BUFFALO (WBEN) - Late last week, some of the nation's leading medical experts expressed that local governments and districts should work to keep schools open for in-person learning despite surging numbers of COVID-19 cases around the country.
As Covid-19 cases continue to surge across the US, Dr. Anthony Fauci says officials should "keep the schools open."
"Obviously, you want to be sensitive to the safety and the health of the children," Fauci adds. https://t.co/3QZJCUIWLb pic.twitter.com/v2mW9sCnWF
— Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) November 20, 2020
"The truth is, for kids K-12, the safest place they can be, from our perspective, is to remain in school," said CDC Director Dr. Robert 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.
"It would be counterproductive, from my point of view, from a public health point of view, in containing the epidemic," Redfield continued, saying that even last spring the CDC did not recommend that schools be closed.
As Erie County residents are well aware, schools districts in areas designated as yellow, orange or red zones are mandated to meet certain testing requirements even though transmission in schools is quite low, especially compared to other places in the community.
"The data around school setting seems to indicate that positivity rates are low," said Hamburg Schools Superintendent Michael Cornell. "In fact, in the memo that we got that indicated the change (in mandates testing that allows schools to test out), (the state's) own data says the overall positivity rate in school settings have remained low to date."
Niagara Falls Superintendent Mark Laurrie agrees that kids should be in school, but he thinks that people are forgetting an important part of the education equation.
"Kids can't be in school without adults," he said. "We have 1,200 adults of varying ages, varying underlying conditions, varying tolerance levels, so it's fine to say that kids should and can be in school - I completely agree - but they can't be in school without the educators and support staff that need to be with them.
"You can't separate the two when you're talking about education," Laurrie continued, saying he expects his district will be within a yellow zone sooner rather than later. "You have to be able to say kids and adults can be in school in order to make that sentence have any meaning in my opinion."
