#back-to-school

No.  Fuck no.  Stay the fucking hell at home.

I don’t care if everyone else is running around maskless with snot dribbling out of their noses and hacking up their lungs.

It’s a fucking equity issue.  Just because everyone’s decided en masse that they don’t care about the welfare of people with disabilities, doesn’t mean you SHOULD.  Getting rid of mask mandates in schools is like getting rid of integrated classes.  

Once upon a time, you know, they didn’t let students with disabilities take classes with everyone else.  There were arguments about how they’d take up too much of the teacher’s time or be a distraction to other students.  I’d like to think that people actually realized that the perspectives and experiences of disabled students were a contribution to the class.  That creating conditions where able students couldn’t work with their disabled peers deprived abled folks of the breadth and diversity of perspective required of a true liberal arts education.  

Today, I sat masked across from an unmasked peer who knows about my pre-existing conditions, who blithely chattered on about how excited she was that things were back to normal.  

It’s back-to-school time in the United States, but for the world’s leader in coronavirus infections and deaths, what “back to school” means is anything but clear. Many countries have gotten ahead of the pandemic with extensive testing, tracing and quarantining. That tight control means that children in Denmark, Singapore and China have returned to school, with extra safety measures.

The situation is fundamentally different in the United States. No other country has attempted to send children to school with coronavirus infection levels as high as they are in some parts of the country. Many large school districts, including those in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Houston, will begin the school year with all kids learning from home. Other districts have yet to announce their plans, which may include models that mix in-person learning with remote classwork.

School districts have been struggling to make the call, given a lack of data on how to reduce risk. Two major scientific societies have provided some guidance. On June 25, the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly recommended that policy decisions be made with the goal of having children in school, in person. The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine agreed, urging in a July 15 report that to the extent possible, in-person education should be prioritized, particularly for young children and those with special needs.

Doing so in a way that minimizes risk will come at a hefty price. The National Academies’ report estimated a price tag of $1.8 million for an average U.S. school district with around 3,300 students. That would pay for personal protective gear such as masks, hand-washing stations, cleaning supplies and extra staff so that students could be spread out. Of course, even if a district spends the funds, there are no guarantees that students, teachers and staff won’t get sick.

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The price of keeping students home is harder to quantify, and could be even greater. In addition to missing out on academic and social growth, some kids in lockdown face greater risks of abuse, neglect and hunger. And to go smoothly, remote learning requires reliable internet service, a safe place to work and adults standing by to help. That kind of support is impossible for many families, particularly those with parents or caregivers who can’t work from home.

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