ATLANTA — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says strong evidence supports the idea of returning to in-person learning safely.
But some in the field of education point out that this path will be harder for some schools - and educators in those schools - than others.
The CDC said they can’t force schools to reopen, opting instead to create a plan to do so safely.
But 11Alive spoke to a kindergarten teacher and head of the Georgia Association of Educators who said she would prefer it if the guidelines were a mandate.
“We want to follow the science,” Lisa Morgan said. “Every educator wants to be in the classroom with our students.”
The CDC recommends these major steps: masks, physical distance, handwashing, cleaning schools, testing, and contact tracing.
Some, like Atlanta Public Schools, have said they’re already doing these things. But Morgan said that’s not the case with every school system.
“We do have school systems here in Georgia who do not require everyone in the building to wear a mask when they are in that building,” she said. “We have school systems who do not implement social distancing, they have full classes of 25, 30, up to 35 in high schools."
The guidelines also call for improving ventilation which could be as simple as opening a window. But even that’s not always easy.
“A great many of our school buildings, due to security concerns, no longer had windows that open,” Morgan said. “So, that does make the ventilation a challenge.”
And that means improving the ventilation systems in schools – which costs money.
Therefore many educators are hoping a $130 billion economic relief bill aimed to help schools reopen passes through Congress.
The other big piece of the CDC guidelines is vaccinating teachers. The agency said vaccinating teachers is not a prerequisite to reopen schools. Morgan agrees.
“Even once educators are vaccinated, we are still going to need masks and social distancing, hand washing, the ventilation, the contact tracing and the testing, because our students will be the last ones to be vaccinated,” she said.
Another part of the recommendations tackles what happens if there’s an outbreak of COVID cases in the community.
The CDC suggests elementary schools can go hybrid but said that middle and high schools should go all-virtual because older students are more likely to transmit the disease.