The Edjurist - Information on School and Educational Law

Schools are closing all over the U.S. because of the Swine Flu scare. Fort Worth entirely shut down for 10 days. Schools are also closed in Chicago, California, Utah, Arizona, Austin, Houston, New York.

As of today, the Washington Post has 300 schools nationwide closed (up from 100 yesterday) based on Department of Education data. Thus, literally hundreds of thousands of students are not in school right now. Of course, that is only the United States, Mexico has shut down its school system entirely.

The Department of Education has published guidance for school administrators. There is some good stuff in there and let me highlight a couple:

The health and safety of a community comes first. We can't lose sight of that.
Monitor your illnesses in your school. Call parents, ask if they went to the doctor, what did the doctor say, etc. Just stay on top of it right now.
Wash hands. We should be doing that all the time, but this is a good teaching opportunity about the importance of this basic step. Also, stress to your cleaning staff to pay special attention to places that students frequently touch like door handles.
Check your districts to make sure there were no students in Mexico in the last month or so. But, if there were, not only do you need to be concerned about exposure, but you also need to make sure they are not bullied by other students. Even students of Mexican descent may be targeted, so keep on top of that.
No masks. If a kid is sick, send them home. Don't have everyone in the school wearing masks. No one is learning anyway at that point so you might as well have them at home.

But, the recommendation to close schools if someone in the community who may or may not have had any contact with schools goes too far in my opinion (disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor - I am a ed. law scholar, take my advice only for what it is worth, which isn't much). Back to my point, the school closure decision is excessive unless there is a true outbreak in the school community because once a decision to close a school is made, the DOE recommends keeping the school closed for at least 7 days. That is a major disruption on the level of Christmas break, and any good educator knows how much knowledge is lost during Christmas break. With it being the state exam time of year, such a break would absolutely devastate test scores (why we are in such a position to worry so much about test scores is a different post). Of course, test scores pale in comparison to the health and safety of our communities, but as of now we seem to be handling this pretty well in the United States.

My concern is that the DOE is basing a lot of their decisions on the CDC, and the CDC seems to think closing schools is sort of a good idea in times like this. Children are labeled "amplification points" for viruses and the "social distancing" treatment theory starts with kids and distancing them from their peers - in the hopes that kids will keep families from interacting so much. If I were an M.D. and looking at this only from that perspective, absolutely schools should be closed. But I am an educator and I think it is reasonable to ask why are schools first on the list to close? Is what we are doing less important than business? In any downtown skyscraper, like the one my wife works in, thousands of people are also all breathing the same air, why is that less important to close?

Closing these hundreds and probably by next week thousands of schools is just going to be a major burden on our education system and really hurt kid's learning. I know the CDC is the expert here, but from their perspective recommending the closing of schools is an easy call, with little ramifications. I just think educators need to be especially vocal about the costs of closing schools right now because someone needs to be making an argument to keep these kids in school.