Should your school be fully open? Here's what the CDC says

Only 4% of the nation’s schoolchildren live in counties where coronavirus transmission is low enough for full-time in-person learning without additional restrictions, according to the guidelines established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an analysis of the agency’s latest figures.

President Joe Biden’s administration has made reopening schools a centerpiece of its coronavirus strategy. And the CDC's recommendations call for every elementary school to be open in some fashion.

But even after drastic drops in the number of new coronavirus cases, few counties in the United States meet the CDC’s thresholds to avoid major restrictions, which are based on both the number of cases and test-positivity rates.

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As of last Thursday, those thresholds put most counties in categories where the agency recommended elementary schools reduce the number of students in classrooms with a mix of in-person and at-home learning. For middle and high schools, the thresholds and data suggest fully remote learning in large portions of the country.

The guidelines include exceptions for schools that adhere to strict safeguards or offer regular testing. They are not binding and say schools that are already open do not automatically need to close.

Nonetheless, the guidelines have been controversial. Some experts have criticized them as stricter than necessary, and some large school districts decided to open under less stringent rules.

Fully in-person learning is recommended in areas where the CDC reports fewer than 50 new cases per 100,000 people in a week and a seven-day positivity rate of less than 8%. Only about one-sixth of America’s counties qualified as of late last week — mostly in more sparsely populated areas across the Plains, the West and the Midwest.

Schools in these areas are still supposed to take precautions, including wearing masks, washing hands, cleaning facilities and keeping everyone at least 6 feet apart “to the greatest extent possible.”

The agency also says schools should make sure students, teachers, staff members and their close contacts who develop symptoms are tested, followed by isolation for those who test positive and quarantine for their close contacts.

Hybrid learning, with some students in school and others learning online at home, is the recommendation when a community has 50 to 100 new weekly cases per 100,000 people or a seven-day positivity rate of 8-10%.

In those areas, the goal is to reduce in-person attendance to maintain separation between students, according to the recommendations, which say the 6-foot separation is “required.” In practice, some schools have reduced class sizes by allowing only high-needs students to attend in person, while other students learn virtually. Others have had students attend part time.

Fully remote learning is recommended for middle and high school students in areas with at least 100 new cases per 100,000 people or a seven-day positivity rate of 10% or greater.

At those levels of community transmission, the agency continues to recommend hybrid learning for elementary school students, citing research suggesting that young children are less likely to spread the coronavirus within schools.

Even for middle and high schools in this tier, there are exemptions. Schools can stay open if “they can strictly implement” all mitigation strategies, including masks and 6 feet of physical distancing, according to the agency. They also must have “few cases” — a level the agency does not define. Schools also can shift to hybrid learning by offering weekly coronavirus tests for students and staff members to detect asymptomatic cases.

Jasmine Reed, a CDC spokeswoman, emphasized that the recommendations were not intended to prevent in-person learning. She said the agency objected to categorizing counties by recommendation level, adding that “decisions about learning mode — full in-person, hybrid, or virtual — at each individual school should be made based on a combination of factors, including levels of community transmission, mitigation, and the number of cases in the school (including individuals in isolation and quarantine).”

It is hard to assess how many schools are following the CDC recommendations. There are about 13,500 school districts in the United States. Many make reopening decisions at the local level.

In-person instruction has been ordered statewide in Arkansas, Florida, Iowa and Texas, according to a tracker maintained by Education Week, though a number of counties in those states — including nearly all in Florida — fall into the CDC recommendations for hybrid learning at elementary schools and remote learning for middle and high schools.

Some districts looked at the guidelines and decided to go a different way. Massachusetts, for example, announced that it would follow recommendations from local physicians to keep students under 12 only 3 feet apart, instead of 6.

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METHODOLOGY NOTES:

School-aged population based on 2019 American Community Survey five-year estimates for 5-to-17-year-olds. Case counts and test-positivity rates are drawn from the data behind the CDC COVID tracker maps. Test-positivity data for most counties is from the week ending Feb. 25, and case counts are from the week ending Feb. 26. When test-positivity and case counts fall into different tiers, the higher tier is used, as described in the CDC guidelines. In some counties, where case counts or test positivity is missing, the single available value is used.CDC test-positivity data closely matches figures in federal community profiles, which note that the data may be missing some tests in Maine, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Washington and Wyoming; that may make the calculated positivity rate unreliable in some counties. The federal government is also investigating discrepancies between federal and state data in South Carolina. Testing data in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas may be incomplete because of winter storms and power outages.