Parents have been anticipating this news for days, if not weeks: School districts across the country are closing to prevent further spread of the coronavirus, or COVID-19. On Wednesday, Seattle Public Schools became the latest, and one of the largest, districts to announce that students, faculty, and staff need to stay home.
“Closing schools is the last thing we ever want to do, but, obviously, this is an unprecedented situation,” Seattle school superintendent Denise Juneau said in a press conference announcing the two-week closure to begin today, according to the Seattle Times. “The health and well-being of our students and staff is one of our top priorities and that’s a primary reason for the decision, but it’s also because of the potential wide reach COVID-19 can have.”
The city has been seeing a growing number of cases, leading to many disruptive factors, including schools having to deep clean every time there is a possible exposure to the virus, and teacher absences rising to 10 percent this week. Seattle Public Schools serves more than 52,000 students. Other area districts have also closed, affecting hundreds of thousands of students.
This follows temporary closings in other large school districts. The Elk Grove Unified School District, the largest in Northern California (serving more than 63,000 students) announced it would be closed this week after a family in the Sacramento area tested positive. The district said the closure would count as spring break instead of the planned holiday in April. In Atlanta, Fulton County Public Schools (which serve 96,000 students) closed for two days this week to allow for cleaning after a teacher tested positive for COVID-19. And in Fairfax County, VA, which serves almost 189,000 students, schools will be closed for the day on Monday, March 16, so that faculty can train to teach students via distance learning.
You can find a detailed map and list of school closures, updated twice a day, on EdWeek.org.
Meanwhile, Seattle has said it will not provide distance learning to students because too many families in the city do not have access to computers. The schools are, however, putting a plan in place to distribute meals at 50-60 locations for the students who rely on school meals, beginning on Monday.
School lunches are one reason many districts in the U.S. are waiting until absolutely necessary to close.
“Almost 30 million kids a day rely on government subsidized school meals,” Joel Berg, CEO of the nonprofit Hunger Free America, told EdWeek. “If schools are shut down for weeks at a time, we’re going to have a serious child hunger crisis.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the school lunch program, granted Washington state a waiver to provide meals in other settings through June. In the absence of other plans to feed children, some are encouraging people to start donating to local food banks.
Still, it’s becoming clear that closing places where large groups of people gather may be the only way to slow this pandemic. In the meantime, please continue to teach your kids proper hand hygiene and stay safe out there!
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