What to Do About Schools

News today. New York City will delay opening vaccination megacytes at Yankee Stadium and City Field because of vaccine shortages. The city will miss its goal of one million doses by the end of January. The city received about one hundred thousand fewer doses last week than it had expected from the US government. Mayor build A. Blasio said the city is equipped to vaccinate five hundred thousand people a week if it gets a supply increase. In the meantime,

it's rescheduling appointments. US Infectious Disease Chief Anthony Faucci said he's worried about a push to delay administering the second dose of COVID nineteen vaccines at a world economic form panel today, Faucci said it's best to give shots in line with the schedules outlined in clinical trials. Fiser recommends a second dose of its vaccine after three weeks, and

Moderna has a four week interval. Faucci was concerned about the efficacy of the vaccine if those intervals were stretched, and said that delaying the second shot could also give rise to more mutated forms of the virus. Finally, the UK reported the lowest number of new cases since the middle of December. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said his government would start considering which measures could be relaxed at the

beginning of next month. The indicators hint at an impending peak in the number of deaths being reported each day, which last week hit a record. There are still thousands of people on mechanical ventilation and UK hospitals are still under significant strain. And now for today's main story. President Joe Biden has vowed to reopen most u S schools in his first one hundred days, but that could ignite clashes among teachers, their unions, and parents over how to

do that safely. Petitions and potential teacher strikes loon even while parents watch children struggle online. I spoke to Nick Carrillo, who reports that the issue has been one of the toughest pandemic challenges for local policymakers. Across the US. School systems look vastly different right now. Some are entirely online and others are back in the classroom. President Biden has announced his intention to reopen the majority of US schools within his first one hundred days. But how is his

administration planning to achieve this? Yeah, it's a great question, and I think it's one that's on every teacher's mind. Um, this has been a really complicated issue for policymakers and education advocates, and it's been very different district to district, county to county. Biden has basically promised to roll out federal guidelines to help schools kind of answer the question, you know, how quickly can we reopen, when should we

be thinking about reopening, and how safe is it? This in practice is going to look like help from the federal government in terms of testing resources, It's going to look like best practices in terms of social distancing for the schools, what triggers they should really be using to kind of decide when to reopen and send teachers or

students back into schools. And they've also asked FEMA to release funding to help teachers and schools pay for UH needed equipment to make it safe to return, like PPE or testing. And so, what have been some of the reactions say by teachers to this announcement. You know, it's a good question. I would say that the national teachers Unions are broadly in support of what Biden rolled out last week. These were executive orders signed towards the second half of last week, and for the most part, they

were pretty vague. I mean, they haven't quite yet explained what that guidance will be. It was really just a promise that the guidance is coming and that there's going to be funds made available to the schools. So there's nothing too controversial and what we've heard so far from the Biden administration, but he has pledged to work towards reopening a majority of US schools within his first one

hundred days, and depending on how quickly that happens. And you know, what the COVID situation looks like in various places, it does set the stage for something that could become potentially complicated we've seen in Chicago teachers unions are pretty close to striking UM as a result of being asked to return to schools and what teachers in their unions have deemed potentially unsafe. New York has had complications going back in practice, is a really tricky issue for the

Biden andrustration to nail down. Let's get into that a little bit more specifically. I mean, what really are the fears that say the teachers unions have identified about whether or not the classroom is safe to return to. The big fear is that teachers are going to be asked to return to schools and it's going to be unsafe.

