CDC Releases New Guidelines for Reopening SchoolsExBulletin

Dejan Stankovic / Getty Images

Dejan Stankovic / Getty Images

Updated at 2:40 pm Eastern Standard Time

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Released the long-awaited updated guidance Friday helps school leaders decide how to safely return students to the classroom and how to keep them there. This update is not a political push to reopen school, but a way to extend old recommendations and “layer” the most effective safety precautions (masking, physical distance, hand washing, breathing etiquette). A measured data-driven effort to advise school leaders about. Ventilation and building cleaning, and contact tracing.

This is not the case for politicians, parents and school leaders looking for a clear green light to reopen school.

“The CDC does not mandate the reopening of schools,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Warrensky said in a telephone briefing with reporters on Friday.

Instead, the CDC explains that appropriate mitigation measures can help keep children and staff safe in schools, even in affected communities, but schools due to the low prevalence of communities. It also warns that they can fall into false reassurance, and if they don’t wear masks and force socially distant classrooms, they will still spread the virus.

Updated guidance comes as President Biden seeks to fulfill his promise to help more K-8 schools reopen within 100 days of taking office. School reopening has become a powerful political battle between parents and educators. In Washington, Republicans used it to criticize the Biden administration for succumbing to pressure from a strong stakeholder group, the teachers union, rather than listening to the concerns of scientists and parents.

This update provides some important changes to previous languages, including a color-coded graph that divides the school reopening option into four zones: blue, yellow, orange, and red. Areas with low coronavirus community spread (blue, 0-9 new cases per 100,000 in the last 7 days) or moderately infected (yellow, 10-49 new cases) are complete We recommend that you consider resuming for face-to-face learning.

Schools in highly infected areas (Orange, 50-99 new cases per 100,000) can consider limited resumption as long as multiple safety strategies can be combined in the classroom. In the hit community (red, more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people), primary schools may consider limited reopening that requires physical distance, while the CDC does not meet mitigation strategies. , It is recommended to make junior high school and high school virtual only.

Clarity is increasing as school leaders seek more practical information on how to reopen school, especially if they cannot afford all of the safety strategies recommended by the CDC. For example, prior to the Friday release, Noelle Ellerson Ng of the School Superintendents Association (AASA) called on the U.S. Department of Education for school clarity that could not afford to place children at recommended 6-foot intervals. I wrote a letter.

“For districts that can’t work, but can work 3 or 4 feet, teach how to add additional mitigation strategies to offset the trade-offs that result from not being able to run 6 feet. Please. Standard foot? “

According to the updated guidance, that 6-foot standard should be considered non-negotiable in schools from kindergarten to high school where communication is fairly or high.

In a statement, AASA Director Daniel A. Domenech said the CDC and the US Department of Education were collaborative and collaborative in providing clear and practical guidance that school system leaders could incorporate into reopening plans. We praised “Cooperative Initiatives”.

This guidance also incorporates some recent strong statements by CDC scientists.

“Schools should close last and open first,” Warrensky said. Said recentlyA line officially appearing in Friday’s guidance: “Schools from kindergarten to high school are the last setting to close after all other mitigations in the community have been adopted and first when they can be safely reopened. Need to resume. “

Also, at the end of last month, several CDC scientists JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association, Says there is little evidence The reopening of the school contributed significantly to the spread of COVID-19.

Friday’s guidance cites many of the studies mentioned in JAMA’s article. North Carolina School And Wisconsin Countryside It resumed in the fall. In the former case, a district review serving more than 90,000 students and staff found only 32 cases infected at school, compared to 773 cases infected outside school. None of these 32 in-school transmissions involved students infecting teachers and staff. In another study, out of 17 Wisconsin schools, high compliance with mask wear helped keep schools at lower COVID-19 incidence than larger communities. Of the 191 COVID-19 cases recorded between students and staff, only 7 occurred at school.

