The role of schools in a pandemic

The refusal of local school districts to return to on campus learning due to health concerns has called into question the role of schools in modern society. At what point should districts simply free parents to make decisions for their children on their own? Robert Verbrugen reports for National Review.

Schools have been given a dual charge: academic and social. Schools enable parents to work, ease the burden on families, allow kids to gather and interact under the eye of responsible adults, and organize activities that give kids a product outlet for their energies.
The shutdown has been a stark reminder that we've also tasked schools with providing a vast web of social support and services--from health care to counseling to meal service. Just take food. America's schools are a primary source of food for millions of students in the free- and reduced price lunch program.
Given the social purpose of education, this conversation [about what we lose when we shut down schools] should be about more than just lost instruction. After all, most Americans think about their schools--district, charter, or private--as community institutions.
Of course educational leaders need to respect the dictates of public health and protect students and teachers. But when faced with a crisis, medical leaders responded to COVID-19 by scrambling to add ICU beds, acquire ventilators, and care for every patient. They didn't muse that, in four or five months, they might or might not be up to the task.
This isn't time for education leaders to hem and haw. It's time for creative thinking about how best to fulfill the dual mandate with which education is charged. What's passing for distance learning is a shoddy stopgap for addressing, at best, one-half of the mandate. And if leaders in any state or school are not up to the challenge, they should just turn their funds over to families so they can find schools that are.

Read the whole thing: here.

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