Quick, there’s a fire in your kitchen, and you’ve got to put it out. You can’t use a fire extinguisher, smother it with a…
Quick, there’s a fire in your kitchen, and you’ve got to put it out. You can’t use a fire extinguisher, smother it with a blanket or dump water on it, but I would like to hear your next best options, pronto.
This is essentially the situation for parents staring down the theoretical start of the next school year, as Michigan’s coronavirus numbers creep back up. Every parent I know needs school to re-open — kids need to learn, they need social and emotional contact with other children, and parents need to work — and no parent I know is sure that schools will be safe this fall. Or this winter. Or maybe even next spring.
So, we are discussing all manner of time-consuming and expensive solutions, like dramatic reductions in class size, the installation of safety gear, daily temperature checks and deep cleaning, to impractical ideas like outdoor schools or parent stipends. And, largely, we’re disregarding the one simple way to safely re-open schools, this fall, or over the winter, or next spring: control the virus.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed all manner of fault lines in our society, and we can and should re-think everything, from who receives health care to the inequities in our schools and criminal justice system to how parents are supported, whether at work or in the home.
Kaffer: Wear your masks, because my child needs to go to school this fall
More: Eastern Michigan University is already testing new coronavirus safety plan
But in the short-term, we have to restore the nation’s most important institution: our schools.
And that means frequent handwashing.
