COLUMBIA — The Columbia and Marion County school districts have released detailed plans for how they plan to reduce the risk of coronavirus spread once classes resume next week.
Measure include reducing the number of class changes, staggering when students are in the halls, eating lunches in classrooms or other places other than the cafeteria, placing sanitation stations throughout schools, reducing the length of school days, wearing masks while in public areas (although not in classrooms at all times) and doing extensive cleaning.
The districts will also be offering distance learning options for parents not comfortable sending their parents back into the classroom during a pandemic. While it’s certainly reasonable if those parents feel that way, the majority want their children back in school. The Columbia district’s initial surveys, which have since been finalized, showed 70% wanted traditional learning, 15% online and 15% undecided.
That illustrates that most parents think that their students will learn better in a classroom than at home. Many parents also work during the day, and it would stretch families too thin for them to be forced to keep up with their children’s schooling during the day while also trying to stay focused on work.
So the local administrations and school boards made the right call in deciding to start school back up.
For one thing, there is a growing body of scientific research that shows younger children (generally before puberty) just don’t seem to catch the virus as much.
The question, though, becomes what schools will do when inevitably a case arises here or there. There’s just no way that they are going to be able to keep the virus completely out as it’s continuing to rage across the nation. What to do?
Some pressure will be applied, no doubt, in a panic to shut everything down once that happens. But that’s too drastic of a step. Better to isolate one classroom — for example, having those students learn from home for a couple of weeks if a classmate tests positive — than to close the entire school. Or better yet, as testing options get easier and quicker, they can test those in that classroom who may have been exposed.
• Charlie Smith is editor and publisher of The Columbian-Progress. Contact him at 601-736-2611.
