Social distancing at school
Note: The following article assumes there will be no viable coronavirus vaccine for at least a year and that countries and states will still have at least moderate social distancing guidelines in place over this time.
For as much as we’d all like to reopen schools and universities for this coming academic year, even an eternal optimist (like me) has trouble seeing how it happens without great difficulty. We have all the motivation in the world to reopen schools – for students who need school support services like free and reduced lunch, for students who don’t have adequate Internet and device access at home, for the parents whose work is dependent on school as childcare, for all of us who crave some return to normalcy. The hard truth, however, is that the version of school we’ll most likely return to this year won’t be anything like it was before. With all the required protocols and considerations for social distancing during a global pandemic, schools may look a little like hospitals and feel a bit like detention to students. Nonetheless, we must carry forward.
This realization hit home for me while I was discussing with my kids the idea of going back to school and trying to prepare them that it will probably be very different this coming school year. We talked about what it would look like with social distancing measures in place. After thinking through things like students wearing masks and ensuring they stay 6 feet apart from others, I got some pretty dramatic reactions from them. My son (3rd grade) said, “It sounds like torture.” My daughter (4th grade) drew pictures of it, which are included throughout this article. Our little family dinner conversation sent me through a whirlwind of thoughts about what re-opening will mean for schools.
Schools were not designed for social distancing. Quite the opposite, they provide the optimal environment for spreading germs. Just ask any teacher about their first year of teaching and how many times they got sick. Students sit in crowded classrooms, disperse frequently through the halls to other classrooms, the gym, the cafeteria and bathrooms. Anyone who has ever seen any school or college between class sessions knows the visual of packed hallways full of students and teachers brushing past one another. Many U.S. schools are so overcrowded they have added external trailer classrooms in their parking lots. To follow moderate standards for social distancing – keeping 6 feet apart, wearing masks, and constantly washing hands and wiping down surfaces – is a dizzying and nearly impossible logistical task for schools and universities. It can be done and for various reasons it must be done. But we need to prepare for the fact it will be very different. And even with re-opening, we’ll need to continue to provide online and distance education.
Here’s what it could look like.
Let’s start with personal protective equipment (PPE). Will there be enough face masks and hand sanitizer available to allow students and teachers and staff to have fresh equipment on a daily basis? Schools will need to have new budgets for providing PPE to staff and students who can’t afford it or don’t have access. Students and all adults in the buildings will need to wear masks all day long. I can barely go an hour on a grocery store run before being thoroughly annoyed wearing a mask, while every breath fogs my glasses. I can’t imagine the ability of my rising 4th and 5th graders to cope with wearing a mask for hours at a time. And then they will presumably have to take off their masks to eat lunch or have a snack or get a drink. Whether they do so at their own desks or in a cafeteria, what provisions are made to ensure students are properly distanced and that the surfaces they eat on are properly cleaned? Water fountains aren’t viable anymore. Will schools be able to provide bottled water to students and staff in each classroom?
Now, how about school buses? Do you have students sit in every other seat with only one student per seat? If so, does that mean every bus driver with a currently full bus load would have to make 2 or 3 separate routes in the same day? We haven’t even arrived at school yet and we already face the daunting task of how we get students to school. (Sure, some schools students can walk or bike or have their parents drop them off.) But the busing system is our first major hurdle and it already calls into question at what capacity of student attendance can a school operate during social distancing? At a minimum there will need to be more bus routes with a reduced capacity of student riders. Already, we must consider the idea of splitting the school day into two cohorts – a morning and an afternoon one where students do half-days. Or we must consider students going to school every other day of the week in cohorts that vary from Mon/Wed students to Tues/Thurs students, etc.
Now, let’s think about school arrival and departure. The visual many of us have is that of bells ringing and massive throngs of students piling in and out of the jammed entrances and exits. New systems that stagger student arrivals and exits will need to be established. And then what about queuing up to do so? Lines established with distances of 6 feet apart – marking those distances with tape or paint both outside and inside the school? A line of just 100 students would be two football fields in length, for example.
