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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Summer just started, but the entire country is already talking about going back to school. There has been a lot of guidance written, a lot of practical thought given to how this can happen. Whether it's schedule, class size, how you space seating, the use of barriers in the school to maintain social distancing, obviously closing shared and communal spaces. Now it's time to be open. It's time to stay open. And we will put out the fires as they come up. But we have to open our schools. It's so important to open our schools. And what you said from a psychological standpoint with respect to staying home any longer, you can't do it. You can't do it. That has great dangers also. So even though we just hit 3 million cases in the United States today, the president can't wait to get the kids back in the classrooms. And in keeping with tradition, he's got no real plan on how to do it. But across the country, everyone's trying to figure it out from daycares to universities, parent-teacher associations to pediatricians, mayors, governors, the CDC. And unsurprisingly, no one's really cracked that nut yet. But today we're going to try and explain what it's going to take to do it safely and what teachers are going to need to do their jobs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we're going to start with the largest school district in the country, NYC's DOE. Here's the deal. For the vast majority of kids in the vast majority of schools, you'll be going to school, to the classroom, either two days a week or three days a week, depending on the week. Today, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city's public schools will not fully reopen in September. Instead, they're going to try and do some kind of hybrid system, school a few days a week with fewer kids in the classroom at the same time. We got in touch with Lauren Gardner to ask her what she thinks about going back to school in New York. She's an eighth-grade teacher in Brooklyn, and we spoke with her back in March when schools were just shutting down.
--:-- Lauren Gardner: Overall, I would say it was really difficult. I mean, in some ways, it felt like teaching remotely was suddenly like a 24-hour-a-day job, communicating and getting texts and emails all the time. And in other ways, there were times where it felt like you had completely lost access to your kids and were like working alone in a vacuum. One day, you know, you're spending an hour on the phone trying to figure out like why a kid can't like edit a Google Doc on his iPad that the DOE gave him. And the next day you're, you know, spending hours making a digital museum and learning, trying to learn all these like new tech skills. I mean, teaching has always been like about wearing a lot of different hats. But so many times during this experience, I was like, okay, this hat is not what I signed up for. I was like a film editor and like a solicitor, cold calling people's houses, like a graphic designer, a YouTube actor. So many of these roles I was totally not prepared for and just had to kind of jump right in.
--:-- Lauren Gardner: And I mean, I joke, but I'm like, you know, sometimes I stop and think I'm like, if I had read a job description for like this job, would I have taken it? What was the experience like for your students? How did they cope with this totally new and, you know, unforeseen, unprecedented experience? The true thing is that it was really, really varied. There were kids who had really, really, really little access to technology. There were kids who moved from place to place during this time. There were kids who were not supervised and were sleeping until four o'clock in the afternoon as much as there were kids who thrived in this environment more so even than when they were in the classroom who totally knew how to do everything technological that we were asking them to do, who benefited from having the responsibility of managing their own schedule. But, you know, it was just it really changed the way that I had access to like my students as a whole.
--:-- Lauren Gardner: And, you know, one thing that I think about is like, I feel lucky to be at a school where we had invested in and like prioritize building community, regardless of this, you know, crisis having happened. And now that the country's attention has turned to going back to school, what's on your mind? Do you feel safe going back into the physical building? Do you feel like it's safe for your students? Is there a way to social distance in a classroom with kids? The DOE went and audited school buildings and to kind of try and see what like a safe ratio, I guess, would be. And our safe ratio in our building, at least in my classroom, is nine students and one teacher.
--:-- Lauren Gardner: Huh. But it kind of feels like they gave us that number and we're like, All right, nine to one. You guys can go ahead and figure that out. Bye. What do you mean figure it out? Like figure out which nine? Yeah, yeah. Which nine? Who comes when? I mean, supposedly you could infer that this means some kind of staggered schedule, but no one's going to tell us how to do that, at least as far as I can tell. So there's at my school and I've heard at other schools, like cohorts of really brave, valiant teachers forming committees to work over the summer with no pay to try and outline a plan for some of these logistics. But we also know that there's supposedly a lot of guidance that's still forthcoming. So there's definitely a vibe right now that feels like we're still kind of waiting, maybe waiting for the other shoe to drop.
--:-- Lauren Gardner: Like what will happen to students who have legally mandated special education services? What will happen to transportation, like food, cleaning requirements. None of those have been outlined that I know of. And in the meantime, we have these like wonderful committees working over the summer trying to make sense of this nine to one ratio and trying to make sense of teachers who have pre-existing health conditions or teachers who have small children who I mean, think of like if if teachers have kids who have their own staggered schedules to work with, you know, what will that mean for the teacher's availability, right? It's the kind of problem that you just can't look at for that long because it starts to seem just so unwieldy and so insane.
--:-- Lauren Gardner: I guess it's summertime, so maybe you're not talking to your fellow teachers all the time, but when you check in with them, how's everyone feeling about all the uncertainty? I think we have some comfort that we can take from being in a supportive, specific school community. But on the bigger picture, it's really concerning because I think there's also an assumption, especially when I, I don't know, watch the news or hear politicians talk. I think there's an assumption that kids can make this transition really seamlessly, right? Like if teachers can just show up and have your nine-to-one classroom or put some stuff online. Like kids can make this transition really seamlessly because what do kids do all day? They're on technology, right? But like, in my experience, there can be a really big like equity gap in technology also that gets totally overlooked.
