Fuck no. It's among the worst possible ideas one could have. School should be online only. If lower-income families need help for devices/internet, give it to them. It's simple!

Got to say I’m with NightlyPoe on this one. Education over the internet is not effective, and children are damaged more by not going to school and having their much needed regularity than they are at risk from this virus. Also, there’s opening schools and “opening schools”. You don’t have to reopen schools and have it be the free-for-all madhouse it usually is. It is possible to regulate where which children are when, have teachers keep their distance and do a little crowd control if you are creative. That’s how they did it here anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAxeA9eiB9g

I think this video says it all.

1. There have been many people, including one of the largest school districts in the nation, that have reported how online learning failed. I was a teacher until last school year and I've got plenty of teacher friends. Many students use it as an excuse to not do work, and I've got teachers I know that are working 10 hour days basically pleading with their students to do their work. This is not sustainable.

2. Safety is most important, I agree, even if education is lost.

3. Why not? There are tons of illnesses throughout history that herd immunity developed. And the "projections" on when we will get a vaccine (and if that will even be impactful again a virus that will probably have mutated by then) are not encouraging.

4. For how long? It's already been like half a year for the hardcore stay at homers. Now we are looking at a second shutdown. How many more semesters, or potentially years? Are we going to do this for literally every widespread virus going forward (which come like every 2 years, H1N1 gen. 2 is on its way already)? Is half of our lives going to be spent in our homes? People will go stir crazy. People, like me with anxiety disorders, will and are really hurting from that kind of isolation. I'm sure suicide rates are quite high. People need physical, in person, out of the house interactions and activities. If it's not for long that's one thing, but half of a year or more is really hard for those of us with high stress levels.

5. Uh, what? There are tons and tons of people that have gotten this thing, many with no symptoms (and therefore no way to really report it). The data doesn't reflect those people, skewing it to make it look like there is a higher death rate. Most people that get it seem to be asymptomatic or close to it.

Virtual class rooms are just the way to go. It's the compromise and the best option. Issues like "They won't be able to socialize as well" or "They will fall behind" are not the priority here. This is an actual life/death situation that has a threshold for getting worse over time the less people listen to reason. It really sucks for a lot of reasons and a lot of people, but this is the situation. This virus is already set to be a leading cause of death in the US. And right now we're in a much better spot than we could be once winter comes around. "Winter is coming" now seems more relevant than ever. Side bad joke: This is GoT Season 8's revenge >.

It sounds simplistic because it is simple. Priorities exist, for example dead kid worse than kid who had to repeat a grade. Those things are not equal and they should not be treated as equal options.

You're also forgetting that it's the teachers that are most at risk here. You know what's bad for education? Having a bunch of dead teachers that didn't need to die. Sacrificing human lives so that children don't have to slightly adjust their learning schedule sounds like a pretty despicable thing to say.

Not surprising to me that Japan has reopened things. I tried to compare the cases and deaths per capita in the two countries and Japan wasn't even on the same scale because the total is almost two orders of magnitude less in cases and deaths than in the US. If the US was in the same place Japan is I'd be pretty comfortable opening schools too. 

Yeah I don't know anyone personally that's been affected either but that's more a stats game even if 1.3% of our population has had it at this point I just don't know enough people for that to sink in. 

I understand what you mean about it feeling like something far away. I'm in a state that got hit early so thankfully we're not in the thick of it currently, but our schools are still taking it slow because there's nothing stopping the infection in other states from getting here. 

It's a tough scenario because we've built a society around the idea of public school as a means to let both parents go to work, and not every family has at least one parent that can work from home during these times. That's more an indictment of the policies in the US than the school teachers who would prefer not to die for their profession. 

Yes. Simple as that.

No, it's not safe for the adults working in those schools, let alone the parents and grandparents of those kids, then of course the wider community after that