There are additional considerations for colleges and universities. Here, the arrivals and departures look a bit different. Students from all over the country (and the world) arrive to campus in the fall and then depart en masse during breaks dispersing – again – all over the globe. How will universities screen students as they come to and then leave campus? Will 14-day quarantines be required upon arrival? Will universities be able to administer rapid coronavirus or antibody tests to students as they arrive? Given the limits to our current testing, it’s hard to imagine we’ll have enough rapid tests for universities by the end of August. Even if we do, will universities have the staffing, training or outsourcing solutions to administer tests to students? There’s also still no compelling evidence that having had the virus previously prevents someone from getting it again which renders antibody testing moot for the time being.
Temperature checks at schools
On both K-12 and university campuses, will we require daily temperature checks for each student? Who will administer those tests and once again, how will we manage the lines of students waiting to go through a temperature check station? What’s the protocol if a student has a fever or tests positive with coronavirus? Schools will need to have on-site quarantine facilities to immediately remove the student from the population. For K-12 schools this will likely need to be a temporary quarantine area until a parent or guardian can come retrieve them. On college campuses, these will need to be long-term facilities than can house students for at least a 14-day quarantine period. In worse cases, they will need procedures for transporting severely ill students to proper medical facilities.
And what about the issue of student housing on college campuses? Once again, most student housing was designed for occupancy efficiencies as opposed to social distancing. Will universities allow students to live together in the same double or triple occupancy rooms? Will parents even allow their children to live with others and will students even want to do so? How will bathroom-sharing policies work? Will cleaning of bathrooms and dorm rooms move to daily or multi-daily intervals and if so, what kind of staffing and budget increases would be necessary? It would be quite a departure from the college days of old when vomit from Friday night parties wouldn’t be cleaned up until the following Monday. Wait, what’s that you just said…parties?
The party’s over…for now. Think of all the aspects of school and college that make it fun, that make it human and social. School assemblies, plays, musical events, sporting events, gym class – all will be virtual at best. Parties? Certainly not in large groups. I can see modified recesses outdoors where students can be properly spread out. But then what kind of games can you play doing that? College students on campus could get outside and run or bike. However, hitting the gym becomes a whole other problem. Wiping down equipment after each use? Daily overnight deep cleaning? A limit to the number of students using the gym at the same time? Dare we even consider the other pandemic-fueling factors of beer funnels, keg stands, scorpion bowls, Jello shots, and the healthy libidos of high school and college students?
Let’s assume for a moment that current public health data holds true – that young people are far less likely to die from coronavirus than others. True, the risk to young people themselves might be low. But all schools and universities have significant populations of staff and faculty who will be at far higher levels of risk. The behavior of students and their adherence to social distancing guidelines will be paramount to the safety of the employees of educational institutions. What about the teachers and faculty who are 50+ years of age or immunocompromised? They’ll likely be able to teach from home but that will be the same situation students are in now – except they’ll be taught remotely by a teacher while in school.
In K12 schools - every single day - students come back home from school to the family members they live with. For colleges and universities, students typically come home on various breaks throughout the year. Will colleges still be able (and will it still be advisable) to release students on breaks? Or will students need to stay on campus for the entire year? In any and all of these scenarios, schools and universities still become potential nodes of virus spread for the families and communities to which their students return.
This brings us to the evolving and unprecedented legal liability considerations for schools and universities. What will be considered a reasonable standard for a school or university to prevent the spread of COVID-19? Will the efforts described above be enough to protect schools from lawsuits in the event students, staff or teachers get sick? What about the protection of student and employee private health information – such as their COVID-19 test results or temperature check station results? Will schools require contact tracing apps for students and staff and if so, how will such apps ensure protection of personal health data?
