This IS a change in direction for the health agency that seems to have a political push….
The agency was VERY cautious about in-school learning up to now….
Small children do not get vaccinated and there have been different points of view about close quarters for student’s in schools.
Grade school student’s spend hours IN class…..
It is impossible for them to keep masks on all the time….
Virtual learning had been wide spread…
But the negatives in that for educational, social and school mangment actions has been severe…
One gets the impression that this change has come from the top and the President and state officials have moved to restart the economy and the CDC has been told to join the crowd…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidance on Friday urging schools to fully reopen in the fall, even if they cannot take all of the steps the agency recommends to curb the spread of the coronavirus — a major turn in a public health crisis in which childhood education has emerged as a political flash point.
The agency also called on school districts to use local health data to guide decisions about when to tighten or relax prevention measures like mask wearing and physical distancing. Officials said they were confident this is the correct approach, even with the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, and the fact that children under 12 are not yet eligible for vaccination.
The guidance is a sharp departure from the C.D.C.’s past recommendations for schools, bluntly acknowledging that many students have suffered during long months of virtual learning and that a uniform approach is not useful when virus caseloads and vaccination rates vary so greatly from city to city and state to state.
The issue of school closures has been an extremely contentious and divisive topic since the outset of the pandemic, and advising school districts has been a fraught exercise for the C.D.C. Virtual learning has been burdensome not only for students but also their parents, many of whom had to stay home to provide child care, and reopening schools is an important step on the economy’s path to recovery….