Was returning to in-person learning before the end of the first nine weeks and during a pandemic beneficial or harmful?
While in-person learning has many benefits for students and can enable teaching to be more efficient, we still have the same concerns as when the district made the decision to switch to virtual learning in August. Numerous new policies and procedures, from desk cleaning to masks and after-school building-wide sanitization of commonly touched surfaces have been put in place to limit the potential spread, but are they enough?
The risk of exposure to COVID-19 increases significantly while in a school building or in public in general. Writing in The Independent, journalist Jack Peat found that, on average, a school desk has 400 times the number of germs as a toilet seat. According to the sanitation company SafeSpace, students come in contact with approximately 152,300 germs in a single school day. Despite the precautions, returning to school with these figures in mind gives us pause.
Students, teachers, staff and their families are in danger of contracting the virus every time they enter the building. We believe that the original plan to delay the return to in-person learning until at least the nine week point was prudent. We think that the decision to change course may have increased the risk level of everyone in the school, along with those they come into contact with.
Many students have part-time jobs that can endanger them and their classmates further. These jobs are often in the food service industry. According to the company EcoSource, there are approximately 185,000 germs in each food service environment. Students may inadvertently bring an infection from a workplace into the building, increasing the exposure of everyone in the school and anyone they in turn come into contact with.
This poses the question: Do the pros outweigh the cons of returning to in-person learning?
The answer, in our view, is no. Despite the administration’s commendable efforts to enhance our safety, there are too many risks and concerns that are just as valid today as when the decision was made to switch to virtual learning.
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