Education Week - December 9, 2020 - 7

What Educators
Need to Hear From
Biden on COVID-19
President-elect Joe Biden's COVID19 plan aims to quiet the political
storms that have made it difficult for
school leaders to know how to reopen
buildings and left teachers and families
unsure who to trust about their safety.
But a national health crisis requires
tremendous cooperation and collective
action from the public. Ten months
since the first virus case emerged in the
United States, polls show that Americans' response can often be traced
back to who they voted for, what media
they consume, which federal officials
they trust, and where they live. And
those divisions have been exacerbated
by the Trump administration's contradictory, and at times hostile messaging
on the issue.
Is it too late for Biden to stand up a
more consistent and unified federal
response? In a situation where small
actions like mask wearing seem irreversibly politicized, can a new administration put the messaging toothpaste
back in the tube?
Those questions are high-stakes
ones for school and district leaders,
many of whom have turned to local
authorities to help build credibility
in their communities about their responses to the coronavirus pandemic.
Even as an effective vaccine appears imminent, schools will have to
steer students, parents, and teachers
through months more of uncertainty
about continued precautions, reopening decisions, and, in some cases, fear
of receiving the vaccine.
" People are frustrated. Who is the
definitive source on these really tough
decisions? " said Cindy Marten, superintendent of the San Diego Unified
School District, which has largely operated in remote learning for the fall
semester.
Biden's plan to help schools address
COVID-19 calls for " listening to the
scientists " about public health decisions that may be politically divisive.
He's pledged additional relief aid for
education, and " basic, objective criteria to guide state, tribal, and local officials " in reopening decisions that are
sensitive to the " level of risk and degree of viral spread in the community. "
In a Dec. 3 CNN interview, Biden
said it would be safe to open elementary schools, where children are considered at the lowest risk for severe
illness, if they have the resources for
appropriate safety precautions, which
may take additional federal relief aid.
" We can make it safe for teachers if
we invest in what needs to be done, "
he said.
Biden has also promised to work
with state and local officials to promote
mask mandates in communities that
have resisted them. Without the authority to issue a broad national order,
he will have to rely on his ability to per-

puts on his mask at an
appearance in Wilmington,
Del. The new administration
faces political headwinds
and a skeptical public in
delivering its message on
the pandemic and schools.

suade sometimes-resistant leaders to
go along with his plans.
But epidemiologists and communications experts say he will face strong
headwinds in shifting the federal response, especially after a contentious
presidential race that highlighted the
nation's divisions.

'A Confusing Situation'
Public trust has been frayed because
of a lack of consistent messaging,
which is a key to epidemic response,
said Kumi Smith, an assistant professor of public health at the University of
Minnesota.
In April, for example, the White
House Coronavirus Task Force released reopening guidelines for
schools and businesses. Leaving decisions up to states and localities, the
guidance included " gating criteria "
like declining virus rates, hospital capacity, and testing capabilities before
a region could move into a new phase
of reopening.
But shortly after announcing the
guidance, President Donald Trump
began pushing governors to reopen
their economies in a far less nuanced
fashion, and he later threatened to cut
education funding for schools that
didn't reopen for in-person instruction.
" He frequently contradicted himself or didn't follow the advice he put
out even hours earlier, " Smith said. " It
made a confusing situation even more
confusing. "
Another missed opportunity: At the
outset of a public health crisis, leaders
need to prepare the public for uncertainty, said Glen Nowak, director of the
Center for Health and Risk Communication at the University of Georgia.
That preparation is necessary to preserve credibility when circumstances,
like the scientific understanding of the
virus, change.
Instead, Trump and some state leaders sought to project certainty. That led
to distrust in changing conditions.
For example, federal officials first
discouraged mask wearing to preserve medical supplies early in the
pandemic, but later encouraged universal face covering, a shift that is still
highlighted by some vocal critics of
mitigation efforts. And, after deferring
to state and local officials on school
reopening decisions, some Americans
didn't trust Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert
Redfield when he said recently that it's
safe for children to return to in-person
learning with appropriate precautions,
like social distancing, in place.
Biden, federal health officials, and
state leaders can still set the expectation that recommendations for schools
may continue to shift, epidemiologists
said. Even as the general population
receives the vaccine during a lengthy
2021 rollout, there will be months of

Carolyn Kaster/AP

By Evie Blad

President-elect Joe Biden

gauging whether communities have
reached the level of collective immunity to ease policies like school mask
mandates and social distancing.
The president-elect can also build
credibility through what he doesn't
do, Smith said. For one, he can stay
away from press conferences about
health data and restrictions once he
takes office.
" You never have these messages
delivered by a politician because you
might absorb that information differently based on whether or not you
voted for that person, " she said, adding that it may be difficult for some to
decouple the federal response from
which party is in the White House.