There is a lot of research about this, and for the most part, we haven't really seen really dangerous situations in classrooms or you know, strong outbreaks linked to classrooms. Of a large majority of cases in schools are usually acquired by teachers outside the classroom, and most students are

less likely to contract severe COVID symptoms. But that being said, the vaccine rollout has been complicated and a lot of teachers are being asked to go back to school as we speak and may not even be able to get the first shot UM. It varies state by state kind of how high and the pecking order teachers are about

when they're going to get their vaccine. And if you're an elderly teacher or someone who has a pre existing condition or some sort of co morbidity, it makes sense that they would be concerned about, you know, even a

small risk that a teacher might contract the virus. And what has been the response to accusations that essentially schools have not provided the necessary say testing or tracing that simply the extent to which schools um are potential transmission sites just is unknown, and we don't really have the information needed to assess whether or not we can reopen

schools safely exactly. This is a really big point that the Biden administration wants to address, is that schools without really comprehensive contact tracing and testing systems in place aren't able to say definitively what the situation with coronavirus is inside their building. So in New York they've been testing quite religiously. I think last week they did over three thousand tests and they didn't find any single case of coronavirus.

But not every state or district has that kind of capacity. In place right now to do so many tests so frequently, and it's really not a sure answer as to whether or not the schools are safe without that now. As part of the announcement regarding his plans for schools, President Biden has also, of course, recently announced his pick for Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona. What we know about his views regarding either remote or in person learning and the

reopening of schools. It was speculated that Miguel Cardona was picked partly because of the role he played in Connecticut's reopening. We don't know that for sure, but in that role, he was the state's Commissioner of Education before becoming the nominee for Secretary of Education, and he was a strong advocate for school reopening along with the state's governor, but didn't go so far as to mandate Connecticut schools to reopen. Instead, they allowed the districts a bit of flexibility to decide

for themselves, and of course some did, some didn't. I think New Haven Schools just opened last week for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. It's complicated. I think he did get a little bit of pushback from certain districts or teachers who were made to go back. But he has done this once before as at a state level. And do we know anything about the say, prioritization of teachers in the vaccine rollout. Is there a chance that more teachers will qualify for being say, front

of the line to receive vaccines. There are states that are really pushing teachers quite high on the list in order to get them vaccinated as quickly as possible, in large part because a lot of state leaders see school real opening has a huge hinge to the recovery of their economies. Allowing students to get back into schools with some regularity would free up a lot of parents who otherwise aren't able to go into their work or have complicated work schedules. So it does vary state by state.

In New York, I think teachers are in Group one B, which is alongside some essential grocery workers and people over the age of sixty five, and they are actively being inoculated right now. But it's difficult, you know. I've talked to a couple of teachers who have have their appointments canceled or are unable to get a slot. I spoke to one teacher in New Jersey last week who is being mandated to go back into two in person teaching and hasn't been able to get a shot. So it's

not perfect. Teachers are getting vaccinated, I think, as quickly as states can vaccinate them, but it's just a huge lotistical challenge for these districts and teachers to get everyone vaccinated as quickly as possible. Now, the opening of schools within his first one days is a very ambitious plan. Many think that we are not going to be seeing a normal school system or a school year really until the start of the next school year in the fall. I mean, how do you respond to to those who

think that this is really quite a distance off. I guess it kind of depends what we think normal is. I mean, there's nobody really in education that is not eager to get students back in schools in some capacity. You know, Virtual learning has really been quite difficult for a lot of students, especially UM students of color and low income students who are you know, more likely to be UM without digital devices or without strong internet access.

There have just been complications left and right. And I think there's about a third of students in the US who since the beginning of the pandemic, have never set foot in a classroom, and right now, I think about fifty pcent maybe a little bit less, are currently doing virtual school. So Biden's goal to get a majority of schools in person, we're technically not that far off from it. I mean, there are a lot of places in the country where students are doing in person or some sort

of hybrid situation. But presumably if he's talking about opening a majority of those that have yet to reopen, that's really tough. And there are going to be some schools with strong social distancing protocols or um maybe a B schedules. It's going to be a mishmash of policies and what these reopenings look like, and for sure that it's going to look very different from you know, what we think of as normal in person schooling pre pandemic for quite

some time. That was Nick Corrello, and that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review at a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify it's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Tophor foreheads Magnus Henrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main

story was reported by Nick Corrello. Original music by Leo Sedrin. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Levi. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.