As infection rates fall and more teachers receive vaccines, the biggest remaining obstacle to reopening schools is the difficulty of clearing students six feet apart, as recommended by federal and state health authorities.
That guidance has meant that fewer children can be in a classroom at the same time, so schools have to rotate students in smaller shifts while others go on to study at home. But new research suggests that a three-foot space between students is enough to prevent COVID-19 from spreading in schools.
Now health experts and many parents are appealing to the California Department of Public Health to review the six-foot guidance, as did Illinois and Massachusetts, as well as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Our testimony shows that schools work just as safely with three feet and not six,” said Emily Oster, a professor of economics and public policy at Brown University, who was among the authors of a study this week.
No significant difference in the infection rates for K-12 students and staff in public schools in Massachusetts was found, whether they implemented the distance of three-foot or six-foot students when other measures such as universal masking were implemented .
And Oster, who watched the reopening of schools through the website covidexplained.org, said it could ‘make sense to relax it’, given the restrictions placed on six-foot distance on school attendance.
This week’s study is not the only study that supports the narrower student spacing in schools. In a January study on personal learning at 17 rural schools in Wisconsin, no teachers were found and only seven of the 4,876 students were infected at the school, and most elementary students studied were between three and six feet tall.
“More than three feet is good,” says Dr. Monica Ghandi, an epidemiologist at the University of California-San Francisco, who, along with a co-author of the Wisconsin study and two other health experts, wrote in a column that the American centers appeal. for disease control and prevention to relax the clues for reopening schools.
Although the CDC and California Department of Public Health do not insist on walking 6 feet in schools, they maintained the distance as ideal. The CDC says ‘physical distance (at least 6 feet) should be utilized as far as possible.’
The latest California guidelines issued on January 14 are for ‘distance teachers and other staff benches at least 6 feet … except where 6 feet distance is not possible after a good faith effort’ and ‘under no circumstances a distance between student chairs of less than 4 feet. However, the World Health Organization recommends ‘at least 1 meter for both students (all age groups) and staff, where possible’, which is a few centimeters more than three feet.
Troy Flint, a spokeswoman for the California School Boards Association, said clearer guidance that makes the narrower space possible would greatly facilitate reopening, and especially to bring children back to school full-time as opposed to the part-time “hybrid” format that the most schools in California used to resume. personal learning.
During a webinar on the recent state reopening legislation, several trustees raised questions about conflicting guidance on distancing, he said. Classrooms usually have 20 to 30 students, and space is limited.
“Determining what standard you use and communicating reasons for it and buying from families and staff in districts was a challenge,” Flint said.
What adds to the confusion is that not all experts agree, as was the case with the pandemic. In the fall, studies have questioned whether even six feet is safe enough, and some have reported that viruses can move in the air 20 feet or more in poorly ventilated environments. The experts noted that the recommendations of three to six feet are rooted in research in the late 19th century on pathogens found in visible respiratory droplets.
Lydia Bourouiba, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who co-authored a August research article on distance learning and an opinion piece, said she would not trust 3-foot distance.
“Three feet is not recommended unless carefully assessed for a specific room, activity and high masking are in place at all times,” said Bourouiba, director of The Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory. “The risk of exposure to the fresh and dense breathing zone of others is three feet too high.”
Teachers’ unions, whose safety concerns have delayed the reopening of the school, are already pushing back in Chicago after Illinois shrank its minimum spacing requirement this week. Claudia Briggs, a spokeswoman for the California Teachers Association, noted that ventilation, mask quality and length of exposure endanger everything.
“We know that the quality of ventilation and filtration in school buildings has been neglected for years,” Briggs said.
But parents who are anxious about the effect of long-term online learning on their children’s education and emotional health are frustrated because government officials are ignoring the latest science and are clinging to guidance that will keep students out of the classroom all week, if it is not quite.
Jolanka Nickerman, mother of two girls in first and third grade at Albany Unified, said her district is already planning one of the region’s most limited hybrid schedules, and that the six-foot pipeline is blurring the prospects for a full reopening.
“If we do not change to four feet,” Nickerman said, “we will not be able to fit all students into a classroom.”