Not Nearly

The questions of whether, and how, to return to school in September are questions which will be answered to no one's satisfaction.  It's mid-July, and no one has been able to put together what little we know, add it to what we want, mix in some consideration for personal choices, and come up with anything that doesn't resemble a rickety Rube-Goldberg tower of nonsense.

The debate has raged for the last month or two - it really has been astonishing how heated the discourse has been.  There have been two sides - "Kids need to be in school" vs. "We can't keep enough people safe if kids are in school."  Given the stakes, which are clearly articulated by both sides, you'd think that rational problem-solving would be universal.  But, no.  They've been going at it hammer and tongs.

At this point, it seems that most students in the US will be going back to school sometime around the normal start date.  They'll be going part-time, for the most part, so we haven't solved the children-home-during-the-workday problem.  We haven't come close to solving the how-the-adults-don't-get-the-virus problem, except that the grownups wear masks.  We haven't solved the parents/teachers- objecting-to-exposing-their-children/themselves problem.  Many colleges are re-opening, without having solved the depending-on-binge-drinkers-to-act-responsibly as the first line of defense problem.  We certainly haven't solved the staying-safe-on-the-school-bus problem.  And with most municipalities and state under water fiscally, and no Federal help on the horizon, we haven't solved the how-are-we-going-to-pay-for-all-this problem.

And so on. 

From what I can tell - and I've read a mountain of stuff so you don't have to - school planners have thrown together masks (at least for the adults) and social distancing and split schedules and have hoped that everything turns out OK.  Which puts public education about in the same place as professional sports.  There's a plan, but it depends a lot on wishful thinking.

Part of the problem is that we don't know what we need to know.  Just today CNN laid out "What We Know About Coronavirus Risks to School Age Children."  What we know is... not much.  Hardly anything.  Go read it and see if you can take away anything really useful.  And this is actually a pretty faithful summary of everything we've been reading for months.

All this is to say that I'm not sure things will work out the way the planners are laying out for us.  Here in early July, positive cases are setting new records, and deaths are just beginning to rise.  Unless things turn around quickly, we'll be reassessing our decisions about the structure of school openings, mostly because that "wishful thinking" component will begin to melt away.

So it's not nearly time for The Big One, the post about schools, learning and children in the new world.  Not nearly.