LETTER: Schools’ reopening brings risks

Schools’ reopening brings risks
One of the hot topics on the news these days is the ongoing debate about schools reopening in the fall. I have seen several stories focusing upon the statistics concerning school-age children. As a general rule, it seems that children and teenagers are the least affected by the virus. Their symptoms are usually mild, often undetectable, and their survival rate is sky high. You see pictures of school rooms on television with desks spaced 10 feet apart, like that’s supposed to address the problem! The true elephant in the room is this: How are the teachers and staff going to be protected?
A quick survey of any school workforce would reveal that a sizable proportion would fall into the vulnerable age group for COVID infection. What is going to be done to protect them? Young children are notorious germ carriers, and I can’t imagine how you are going to teach a 5-year-old to socially distance and practice good hygiene properly when it is difficult enough to get them to hold a pencil correctly. What about surface contamination preventative measures, like how to safely use a pencil sharpener? How about the sharing of educational materials like computers and reference materials? What about trips back and forth to the restroom? Certainly, water fountains are going to be off-limits.
There are so many opportunities for contamination, and, as we know, just because someone does not have a temperature, does not mean that they aren’t a carrier. It is also a well-known fact in schools that some parents knowingly send their children to school sick for a baby-sitting solution, usually because they have to go to work. During flu season, the nurse’s room often looks like a clinic. How about households that have a member that is positive and quarantined? Are they always going to be up front with that? As for older students, the teenage crowd, socialization is everything to them. I can easily see kids sneaking into school, knowing that they might be a risk to others. With contact tracing, it has been shown that one ill individual can affect dozens.
Many decision makers steadfastly cling to the notion that enough parents will opt for remote learning so that social distancing, hygiene measures and scheduling adjustments will be successful. After months of families being cooped up together, that remains to be seen.
Will we see a proportion of teachers and staff making the tough decision to take the year off because they are in the high-risk group? If financially possible, I would think that would be a reasonable course of action. I would imagine that substitute teachers are going to be in high demand this upcoming year. For the remaining staff, are we going to see hazmat suits and plastic shields? A bottle of hand sanitizer and a forehead scanner are certainly not going to be enough. These are very real, sobering questions that must be addressed.
I hope that our school systems come up with safe, reasonable solutions for everyone.
Sally Brown-Pawlosky
Hickory