estimation of US Children’s Educational Attainment and Years of Lost Life Associated With Primary School Closures During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic”, Drs. Dimitri Christakis, Wil Van Cleve, and Frederick Zimmerman show that their “findings suggest that the decision to close US public schools in the early months of 2020 may be associated with a decrease in life expectancy for US children.” They go on to say that “these consequences are especially dire for young children” and that “future decisions regarding school closures during the pandemic should consider the association between educational disruption and decreased expected lifespan and give greater weight to the potential outcomes of school closure on children’s health.”
To put it simply: experts are saying that children will die early because of school closures.
I witnessed the cycles of sadness, despair, and grief in my own social, high energy boys first hand: their loneliness and yearning for their friends and classmates; their frustration with online learning and my frustration trying to work and teach them at the same time; their total lack of physical activity as sports came to a complete halt; their search for comfort in video games and snacks. It was heartbreaking. Such dark days, but I do realize that we were privileged to endure them. Children in low-income households have it much worse. There’s no equity in this pandemic and school closures only add to the multitude of disparities that under-privileged kids already face.
How can Governor Cuomo ignore these urgent warnings about the dangers our children are facing, especially when closing schools won’t have any real impact on slowing the spread of Covid? If we receive a tsunami warning, do we move to higher ground? If an avalanche is upon us, do we work to save not just ourselves but our children? Of course we do. It is our moral obligation.
Last, but certainly not least, depriving children of in-person school is discriminatory. This is not political. School closures discriminate against the young and the poor — those whose voices too often go unheard. How can we discuss the importance of equity with our children when the younger generations continue to take the brunt of policy decisions that make no sense?
Oster writes in her Atlantic piece, “One might argue, again, that any risk is too great, and that schools must be completely safe before local governments move to reopen them. But this approach ignores the enormous costs to children from closed schools.” The work by Christakis, Van Cleve, and Zimmerman shows that school closures reduce life expectancy in younger people. Governor Cuomo is not saving lives by closing schools. Rather, our government is implicitly valuing older lives more than younger lives, and wealthier families over those that are less able to cope with the loss of in-person schooling.
School closures are illogical, harmful, and immoral. It is time to stand up and defend our children.
Governors cannot be allowed to take away the rights of children to be educated, particularly when it can be done safely without meaningfully increasing the rate of transmission. I would argue, in fact, that there is no greater essential service than in-school education.
We can figure out how to put children back in school. We have figured out how to put children back in school, and it’s working:
1. Masks
2. Small cohorts
3. Spacing
4. Testing
To Governor Cuomo: put divisive rhetoric away that pits New Yorkers against each other; put ego and legacy aside; ignore the demands of powerful groups. I beg of you: do not let policy punish our children. Heed your own words, “Follow the data, follow the science, let the professionals tell us when it’s safe to reopen.”
They are telling us now.
Please. Open schools immediately and return children to the safest place they could be right now.
