Safe, A Meaningless Word During a Pandemic

 Dear Superintendent and School Board Members,

March 14, 2021

Please halt this madness now, before it is too late. Reopening our schools now would be reckless, irresponsible and potentially deadly. Any claim that children do not significantly transmit COVID-19 and that schools can be safely reopened now is a lie. The most accurate and honest thing anyone can say is that with consistently effective mitigation efforts, the risk of infection and death can be reduced. Furthermore, all claims of “safety” refer ONLY to the “safety” of students and staff, but completely ignore the impact on community spread. But most significantly, the studies used to justify reopening schools are based on outdated studies of the wild type (original strain) of covid and tell us little to nothing about how the UK variant will affect students and staff.

Fallacy #1: All The Scientific Data Show That Reopening Schools is Safe This is simply untrue. What the data show is that school infections continue to happen, even with mitigation efforts, but that student deaths and hospitalizations are low compared with adults in the community at large. This is NOT safe. Safe would mean parents can trust that their kids won’t get sick or hurt at school. This is NOT something we can honestly promise them. 

1. More importantly, these studies ONLY look at the effects on students and staff, NOT on how schools contribute to community spread outside the schools. This review of international government interventions, in Nature Human Behaviour, showed school closures as second only to barring small gatherings in reducing community spread. 
2. The Journal of the American Medical Association published this study showing statewide school closures in the United States resulted in a 60 percent decrease in COVID incidence and mortality. 
3. This recent study in The Lancet looking at the impact of closing schools in 131 different countries, found that after one month, school closures were associated with a 20% decline in the reproduction number (the average number of people infected by each new case of SARS-CoV-2), while reopening school sites was associated with a 20 percent increase. 
4. In Michigan, where much of the state has resumed in-person instruction, schools are now the leading source of new COVID-19 outbreaks.  

Fallacy #2: The Current Science is Relevant 

1. All the studies saying that opening schools is safe are based on outdated research on the wild type (original strain of covid). But the British variant B.1.1.7 has grown from 1-4% of the viruses in the US analyzed four weeks ago to 30-40% now (over 50% in Florida). Therefore, the recommendations made by the CDC and other health agencies is based on outdated data and can NOT be trusted. 
2. What we do know about the UK variant is that it is significantly more infectious in school settings, significantly more contagious to kids, and substantially more deadly than the wild type. Therefore, reopening the schools now, with this strain on the rise, would not only be unsafe, but criminally irresponsible.  
3. It is 40-80% more transmissible overall, which means that when kids do pick it up at school and bring it home, it will spread much more quickly in the community, causing a sudden and sharp jump in the county’s daily infection rate, bring us quickly back into the purple tier and force us to reclose within a few weeks of reopening (or sooner).  
4. Europe is currently struggling to contain their third wave of the pandemic, caused by the more infectious and deadlier variants, and by reopening their schools and permitting public gatherings.  

There is no amount of money that Governor Newsom can give the district that would justify risking a single student getting sick, let alone dying. No amount of money that would justify contributing to the next surge, as reopening would likely do.  
 
We cannot make reckless and irresponsible decisions based on the loudest screams, coming from a minority of privileged families. When close to half our students are choosing NOT to return to the classroom, we should take that as an indication that families do NOT think it’s safe. And the number of returning students will likely decline sharply after the first week when they realize that in-person school is NOTHING like it was before the pandemic, when they realize just how onerous and unpleasant it is to stand in long lines just to get onto campus, to be fully masked for 7 hours straight, only to continue doing the same Zoom lessons as before. 
 
Mr. Superintendent, school board members, please stop ignoring the studies that say schools are unsafe. You do so at your own peril. When students and family members start getting sick, hospitalized and die, the lawsuits will follow. We cannot give any families what they really want in terms of a normalized classroom experience. Consequently, the angry complaints, the screaming and ranting, possibly even the threats, will continue, even if you continue with this reckless drive to reopen the schools.  
 
The only thing we can truly guarantee our students and families is that no one will be sickened or killed by our schools IF and ONLY IF we keep them closed and continue with Distance Learning until the pandemic is under control. 
 
Thank you again for your time and consideration,