So, this topic may interest me more than most of you since I am a teacher.  However, I am curious what you guys think.  This is more directed with the United States in mind with Covid surging dramatically right now.  

What do you guys think?  Should schools be reopening right now? Or should we stick with distance learning? If they do reopen, should it be business as usual?  Or do you think a blended online/in person model is more appropriate?

In some states, maybe. In most, good god no.

It depends on the country. I don't think anyone is stupid enough to argue that's a good idea for countries with thousands of active cases and/or community spread to re-open. Maybe when it is a few hundred in known quarantine.

Personally, I’m really struggling with this. I live in Utah which is one the states with surging cases and my district just came out with the plan to open up full go. Students will wear masks and such, but social distancing isn’t really an option, I have 38 students in one of my classes, lowest is 32...

Basically, I feel nervous for myself, my colleagues, and more importantly my students. There is a much larger population of at risk students then most people realize... I pray nothing happens... but it frustrates me how irresponsible the people in charge are being. With cases surging this isn’t a time to reopen schools... we should be safe above anything. If it is too dangerous for criminals to be in prison, how is it safe for students to be in school?

I'm in the US, specifically California. I definitely do not want schools to open here. And I think in areas that are doing well or are trending down that opening up schools will ensure they go in the wrong direction. Sorry, but 2020 is cancelled. It's a bummer, but it's just a fact. The sooner we can all adjust to that the sooner we can begin to internally cope with what that means. Check out Kern County right now in California. My goodness their graph is off the charts and going the wrong way...and did I mention their hospitals are already at capacity. Drastic times call for drastic measures. And I'm not going to bother in this thread with anyone who wants to tell me the numbers are fake or the whole damn thing is a hoax. If that's where this topic goes, then it belongs in the politics section.

It will spread through the schools and back to homes, infecting the parents/grandparents.
You need low active cases in the community before its safe to reopen schools, and even then you need to follow "common sense" rules to keep it from spreading.

Basically USA needs to get its new daily cases and active cases down to like ~2000 new daily cases accross the entire USA, and active cases down to like ~20,000-30,000.

The problem is the USA has:
2,100,000+ active (confirmed) cases
+70,000 new (confirmed) cases every day.

Thats like x100+ times more active cases than you want, and like x35 times more daily new cases as well (for safe school reopenings, equal to say in denmark).

The fact that a pandemic has become politicized is incredibly sad to me.  I agree with you there...

Nah, we have the technology to have people stay at home and learn that way until the vaccine gets released.

I'm certain anyone in the health sector could tell you they could still be a significant vector of the disease, enough to hamper all the effort that has been done against it. The return of children to schools also inevitably means more movement of adults. 

Still, you bring a good point with the social development of children. Even then, we should at least give time until the end of the year to see how much things improve. 

No. Just hold virtual classrooms for the time being. Pretty simple. Idiotic to re-open.