The Trump administration should observe the reopening of classes overseas and apply what they see fit for US schools.
Reopening of classes overseas a failure
As the Trump administration pushes its way to reopen schools by Fall, they are faced with criticism for not having a suitable guideline for US schools. Education experts advise the Ministry of Education to observe the reopening of classes overseas and learn from their experience.
The Trump administration relies on scientific data saying that children ages 18 and below are less prone to the virus compared to other age brackets. But, the actual scenario in the reopening of classes overseas says otherwise.
Several cities that opened classes early without providing proper COVID-19 guidelines resulted in the further outbreak of the virus. Taken as an example is what happened to Israel, they’ve reopened their classes along with the easing of restriction of social gatherings. The end result was a student increase of COVID-19 cases in the country.
Even though the mortality rate in children is far less compared to older individuals, medical data shows children suffering extremely with the onset symptoms of the virus.
Safe reopening of classes
Good news, there are countries that successfully reopened their schools without triggering a domino effect on the cases of COVID-19 in their area.
Denmark and Norway successfully resumed classes without an increase in their COVID-19 cases. Younger students were the first to be allowed to report back to schools, with limited class sizes, social distancing measures, and constant sanitation being a part of their precautions.
Masks and sanitizers were a must. Class size was also reduced to 12, which are scheduled for different sessions per day.
If US schools plan to reopen their schools, they should make sure proper guidelines and implementation will be followed to ensure student’s safety.
Just recently, a teacher from Arizona died of COVID-19 and infecting co-teachers during a shared summer class at their school.
