Editorial: Opening schools safely means everyone pitching in

When can schools open up?

That has been the question on everyone’s minds for months.

The coronavirus pandemic shut all Pennsylvania schools in March 2020. Some reopened in the fall, but it was a very different experience than kids — or educators — usually handle while studying math or learning parts of speech.

Many were continuing the online education that started during the spring. Others went back and forth — sometimes in planned efforts to mitigate the numbers in the buildings at a time and sometimes in response to positive covid-19 cases in those buildings.

But as the first semester came and went and vaccines were approved and began to be distributed, anticipation has grown. When would school be back to normal again?

It is important to realize those are two different questions.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out guidelines for reopening schools. They were the kind of thing that could either excite or alarm because they do pave a clear path for getting kids back to their desks.

They point to data that says students — especially younger children — can be educated in person, but not in a return to February 2020 practices.

The recommendations emphasize all of the things that have been pushed by experts for 11 months as the keys to getting through the pandemic: hand-washing, mask-wearing, distancing, testing and tracing. With those in place, and in communities with lower spread, a return to school could be done safely.

The part about “with those in place” cannot be overstated. This cannot continue to be a fight between what is recommended and what is demanded.

Students don’t just lose educational opportunities while they are at home, learning in ways that maybe less efficient than their traditional science labs and collaborative social studies projects. They have also lost their community and that is important to consider.

“So many of these kids are experiencing mental health issues,” Penn-Trafford Assistant Superintendent Scott Inglese said. “They really need to interact with their peers.”

Penn-Trafford high school seniors had the option of returning to traditional, five-days-a-week classes starting last week. Greater Latrobe School District sent elementary students back in January and expanded to secondary last week.

It is a way for a district to wade into the waters of a full return with some students rather than diving in with all of them. That sounds smart — like an open-book quiz to prepare for a midterm test.

It isn’t just a good idea because it allows the school to figure out what works and what doesn’t as it implements the return. It is also a positive because it helps demonstrate forward motion can be sustained if only everyone does their part to make it happen.

That changes the question significantly. The most helpful way to phrase it is: “What can I do to help schools open safely?”