With COVID-19 cases across the country on the rise due to low vaccination rates and the spread of the Delta variant, the question of having another distance school year is looming. However, the Education Secretary for the United States, Miguel Cardona, has made his message for schools simple: students need to be in classrooms.
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In an interview with NPR, Cardona talked about the importance of learning in-person rather than in a distance model.
"That's where students learn best," Cardona said to NPR. "Schools are more than just places where students learn how to read and write — they're communities. They're like second families to our students."
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On Monday, the U.S. Education Department released its plans for the return to school this fall. It will encourage districts to invest in social and emotional support for students while also outlining ways to "accelerate academic achievement."
The plan will focus on five key components to return education to a high level. These components include vaccinations for students over the age of 12, summer learning, schools reopening safely, mental health support, and addressing lost instructional time.
"The release of the Roadmap builds upon President Biden's call to increase vaccinations among adolescents as students go back to school," the U.S. Department of Education said in a press release.
Whether or not students' smiles will be seen this school year is also in question as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends that students, staff, teachers, and visitors in K-12 schools wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order last week that bans schools from mandating students to wear masks. Unfortunately, this will make the Department of Education's road map more difficult in Florida and other states where similar laws are in place.
Legislators in Texas, South Carolina, and Iowa have also passed laws banning schools from forcing students to wear masks.
"I know that there are some folks making decisions that are less based on science and more on their ideology," Cardona said. "But at the end of the day, our educators, their job is to make sure our students are OK. We have to make sure that we're following mitigation strategies and creating safe learning environments for students."
Schools are responsible for communicating with families hesitant to send their students back to the classroom, Cardona said to NPR. If schools are not doing the right things to make families comfortable, then "what's going to happen is those families that don't feel comfortable will not be sending their children to school."
School leaders are "going to be running up against challenges from elected officials. And that's sad, and that's unfortunate," Cardona said.
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School districts in states where mask mandates cannot be enforced still strongly encourage students and staff to wear them when indoors. South Carolina's biggest school district, Greenville County Schools, is one of these districts.
District spokesperson Tim Waller shared with NPR that all they can do at this point is encourage it.
"The legislature has passed a number of provisions which have tied the hands of school districts in South Carolina," he said. If an outbreak happens and students and staff are forced to quarantine, then, "It is my hope that elected officials who have placed these restrictions on public school districts in South Carolina will do the right thing and ease up on some of those restrictions."
The roadmap will give districts across the nation a plan for returning students to in-person learning to ensure that they receive the best education possible while also being safe from the coronavirus.
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