However, New CDC survey Of the nearly 4,000 junior and senior high school students released this week, it shows that mask use may be inconsistent among older students (13-21). “Approximately 65% ​​of students reported that fellow students” always “wear masks in classrooms, corridors and stairwells. However, mask use has declined sharply elsewhere, from just 42% in school buses and 40% in the bathroom to 36% in the cafeteria (when not eating).

Becky Pringle, head of NEA, the country’s largest teachers union, also said that schools servicing more vulnerable students in low-income communities cannot afford the other important protections recommended by the CDC. Warned.

“Many schools, especially those attended by black, brown, indigenous and poor white students, have badly outdated ventilation systems and no testing or tracking programs,” Pringle said in a statement. “State and local leaders cannot choose the guidelines to follow and the students to obtain the resources to keep them safe, and the basic protections that the CDC is universally needed. Too many schools don’t do it. ”

The new CDC guidance also warns schools to think twice, especially about resuming athletic activity indoors.The agency reported an outbreak caused by Two high school wrestling tournaments In Florida, 38 of the 54 participants tested subsequently tested positive. Some have brought the virus back to family and friend circles. One died. In the new guidance, the CDC advises that sports and extracurricular activities should only be conducted “outdoors and physically more than 6 feet away” in infected areas. In a highly contagious community, they say these activities are only virtual.

This guidance walks a tightrope on how important it is for teachers and other school staff to be vaccinated before the school reopens. Guidance clarifies that vaccinated educators and staff can provide an important and effective layer of protection, but “access to vaccination is for reopening schools for direct instruction. It should not be considered a condition. “

In a recent interview with Boston Public Radio, Randi Weingarten, Head of the American Federation of Teachers, Seemed to agreeVaccination of teachers is “not a prerequisite” for reopening school, but she said she considers it a top priority.

CDC Guidance Place education workers in group 1b, “Frontline Key Worker”, is at the top of the vaccine priority. However, states are free to make their own decisions.In some parts of the country teachers are lined up for their shots While continuing to work from home, And other states It’s the opposite..

In addition, the guidance provides new details on how schools can use tests to detect and contain outbreaks. For example, we recommend weekly tests for teachers and staff at all levels of community infection, and weekly tests for students in moderate to highly infected areas.

In the past, budgets have limited most public schools from extensive asymptomatic screening with frequent and rapid coronavirus testing. Some private schools, Movie set And the results are mixed, At the white house..Massachusetts Recently released An effort to test everyone in the school once a week using a “pooled” test model.

CDC’s school guidance could add to the resumption plan by tackling the new COVID-19 variant, which has begun to spread throughout the United States, for the first time. For now, the CDC said that these variants are “concerned” and need further investigation, and if the variants begin to promote community expansion, “this guidance may need to be updated.” There is. “

The Biden administration is under intense political pressure to fulfill Biden’s first 100-day promise to help reopen schools, and government officials have the latest CDC guidance as an important tool to achieve that. Is listed.Busy At MSNBC on ThursdayAndy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House at COVID-19, said the CDC guidance would provide school districts and local communities with the information that “they must start it and be proactive.”

Earlier this week, Biden’s team provided a definition of opening a school that was criticized as far below what parents expected from Biden’s promises.Saki Said Biden will succeed in his pledge if more than 50% of schools have “at least one day a week, preferably more” lessons in the classroom.

(There is no official national number of open schools, but the organization About two-thirds of Brubio As of Sunday, February 7, some districts already meet this benchmark. )

The repulsion was swift, with accusations that Biden’s team, which promised to follow science, stood on the side of a strong teachers union instead, some of which were direct guidance until all teachers or all students were vaccinated. I resisted returning to. Republicans noticed parents’ frustration to bring their children back to school and a change in the message from the Biden White House.

On Thursday, Pusaki stated that Biden wanted the school to open five days a week. “That’s what he wants to achieve,” Pusaki said. “And we are going to lead science.”

Friday’s guidance will undoubtedly lead to science and use data and mitigation best practices to help school leaders understand the best way to stay open and / or reopen without leading to a universal plan. I will be able to do it.