Over the 20 days of March 2020, 55 million American children stopped going to school as Covid-19 swept the US.
What was impossible to predict at the time was that millions of students would not return to classrooms full time until a year and a half later in September 2021.
Children and teenagers in democratic local public schools often stayed online at home while private schools, childcare centers, conservative local public schools, office buildings, bars, restaurants, sports arenas and theatres bouncing back towards normalcy.
Five years later, the devastating effects of the pandemic on children and adolescents are widely recognized across political spheres. School closures were not the only reason the pandemic was difficult for children, but research shows that schools remained closed for a long time, further collapsed behind students.
As measles and avian flu cases appear, what happens if another health crisis arises? How will school leaders and lawmakers make decisions in the face of new, unknown pathogens?
“It's very important for Democrats to have a retrospective on this episode,” said Jake Achinkoros, a representative of the suburban Boston district, who represented Democrats in Massachusetts, who said some schools had been closed completely or partially for a year. He argued that during the pandemic, his party “overindexed” the views of teacher unions and epidemiologists, often calling for a slow and careful approach to reopening schools.
The extended closure “crystallized the way the party failed to govern,” Auchincloss said.
In some ways, it's easier to move to online learning now that almost every school offers its own laptops and tablets for its students. And where schools remain closed for a long time, some people in power, including health authorities and leaders in local teacher unions, say they support the decision they made at the time.
Still, in interviews with more than a dozen health, education and politics leaders, including those who were key figures at the time, he said he would take a different approach in the future and would try to avoid extended closures across the district.
“Yes, I've learned a lot from now on,” said Randy Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a powerful force in democratic politics.
Her national coalition includes many locals in the urban school system, such as Philadelphia and Chicago, that have been shut down for a long time during the pandemic. Some union members fought to keep buildings closed until the district was able to obtain vaccines, tests, ventilation upgrades and other safety measures — even after classrooms in other parts of the country reopened.
Weingarten defended the right of members to work safely and emphasized the importance of ventilation, but said he would strive to make it clearer in the future that “children must be a priority.” It includes in-person instruction, she said.
“I thought it was pretty loud,” she added. “I'll be even bigger.”
Conflict Advice for 2020
Education and health leaders doubt that it is right to close schools in March 2020, when many were unknown about Covid-19.
But at the beginning of the summer, there was a brief moment of evidence pointed out for a careful reopening. Classes have resumed overseas, with research showing that the spread of the virus within schools is limited. It has been shown that children tend to be less susceptible to the virus than many adults, and that young children are less likely to spread the disease.
The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a report in June 2020 recommending that schools reopen. Republican-run states such as Texas and Florida have advanced plans to provide in-person guidance to families who wanted it.
However, thousands of schools in the vast majority of democratic states, including California, Oregon, Washington and Maryland, remained closed or partially shut for a year.
Policymakers who played a role in these decisions argue that applying evidence from overseas is difficult due to several factors, including high infection rates in the US, a decline in masking consensus, and limited availability of virus testing.
Politicization of the pandemic also played a role. President Trump repeatedly called for schools to reopen, and many Democrat officials and advocacy groups fought for stricter safety measures and more federal aid to schools.
Furthermore, conflicting advice from health experts has caused confusion.
The Centers for Disease Control sometimes recommended greater precautions than the Academy of Pediatrics, including maintaining a six-foot distance between desks. In the summer of 2020, state health agencies like California advised schools remain closed in areas with high case levels. This was almost everywhere.
The California Department of Public Health declined to answer questions about this article's approach to school closures.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, said following careful public health guidance is the right approach and that she will follow again.
“All we had to do was listen to infectious disease experts,” Pringle said.
She noted that infections and mortality rates were higher in low-income communities of color, and that many parents preferred to keep their children home.
“You try to make the best decision with the information you have,” she added.
Sean O'Leary, a University of Colorado pediatric infectious disease expert and lead author of the Academy's report, recalled that some teachers opposed the recommendations in the report by pointing out that it is located in low-income urban neighborhoods, pointing to the sealed windows of busy classrooms, HVAC systems and schools.