--:-- Lauren Gardner: And I think it's really ridiculous just to assume that like you give a kid an iPad and you've done your duty, you know, they'll be fine. I mean, if there is some way that you guys pull this off and you figure out an equitable, logical way to bring in the nine students every day, whomever they may be, what are your concerns about a system like that? Oh, boy, where do I start? In terms of teacher safety, like especially teaching in New York City, I don't see how there can be any kind of nine to one classroom where I would ever really feel like isolated. Like I don't you know, nobody just drops out of the sky into this room with nine to one people, one adult and nine children and say, OK, well, this is relatively safe.
--:-- Lauren Gardner: I mean, a lot of my kids live with older people and small children. Are they taking the subway? I suppose they are, right? Not to mention teachers who also live with older people and younger people. Just like everything about the job is so, especially New York City, feels so, I don't know, like interconnected. There's no safe isolation chamber of nine to one ratio that feels realistic. You know it is so important for kids to be together I completely get that And every teacher that I know I think would be willing to do whatever they have to do to facilitate that happening for kids in the safest way that we know how. But with all this uncertainty, it's really easy to say, can we please just forfeit all of this anxiety and this unknown blended hybrid mantra that we've been given and just be like, you know what, let's just be remote until January.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's I mean, I can't say that that wouldn't bring a certain amount of comfort, you know. Quick break, and then we'll talk to a pediatrician who's been trying to figure out how to get American kids and teachers back to school safely. Thank you.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The CDC issued guidelines for reopening schools back in May. The president doesn't like them. The president tweeted out this morning that he disagrees with CDC guidelines on reopening schools, calling them tough and expensive. And he says that the CDC is asking schools to do very impractical things. Pence says the CDC will be issuing new guidelines next week. The CDC will be issuing new guidance next week, part of a five-part series of recommendations that will give all new tools to our schools. Sounds dysfunctional. But the CDC's not the only organization trying to figure this out. There's also the Council on School Health at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Nathaniel Beers serves on the small council.
--:-- Nathaniel Beers: I think that before we return to classrooms, schools need to have the hard conversations about how they're going to make sure that students, families, staff, teachers are all going to be safe. And so that means that while the American Academy of Pediatrics has put out guidance that we should be encouraging all kids to be in school to receive in-school instruction as much as possible, we also need to recognize that there are limitations relative to different school districts as well as the different issues around disease burden in different areas that we need to take into account.
--:-- Nathaniel Beers: So you helped develop the school reopening guidelines, right? Correct. Would you say that schools are ready to reopen? Many are not. And so that is part of the reason that the American Academy of Pediatrics put that guidance out, because the conversations need to start now if we have any meaningful chance of actually getting kids back into school safely and having the teachers be safe as well. I guess I still wonder, just as a pediatrician, seeing what you're seeing across the country right now, a lack of leadership, a lack of clear guidelines, a lack of responsible shutdowns, are you afraid we'll get this wrong?
--:-- Nathaniel Beers: I think we would be naive to not be afraid that there will be places that get this wrong based on our current experience. I think that we as pediatric health professionals need to make sure that we were reminding this country that closing schools is more than just missed academic opportunities. There are a large percentage of our children and youth in this country who are dependent on schools for nutrition, social-emotional development, mental health services. All of those, in addition to others, are lost when we provide virtual education. And so if we don't figure out a mechanism to first open schools, we are not going to be successful in addressing the other portions of our economy that need to be opened.
--:-- Nathaniel Beers: And so there are some hard conversations that we have to be willing to have as a country, as leaders in this country, that stem around how are we going to step into the space and acknowledge the needs for facial coverings in order to keep other people safe from us? How are we going to make sure that people understand what the actual recommendations are around physical distancing and cleaning of surfaces to make sure that we can do this as safely as possible? Opening schools is not without risk. And our job is to minimize that risk as much as possible and help families feel like their children can feel safe, help staff and teachers know that their school system is taking care of them and keeping them safe.
--:-- Nathaniel Beers: Because the data shows that children are actually much less likely to spread disease to adults. If you look at family studies out of Iceland, you also have studies out of Australia that suggest that, in fact, in schools, teachers are more likely to get COVID from another teacher than they are actually from a student. And so what we know about the risk for kids has been growing and growing as we look at other countries and the way that they've been able to implement. But it will require some hard decisions as local public health officials at state and federal level about implementation of testing and masking and resources to schools and teachers to make sure that this can be effectively done.
--:-- Nathaniel Beers: Because it doesn't just happen because we announce that we want it to happen. Right. I mean, speaking to Lauren Gardner, the teacher we had in the first half of the show, she's talking about a lack of clear direction and guidelines in the biggest school district in the country, in New York City. I mean, do you see anyone who's communicating well to teachers about how to go about this right now? Are there any positive examples for the country?
--:-- Nathaniel Beers: I think that there is lots of growth opportunity in that space for school districts to effectively communicate with teachers as well as with students and families. I think that school districts have been flooded with information and recommendations and guidance and have been trying to do their best possible to develop a plan. Many parents and families are frustrated with the lack of plans in some school districts. And yet there are parents and families and students who are frustrated by the quick jump to this hybrid model of some kids in school, some kids out of school without clarity about what that means, without clarity about what that virtual education looks like.
--:-- Nathaniel Beers: And so I think that the school districts that are taking their time and being deliberate, we need to give them that space to do it. Do you have faith we'll pull this off, Doc?
--:-- Nathaniel Beers: I think that there are many jurisdictions around this country that are stepping into this hard conversation and are really willing to make some of the hard decisions that need to be made to ensure that we can do this. And there are those that are unwilling to have those conversations and they will suffer accordingly. Dr. Beers is a pediatrician at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. I'm Sean Rameswaram. Today Explained is for the children and the teachers. Protect them, please. Thank you.
