Schooling through a Pandemic

This Denver Post cartoon got at the fears of many students and teachers - would closures in the fall of 1918 mean year round school and no holiday breaks?

The health risks of a potential opening were seen as equally consequential: As Utah’s state superintendent of public instruction Dr. E.G. Gowans put it bluntly in the Deseret Evening News on December 30: ”We do not know whether the reopening of schools is going to sacrifice some children’s lives or not, but this we do know, that there could hardly ever have been a time when the daily health inspection of the pupils was more important than it is right now.”