President Joe Biden’s team will ensure new guidance on school reopenings

President Joe Biden’s team is promising new guidance on school reopenings next week. But even as more Covid-19 vaccine shots go into arms two and half weeks into his administration, there is growing impatience and frustration among parents about the biggest question looming over their lives: when their children can get back in the classroom.

The issue of school reopenings emerged as a central flashpoint this week as the anger that many parents and teachers are feeling is spilling into courtroom battles and potentially headed toward the picket line in Chicago, home to the third-largest school district in the country. Biden has said he wants to open the majority of K-8 schools within his first 100 days, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the CDC will provide more advice on how they can safely do so next week.

But reopening policies and the readiness of campuses to usher children back through their doors currently vary wildly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction — a legacy of the Trump administration’s decentralized approach to managing Covid-19. And the ability of schools to reopen hinges on the coronavirus transmission rate in each locality — meaning that the CDC’s advice next week is unlikely to offer anxious parents any immediate, one-size-fits-all answers that bring clarity to when their lives will get back to normal.

Even after Biden set his 100-day goal for reopening, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said achieving that goal “may not happen because there may be mitigating circumstances.”

Meanwhile, governors and county health officials are struggling with agonizing ethical decisions about whether to use the scarce doses of vaccine they have to vaccinate teachers while simultaneously rushing to vaccinate adults 65 and over, the group that is most at risk of severe illness and death.

And the administration created fresh confusion this week over the direction its school guidance is headed when Walensky said during a briefing Wednesday that “safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely” — only to have White House press secretary Jen Psaki walk that back Thursday by stating that Walensky was speaking “in her personal capacity.”

Currently, 24 states and Washington, DC, are permitting some teachers and school staff members to get the vaccine.

Taking a cautious line on Friday, Psaki underscored that vaccination programs for teachers will be important but sought to highlight the funding for other school resources that is part of Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief proposal, known as the American Rescue Plan. In addition to scaling up testing and contact tracing, a key element for reassuring teachers that they will be safe as they return to the classroom, the President’s plan would provide $170 billion for K-12 schools, as well as colleges and universities. That money could be directed toward a wide array of mitigation measures including reducing class sizes, modifying crowded spaces to allow greater social distancing for students and teachers, improving ventilation, hiring janitors and even ensuring that each school has immediate access to a nurse.

“We’re looking at vaccines; that’s an important part of keeping teachers and the American public safe. But we also need to look at other mitigation steps… including masking, social distancing, proper ventilation in schools,” Psaki said Friday. “The urgency should prompt Democrats and Republicans … to come together to support the American Rescue Plan so we can get schools the funding they need. Schools are planning, but many of them don’t have the funding they need to take the steps necessary to reopen.”

But many parents are not going to be satisfied waiting to see how Biden’s funding proposals shake out during marathon negotiations in Congress.