The Debate About School Safety Is No Longer Relevant

For months, the debate about whether to open schools has centered on one question: Are schools safe? The only trouble is, this hardly matters anymore. Except in the few remaining regions with modest rates of viral spread, the transmission risk from and within schools is now beside the point. So many teachers and staff members are sick, quarantining, or have stepped down that many schools trying to remain open or to reopen just do not have the personnel available to do so well.

The examples are countless. Littleton Public Schools in Colorado, in their shift to remote learning, stated that one of their primary reasons for doing so was that as saying, “Now you have students in the building and not enough adults to cover for the adults that are home for various reasons.” One elementary school near Milwaukee ; Metro Nashville Public Schools has, according to , “had more than 200 teachers or staff members in quarantine or self-isolation each week since the end of October.” In of 217 districts across 30 states, about half reported significant staffing issues—and this was before Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the arrival of deep winter.