But kids are safest in school, per disease-control director.
Remote learning has not been a sound “plan” for students. More like the opposite. But what about the main union contention, safety?
“The truth is, for kids K-12, one of the safest places they can be from our perspective is to remain in school,” then-director of the Centers for Disease Control Robert Redfield said in November.
COVID-19 infection rates at elementary schools in particular have been, compared to the country as a whole, microscopic—0.2 percent for teachers, 0.1 percent for students, according to economist Emily Oster’s database of 5,000-plus K-12 schools. The positive rate in New York City’s program of random school testing—currently standing at 0.52 percent from more than 360,000 tests since October—has consistently been around one-tenth of the overall community positivity rate.
And, observed Redfield, “The infections that we’ve identified in schools when they’ve been evaluated were not acquired in schools. They were actually acquired in the community and in the household….The data strongly supports that K-12 schools—as well as institutes of higher learning—really are not where we’re having our challenges.”
But unions, like murder, will out. We hope.
Meanwhile,
No wonder preference for school choice is spreading. Parents want to be able to predict when their kids will attend school. It’s amazing that teachers unions do not yet seem to understand how much public sentiment is poised to turn against them.
Power is their game.
Blithe Spirit 