There's lots of conversation going on about reopening schools. Many different plans are being discussed and parents are struggling to decide whether they want their kids in school this fall. There is some disagreement about what the actual risks are, but really it is more a problem of how comprehensive the solutions can really be, and what is an acceptable amount of risk as weighed against what is possible.
What is possible? That is an interesting question as the answer is ultimately about available resources. That's a real whammy for public schools because most of them didn't have sufficient resources to accomplish what they were already doing. If schools were in a hole to begin with how are they supposed to take on orders of magnitude more expenses in order to mitigate the COVID risks?
Without a vaccine, mitigations tend to either be about distancing, PPE, or hygiene. It seems a given that all three are needed, but I've yet to even hear speculatively what "safe" school would cost. Most of the discussions seem to start with what is possible within an existing budgetary framework, or within a cost structure based on what funds organizers think can be obtained. As with many arguments in contemporary American discourse this conversation is tilted before it begins.
We need to convene a panel of docs, teachers, and facility managers and hash out what safe school would look like without applying the constraint of budget. Without that discussion we can't really frame just how woefully inadequate the proposed solutions likely are.
Start with distancing. Stipulating everyone gets to return and we are to have 5 day a week school it would seem (and I am guessing here) that most classes need to drop in size to about 1/3 their "normal" size. I put that in quotes because we should recognize that most classes have likely been too larger all along. Gib5on's kindergarten class was 28 kids. That is "normal" but I would think is at least a few too many. With proper social distancing it feels (to me, and I am still making this up) that what we consider a normal classroom probably ought not have more than a dozen students in it. That's more like 1/2 than 1/3 but it seems like a reasonable assumption for what is only a thought experiment.
From there it would seem there should be some obvious an unrelenting math. 1/2 the kids in the room means twice as many rooms. Twice as many rooms means twice as many teachers. I suppose there might be some kind of split shift solution available with half the kids doing morning/afternoon and half the kids doing afternoon/evening, but that still requires either a hell of a lot of overtime or twice the number of teachers - and likely a custodial crew of substantially larger than existing size to turn the spaces over.
So right from jump we need double the budget for faculty (oh, and we have to find a whole bunch of teachers). We also need a substantive real estate acquisition budget to pick up or rent additional space. I surmise that there might be decommissioned schools that could be brought onto the board here, but they would also require funds to get them operational again (as well as calendar time to do the work to prepare them).
I can't do it, but someone could put a number on that, right? Probably needs to be a big number.
PPE... Multiple masks for every student and staff member in every school in the nation. Gib5on likes to chew on his mask. He's going to need a few, and he needs a replacement mask even if he doesn't bring one from home. Either that or the policy has to be to send a kid home if their mask gets lost, destroyed, or rendered ineffective. That's a lot of parent calls. Hand sanitizer for every room in every building.
Someone could put a number on that, yes? I mean I can't but I bet there are people that can. Probably for this issue one would also have to determine that there are that many masks and that much hand sanitizer available. It does seem like manufacturers have really ramped up mask production and these masks don't need to be N95 masks, so maybe it is possible. Hand sanitizer has been harder to come by.
At work they're redoing a bunch of the filtration in the HVAC systems. Hospitals rejigger many of their spaces to be negative pressure volumes. I don't know if that would be necessary for school buildings, but I do know many public school building are so old that they don't so much have ventilation systems to upgrade. Big number.
On top of all of this schools would need a significantly increased cleaning tempo and the rigorousness of that cleaning also would need to be increased a great deal. Bathrooms potentially need to be cleaned after every use. The same is true about any common area: gyms, cafeteria tables, library tables... door handles; and any common equipment: computers, athletic equipment. Some of those things could I guess be temporarily phased out. Custodial departments, normally a handful of people would need to be a legion. More money for people, more money for gear, more money for supplies.
The crazy part is that the last two bits: PPE and Sanitation are part of most of the solutions already being proposed. I wonder to what degree these things are planned to be provided - and what the contingencies are for when necessary items are not available.
This neglects any backup plan for students that test positive and need to be out two weeks, or for staff that test positive and need to be out for two weeks. Two weeks assumes ultimately the case clears up quickly. In reality many of the people could be out for much, much longer. Students being set home need technology for distance learning, and the teachers in their classrooms need to be able to simultaneously teach in the room and online, so that is more equipment in each classroom (or a separate infrastructure to teach students at home). There will also have to be a large supply of substitutes available, or teachers need to be able to teach from home while quarantined. More gear in the classroom for a remote instructor, and probably at least a teaching assistant in the room to keep things moving along while the classroom teacher is on a screen.
Oh and by the way... that last graph assumes frequent and quickly returning testing. To be truly confident we'd need a daily, instant test. There is apparently a test with a one hour result window that could be administered at home prior to coming in - although that neglects anyone someone might contact getting from home to school. Some logistics there to be figured out even if the tests are available. One test per day per person for every school in the US? Big number.
What did I forget? Buses. Need WAY more buses. Have to clean the buses every day, maybe twice a day?
When people talk about how it is safe to reopen the school they are likely saying they have determined there is an acceptable level of risk to reopening. They are certainly not saying the risk has been eliminated. Even if we did everything above the risk wouldn't be zero.
Even staying home the risk isn't zero.
Still, I would like to know what the number is to maximize the available mitigation and how that number compares with some of the other bailouts. I mean, this is without question a huge number. But the legislation being tossed around has 12 zeros to the left of the decimal. If we've got that kind of money to allocate then maybe we can make a real dent in the risk we're assuming at school.