Teachers argued that reopening of schools was dangerous and organized outdoor and masked marches to demand that classrooms be left empty until the speed of virus transmission fell to essentially zero.
Dr. O'Leary said it was clear at the time that those requests failed to consider what he called “the bigger picture.”
“What are the downstream consequences of closing schools?” he asked. “Is this the right decision for society?”
Local officials who wanted to reopen schools have sometimes discovered that their plans have been replaced by the governor and state health officials.
Heidi Sipe, director of Umatira, Oregon, is a rural district serving primarily Hispanic and low-income students, remembering that in the fall of 2020 she released a video detailing her complex reopening plans for her district.
“It was devastating for us,” she said. “The challenge was the trust of the lost organization, because many of our families lost their faith.”
Oregon's school strategy is a more broadly reflecting a careful approach to the virus in many democratic states. “I'm overall proud of our reaction,” said Dr. Dean Seidelinger, state health officer in Oregon., Oregon noted that COVID mortality rates within the country are low.
However, research suggests that closing schools is not a key factor in slowing the virus, especially after other parts of society are up and running. More people have died in some Republican areas, not because the schools were open, but because they didn't wear masks and were not vaccinated.
Do leaders make different decisions today?
Almost everyone in education admits that the expanded school closure is damaging. Academic performance has plummeted and has not recovered. The student absence rate is twice as high as post-pregnancy levels. And with remote learning, children have surged even further onto the screen, moving away from learning and playing in the body world.
But even today there is no broad consensus on whether long closures are necessary.
Seattle public schools superintendent Brent Jones said he “doesn't apologize” for his system's 18 months of virtual and hybrid learning.
“I thought it was a forced opportunity to back off,” he said. “Frankly, we were asked to expand our mission to include many other things, such as nutrition, social, emotional, mental health, and more. There was a cry for support. The school stepped into that gap.”
Seattle also invested in ventilation, which they said would help keep classrooms open during another pandemic.
In some other cities, especially in older school buildings, ventilation remains stuck.
“We assert that the building is safe before it is occupied,” said Arthur G. Steinberg of the Philadelphia Teachers Union, who have not yet updated the HVAC system in dozens of school buildings.
Still, he and others said they tend to consider closures of schools on a building-by-building basis, rather than pushing for a system-wide shutdown.
Stacey Davis Gates, chairman of the Chicago Teachers Union, admitted that some municipal schools “maybe they were fine,” but noted that they tend to be from a more affluent area.
“How do you continue to create policies that alienate people who have been alienated for years?? ” She asked in an interview late last year..
In future crisis, Weingarten, leader of the National Union, said she will encourage local unions to come up with their own safety plans and be creative in order to educate their children directly.
If there is no proper ventilation for the school building, she said, “Then you will find other buildings in the city.”
Still, politics, not logistics, may be the biggest obstacle in future health emergencies.
Public trust in science and schools has broken during the pandemic and remains low, especially among Republicans. The governor and state leaders were once again able to split along partisan boundaries. If anything, in the last five years, American views on vaccines, public health and education have only become more divided and politicized.
Some of the mistrust sown by the pandemic has spilled into other areas of education.
Discussions about schools often focus on race, gender and how American history is taught today. Republicans are pushing for new state laws to provide public funding for families to send their children to private schools. The number of children nationwide using some form of private school voucher has doubled since 2019 to over a million.
On both the right and left, partisans say these trends may not have taken off without the widespread anger and frustration that stemmed from how educational facilities handled Covid-19.
Public health experts warn that guidance for future health crisis will depend on certain illnesses. Future pathogens are far more dangerous to children and teachers than Covid-19.
“I don't know what's coming,” said Sean Barson, the director of a school in Harford County, a suburb of Baltimore. However, based on what he has learned over the past five years, he said “our threshold for closures has probably been higher.”
