Across the country and around the world….
Official’s are trying their best to return young children back to school to learn and develop socially….
Almost a year into the virus pandemic…
Human’s are learning to adjust….
After a summer of uncertainty and fear about how schools across the globe would operate in a pandemic, a consensus has emerged in recent months that is becoming policy in more and more districts: In-person teaching with young children is safer than with older ones, and particularly crucial for their development.
On Sunday, New York City, home to the country’s largest school system, became the most high-profile example of that trend, when Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that only elementary schools and some schools for children with complex disabilities would reopen after all city classrooms were briefly shuttered in November. There is no plan yet to bring middle and high school students back into city school buildings.
It was an abrupt about-face for the mayor, who had for months promised to welcome all of the city’s 1.1 million children — from 3-year-olds to high school seniors — back into classrooms this fall.
But the decision put New York in line with other cities around America and across the world, which have reopened classrooms first, and often exclusively, for young children, and in some cases kept them open even as they have confronted second waves of the virus.
In-person learning is particularly crucial for young children, who often need intensive parental supervision to even log on for the day, education experts say. And mounting evidence has shown that elementary school students in particular can be safe as long as districts adopt strict safety measures, though it’s an unsettled question for older students.
“With younger kids, we see this pleasant confluence of two facts: science tells us that younger children are less likely to contract, and seemingly less likely to transmit, the virus,” said Elliot Haspel, the author of Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It. “And younger children are the ones that most need in-person schooling, and in-person interactions.”
Districts including Chicago, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia have either begun to bring back only young children or have plans to do so whenever they eventually reopen classrooms….
image….Juan Arredondo for The New York Times