As we edge into the dog days of summer, we’re also creeping toward fall classes, and the only thing people are sure of is they’re not sure about sending their kids back to school. And in the backdrop of massive virus spikes in the South and West, come renewed calls to make a decision on whether schools should open in the fall. Calls for school reopenings will be our main topic for this week as there are a variety of stories, from daycare to doctorates under debate. With school looming, an op-ed in the New York Times noted, provocatively, it’s jobs or kids. You can’t have both.
College
The higher ed business model has already left many institutions in deep financial trouble, a situation only exacerbated by coronavirus. While administrators have been hoping to reopen in the fall, they’ve met resistance from public health officials and their own faculty. Writing in the Los Angeles Times back at the end of June, Heidi Li Feldman, a Georgetown Law professor, warned that universities would attempt to cover their liability through consent waivers or arguing mere attendance waived their faculty’s rights. Her warning has proved prescient as more faculty and staff raise concerns about the feasibility of cramming 50,000 students and thousands of faculty, dining and facilities workers, and administrators into campus.
Budget cuts are already affecting professor’s livelihoods. The struggle for adjuncts to get better pay has been attacked in recent months. At CUNY, 2,800 adjunct professors were laid off, and responded by filing a lawsuit arguing the layoffs were in violation of the CARES act. Meanwhile, for junior researchers and early-career academics, a hiring freeze could spell doom for their careers.
K-12
Moving down to the K-12 system, things look a little better. In many school districts across the country forced to shut down in March, the results of the switch to online teachers were nothing short of disastrous. Poor American’s lack of technology and internet access, already a huge problem in the US, has made teaching online difficult which has led to students falling behind. Some are hoping that the failures of the spring can be smoothed out, but, as odd as it feels to write, teaching is only one concern. With state and local budgets in real danger of deep and dramatic cuts, there are real questions about whether schools can Covid-proof schools, and, if the US’s general failure to combat Coronavirus suggests anything, it’s that it’s unlikely. Like college faculty, public school teachers are in a real bind about concerns of safety weighed against shelter and food.
Parents
Parents and children are faring little better. We’ve made it a habit of ringing the alarm bells on this one, but the news does not get better. Parents are deeply divided on whether reopening is best. If schools don’t reopen, parents who are required to be working will face even more difficult decisions (something that has been the subject of several FFCRA lawsuits). And for parents who are able to work from home, companies may become even less forgiving as the pandemic drags on. It has affected productivity and wage-earning already, and may have dire consequences for long-term impacts on children.
