School reopening is about more than getting kids back into their classrooms. It’s about providing the necessary policies, procedures and financing to enable schools to reopen safely, ensuring that students learn and that educators are able to continue to fulfill their critical roles in children’s lives.
This involves putting in place multilayered mitigation strategies, including contact tracing and community-wide infection control practices. It requires a commitment to transparency and communication between department officials, families and educators. And it requires a willingness to be flexible, as circumstances change.
New York City’s reopening plan, which relies on a combination of in-person and remote learning and intense COVID safety precautions, is an example of this. The plan allows families to choose whether their kids attend in person or via online instruction, with students in buildings only two or three times per week to assure social distancing. The face coverings that teachers must wear to teach in the classroom, nightly deep cleanings and the conversion of cafeterias and auditoriums into classroom spaces are other examples of the rigorous measures. Testing of a random 30% of in-person students and staff is also mandatory, coordinated by the NYC Test & Trace Corps.
Starting her own school wasn’t Emily Niehaus’s career plan. But when her rural Utah town didn’t have an educational option that met the needs of her “2e” (twice exceptional) son, who has both an intellectual disability and giftedness, Niehaus stepped up to create a new kind of public school.
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