When the omicron variant forced District 97 schools to go remote for a couple of days, it might have seemed like the wrong time to consider changes to our village’s and district’s COVID mitigation policies. However, now is the time to plan for spring, and plan without getting stuck in either/or thinking, nor becoming single-mindedly focused on the risk of transmission.
Although the country has divided into camps, we don’t need to be. We can both increase our efforts to reduce spread, say, by purchasing high-quality masks for students, as well as recognizing that some mitigation methods aren’t worth the social, emotional, and/or academic costs to our students.
This is critical because at this point, two years in, we know that COVID isn’t going to completely disappear in the near future, even for vaccinated people. It may not get better. We are developing practices and habits for the long-term, and some habits aren’t worth the cost of doing them. Other practices do work; we need to make them easier to do or more effective. For our children particularly, any activity or prohibition that reduces their social, emotional, or academic development brings short-term and long-term costs. These costs often disproportionally harm students from families with less resources, leaving them at a further disadvantage.
In that spirit of rejecting either/or thinking and embracing holistic evaluations, I propose we:
- Encourage vaccinations with fun incentives and increased convenience
- Purchase KN95 masks for students to wear during the school day
- Let students play and socialize outdoors without wearing masks
- Reintroduce group work into the classroom
- Increase the amount of time students play and study outside
- Accept rapid test results so that students and staff who have recovered from a non-COVID illness can return to the classroom faster
- Host large-scale outdoor events to celebrate our students and connect our school communities
In this way we can both facilitate a great spring for our students while managing risk to students, staff, and our community.
Conor Gallogly
Oak Park