Back on November 28th, 2020, an article titled This state is shutting bars and gyms as the coronavirus surges — but not schools was published in the Washington Post. It is about the state of Rhode Island, and how, having an administration that cares more about the kids than looking good and "controlling" a virus, they have made it a priority to keep their kids attending in-person classes. This is in spite of a high rate of community spread of COVID19, which ironically, is the criteria Kate is using as an excuse to continue destroying our kids mental health and education.

Bars in Rhode Island must close for two weeks starting Monday. Gyms, casinos, movie theaters and bowling alleys will also go dark.

But not Scituate High School — or most other public schools in the state, where Gov. Gina Raimondo (D) has made in-person instruction a priority even as coronavirus cases soar. And so Michael D. Hassell, Scituate’s principal, expects to start Monday as he has for weeks now: happy to be at work but wondering whether he will have enough staff to teach the 130 teenagers who will soon show up for class.

Just four of Hassell’s students — and no employees — have tested positive for the virus this fall. But in a state with rampant community spread, keeping the school up and running on any given day feels tenuous because so many teachers self-quarantine after possible exposure outside school.

“From any dimension you look at it, having schools open in person is better — social, emotional and learning. No one disagrees on this point,” Hassell said. “The question is: When does it become logistically impossible to do that anymore?”

That is a question confronting many U.S. school districts that offered in-person learning this fall, weeks before the coronavirus surge started sweeping through nearly every state. Even as more data suggests schools do not appear to significantly fuel community spread, elected and school officials who favor open classrooms are contending with a spiraling virus that threatens to overwhelm the fragile staffing systems and contact tracing that keep pandemic-era schools running.

As has been noted multiple times before here, even a pediatric immunologist from our own Doernbechers' Children's Hospital had made it clear that kids are not a spreader of COVID19. This same thing has been noted in Rhode Island.

“There is a fair amount of data that schools can be opened safely during the pandemic,” said David Rubin, director of PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which has advised schools on how to open but also to reconsider when their regions’ rate of positive coronavirus test results surpasses 9 percent.

That means community spread in some places may now call for a “last resort,” Rubin said — a temporary move to online education for older students, who more easily transmit the virus and may be better able to manage online learning.

And it's not only Rhode Island that sees this data and is keeping schools open.

But even in the face of skyrocketing coronavirus cases, officials in Delaware, Vermont and other locations are pushing to keep schools open, at least partially. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) shuttered high schools in mid-November but left elementary and middle schools open.

Rhode Island, where statewide test positivity is about 6 percent, is a prominent exception. In an interview, Raimondo said she is “making real-time decisions” on the issue but believes schools “should be among the very last things to close.”

Every time I read that paragraph, I wonder what it would be like to have a governor and head of Dept of Education that actually care about the kids....

And, they even go so far as to point out that kids are actually safer in school than doing "distance learning"

Pointing to state data, Raimondo argues that schools, with their controlled environments, may actually be safer for children: About 1,245 of some 98,000 Rhode Island students attending school at least partly in person had tested positive as of Nov. 21; the state says most cases were transmitted outside of school. In contrast, about 950 of nearly 50,000 students learning remotely had confirmed cases.

A large part of the reason for this push is tha, unlike Kate Brown, they understand from the data the devastation that "distance learning" wreaks on our kids.

“I think there are massive long-term negative impacts on our children for keeping them out of school for a long time,” said Raimondo, whose two children attend private schools that have been open all fall. “Every child deserves that same opportunity. It shouldn’t just be for the parents who choose to and are able to pay tuition. … Throwing in the towel and letting kids stay home for a year and a half to languish — it’s just wrong.”

That is an increasingly mainstream view. A UNICEF report published this month said evidence shows that “with basic safety measures in place, the net benefits of keeping schools open outweigh the costs of closing them.” Citing data that shows infections at schools are often traced to off-campus transmission, Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently called schools “one of the safest places” for children.

Unlike Oregon, with Kate Brown's "two weeks to flatten the curve", which of course, extended with her never-ending "emergency powers" extensions, Rhode Island started planning to get kids back in the classroom as soon as possible.

Rhode Island began planning for in-person school “the moment we went out” in the spring, Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green said. Raimondo centralized the state’s strategy, putting all schools on the same academic calendar, creating testing sites exclusively for students and school employees, and setting up a 24-hour “command center,” staffed in part by the National Guard, that responds to parent and school concerns and troubleshoots problems by conducting school site visits.

Reopening plans were drafted by each of the state’s 36 school districts and had to be approved by the state. The plans vary widely, with some offering full in-person instruction and others hybrid. Parents could opt to keep their children home, so all also offer virtual schooling

Thomas DiPaola, executive director of the Rhode Island School Superintendents Association, said he knew of no districts eager to close schools.

“People overcame some major obstacles and challenges with respect to transportation, ventilation, air exchange,” he said. “Most would hate to see that go by the board. And fundamentally, they believe it’s just better for the kids.”

Of course, there are those who live in fear of a virus with tiny mortality rate.

“If it drives spread, it will drive it into families, into communities, and it puts everyone’s lives at risk,” she said. “We’re literally within like a couple of months of having a vaccine available. It just seems like, why are we risking lives like this at this point?”

But, the schools are doing everything they can to adjust and make the schools as safe as possible.

State officials insist that they aren’t — and that they are adjusting to problems. Infante-Green, the state education commissioner, said the state is training 500 substitute teachers to step in when too many staff members are out. New HEPA air purifiers are expected to be in 6,000 classrooms by the end of the month, allowing administrators such as Hassell to close the windows. A pilot surveillance testing program is about to launch, she said.

And with bars and other commercial sites closed or operating with reduced hours, contact tracers should be able to focus on schools, her department says.

“We will change anything and everything so that schools will remain open as long as they can,” Infante-Green said. “That doesn’t mean they won’t reach a threshold someday. But we are not near that.”

And yet in spite of the mountains of evidence that kids are safer back in school, and that it's better for their short and long term learning, Kate Brown and Colt Gill still refuse to put out kids back in school.