This spring has also given us a glimpse into how students and parents think about the value of their education and the tuition they pay for college. (This may soon be true for private, tuition-based K12 schools as well.) Several students have filed class action law suits against universities demanding rebates on their tuition since they were unable to experience the full value of being on campus and enjoying all the various aspects of college life. Will similar lawsuits arise when students come to campus in the fall under social distancing regulations? It’s going to be hard to imagine that colleges and universities will be able to maintain their past tuition rates when the student experience will be significantly limited. Universities aren’t even hinting at this yet, but rest assured the market of students and parents will push in the direction of differentiated tuition prices during COVID-19 social distancing measures – whether that be with students on-campus or continuing their studies online.
What are the implications of all this? We will have to both reopen schools and continue distance learning. There’s no other choice as neither will be sufficient alone. And we’re all going to have to buck up here. Whether learning online at home or heading to school in the fall under social distancing guidelines, none of the scenarios are going to be anything close to what most of us have experienced in the past. It’s already been and will continue to be a difficult transition for students, teachers and parents. We need to embrace it because there really aren’t any alternatives. We will simply be choosing between distance education and greatly modified in-school/on-campus learning. It’s highly likely both of these options will continue for at least the next academic year.
Some students and families in K12 schools will have no choice. Kids being able to go to school is critical to parents’ jobs. For students reliant on free and reduced lunches, going to school is crucial for their wellbeing. If schools don’t open or if they do so where students go half days (such as either mornings or afternoons), they will still need to find innovative ways to feed students. Bus drivers may start delivering lunches to bus stops – along with laptops, tablets and basic school supplies. For families without Internet access, will we find innovative ways to supply cellular-connected devices or set up local Wi-Fi hot spots?
For other students and families many options will suddenly be considered. Do I send my children to school grounds or do I keep them home and continue distance learning? What about a full shift to homeschooling? Or fully online K12 schools? One thing is certain, students and parents are quickly becoming far more involved in (and knowledgeable about) their own education. When unsatisfied, they will push to demand changes in their current education or find new and better solutions. So far, the forced rush to provide ad-hoc remote learning has been mostly dissatisfying to students, parents and teachers. Over time, remote education will yield to much better, purposely developed online courses.
When it’s done right, online education can be as effective as classroom-based learning. Prior to COVID-19, most schools and colleges hadn’t invested in developing their online learning capabilities. Now, whether they like it or not, they must. And they will make great strides and improvements in the process. It’s just a matter of how fast they get there. It will be difficult for most of them to make huge strides by the fall, but over the course of the year (and years) to come, there will be dramatic improvement in the overall quality of online learning. Likewise, we will see a wave of new innovations with classroom teaching too. “Necessity as the mother of all invention” will bear out in incredibly inspiring ways in education over the months and years to come.
We’ll ultimately see hybrid models develop over time where it becomes increasingly clear that some things can be done better online while others will ensure the timeless value of in-person and on-campus experience. Lectures by teachers or faculty can be produced in highly engaging ways via asynchronous video so that teachers and students can spend more time together in discussion, answering questions or working on projects. This flipped classroom model has already begun to revolutionize education around the world; now it will speed up dramatically. Students won’t want or need to go to school or campus to hear a lecture. They will, however, crave going to school to be part of activities, socialize with friends, and work on engaging projects or research with teachers. Think of all the labs and various equipment that students need to access at school and on-campus. Blending the best of online and in-person will lead to better outcomes across the board.
We need to be a combination of patient, persistent and pedagogically open-minded. Patient with ourselves, with our kids and students, with teachers and faculty and with school leaders as they deal with unquestionably impossible tasks. Persistent in our dreams and desires and appetite for learning. And pedagogically open-minded to various new ways of teaching and learning. Ultimately, students with goals and dreams will stop at nothing to pursue their education. I’m reminded of an opportunity I had to meet Dr. Sakeena Yakoobi, the founder of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), when she was awarded the WISE Prize for Education in 2015. When the Taliban banned girls education, the AIL organized underground homeschools for thousands of girls across Afghanistan. Where there is a will there is a way. And where there is education, in any form, there is hope.
Post-script: Toward the end of our family dinner discussion, after thinking about it for a while, my son ended by saying, “Well, at least I’ll get to see my friends.” He came a long way in a short conversation from feeling like it would be torture to realizing it might not be so bad after all.