Consistent Guidance
One of the biggest frustrations for
school administrators has been shifting
federal virus guidance that left much of
the decision-making in their hands.
The CDC amended its guidance
after criticism from Trump, leading to
some suspicion of political influence at
the agency. " We are educators, " said
Marten, the San Diego superintendent. " We are not epidemiologists and
virologists who understand the nature
of this disease and who understand
public health policy. "
San Diego follows color-coded state
guidance that relies on virus rates to
determine when to close its schools;
district leaders have planned a gradual
reopening when the region emerges
from the high-risk tier. But the school
system didn't rely on federal guidance
to plan exactly what reopening those
buildings should look like.
Rather, Marten turned to a team of
scientists at the University of California San Diego, including specialists in
airborne illness, to guide an overhaul
of air filtration systems, cleaning, and
other protocols. Working with local
experts helped San Diego to tailor its
plan to its specific needs, and it also has
helped build the credibility needed for
public buy-in, she said.
The plan calls for working with the
university to test up to 10,000 students and staff members a day, using
frequent testing to significantly drive
down the likelihood of transmission.
In November, Marten wrote to the
Biden transition team, calling on the
incoming president to work with Congress to fund a school testing plan nationwide.
" Unfortunately, school districts face
the challenges of reopening during
a pandemic without any meaning-

ful support from the state and federal
government on testing in schools, " she
wrote.
The Trump administration announced plans in September to ship
100 million rapid COVID-19 tests
to states with the aim of supporting
school and business reopenings, but
it left it to governors to decide how to
use those tests. Biden's plans call for
stepped up federal efforts to produce
and distribute tests, and use of the Defense Production Act to produce additional supplies.

'Schools Over Bars'
Beyond guidance for schools themselves, a renewed federal response
could also help tackle community conditions, like super-spreading activities, that make it difficult for schools
to open.
Members of Biden's coronavirus
task force, made up of scientists from
around the country, have said their
approach will prioritize " schools over
bars " in response to realities in many
areas where it is possible to drink a beer
with friends but not send a child to a
school building. But different governing bodies often set such restrictions,
and the political will for tough rules
may be waning months into the crisis.
" You cannot single-handedly reshape the behaviors of 300 million
Americans all at once. There is no
magic wand to do that, " said Monica
Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist and senior scholar at the Johns
Hopkins University Center for Health
Security. " There has to be collaboration and coordination across all levels
of government. "
Biden's administration may not
be able to fully erase the " lines in the
sand " that have been drawn to separate Americans' perceptions of risk
and response to mitigation efforts, she
said. But it can " regain some ground "
by taking an " all hands on deck " approach, Schoch-Spana said. That could
include enlisting celebrities and nonpolitical figures to spread public health
messages and providing incentives
that make it easier for people to make
hard choices, like small business aid
for bars that have to close temporarily
and economic stimulus payments for
people whose jobs are affected.
Another huge community problem?
Receptiveness to mask wearing.
In Nebraska, for example, Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts has rejected
calls for a mask mandate, even after
the state's board of education encour-

aged school districts to adopt them.
Trump has mocked his political opponents for wearing masks and questioned their effectiveness.
" The number one mistake was the
politicization of wearing masks, " said
Bob Rauner, a family doctor and public health advocate who serves as vice
president of the Lincoln, Neb., school
board.
The 42,000-student district started
discussing a mask requirement in June,
Rauner said. Around the same time,
public health officials gathered signatures from 123 pediatricians and local
physicians around the state in support
of mask wearing.
Rauner lamented the lack of federal
data on schools that did open and on
the risk of viral spread when schools
adopt mitigation strategies, like social
distancing. U.S. Secretary of Education
Betsy DeVos has said it is not her role
to collect such data. And Redfield, of
the CDC, recently cited privately collected data from a coalition of education groups on school virus cases.

Effective Messaging
Without more credible, centralized
guidance on the issue, some Americans have passionately resisted calls
for schools to open while others have
insisted with equal passion that they
never should have closed. Some epidemiologists have argued that schools
are relatively safe, but they have lacked
federal data to support their claim.
Chris Eide, the interim director of
Turquoise Trail Charter School in Albuquerque, N.M., believes it's safe for
teachers to return to classrooms with
appropriate interventions. He hopes
that Biden's willingness to show more
empathy and consistency in personal
habits, like mask wearing, will help
build his credibility with educators
who may be nervous about in-person
learning.
The prekindergarten through 8th
grade charter school has started a
phased reopening of classrooms. And
the teachers who have returned have
made the case to their peers that they
have felt safe with precautions like increased cleaning and sealed off classrooms, said Eide, who is also the former director of Teach Plus, a national
education policy organization.
" I think it has to come from the
teachers who have been here and have
felt safe and experienced it themselves, " he said. " I don't think there's
any top-down way for that message to
be effective. "

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Education Week - December 9, 2020

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