How The Back-To-School Debate Can Make Or Break The U.S. Economy?
Florida’s largest teachers’ union sued to halt the state’s plan to reopen schools this fall schools reopening plans are all over the map literally and figuratively US economy would lose about 1.2 per cent off GDP, if schools closed through January Barclays estimates half of the likely voters in Arizona and 52 in Florida say it won’t be safe to physically go back to school tens of millions of kids in k-12 were estimated to lack either the devices or the internet connection to do effective at-home learning as September draws closer the entire united states.
Debating the best way to restart the school year in the new covet 19 eras resuming in-person instruction remains a complicated decision that requires economists’ public health officials federal state and local governments to work together to find a solution this video is not arguing that the economy is a more important consideration than health but any choice a community makes about reopening schools will come with serious economic implications so how big of a role does the back to school debate play in the economy and what options are available in the US.
The US economy took a huge hit as a result of the pandemic shrinking by a historic 32.9 per cent in the second quarter because of strict lockdowns and business closures because of the widespread business closures the US the unemployment rate reached a peak of 14.7 in April 2020 before taking back down even now the unemployment rate has reached the highest level in decades as a result of such a dire economic outlook the trump administration and many of his supporters in Congress have made a hard push for schools to completely reopen in the fall we have to get the schools open we have to get everything opens a lot of people don’t want to do that for political reasons, not for other reasons.
When he says openly he means open and full kids being able to attend each and every day at their school just go back to school we can do that and you know you can social distance you can get your temperature taken you can be tested you can have distancing come on it’s not that hard there’s not really a debate over how much schools matter for the recovery of the US economy the debate remains over how quickly the US can safely bring students and teachers back inside the classroom according to a study from closing schools for one month could cost the US economy more than 50 billion dollars or roughly 0.2 per cent of total GDP.
As a result of workers staying home to take care of their children, one survey found that 37 per cent of Americans continued to commute to work during the pandemic and only about 35 per cent of people who were commuting to work before it began to say they can now work from home lower-income households often have workers that don’t have the luxury of telecommuting also you have some households where they’re led by only one person and you can’t provide for the income of your family if you’re not able to work lower-income parents are also more likely to be concerned about their children falling behind in school because of the closures from COVID-19.
some research suggests that for students in low-income areas their progress and online math course work had declined by roughly half after a few weeks of virtual learning students in high-income areas saw a short decline at the onset of the pandemic but they quickly rebounded to baseline levels if someone is a is still in junior the high or elementary school you disrupt that her his or her education you’re ever going to really make up for that and then the other thing is it’s graduates who enter a bad labour market we actually know about that from a number of studies suffer permanent damage to their career prospects and so by not getting this thing under control and giving ourselves.
Probably a year of depressed labour markets we’ve actually done immense damage to the class of 2020.the responsibility of child care also disproportionately affects women one study found that at the height of the social distancing orders in households where both parents work and have children under the age of 13 mothers were forced to reduce their work hours four to five times more than fathers another economic pitfall of keeping schools empty.
Job losses in education job losses in public education during the month of April 2020 are already greater than during all of the great recession it was commonly understood that if the federal government was not going to step up with more aid to stay in local governments that same local government would be faced with a huge revenue shortfall and they were going to start slashing their budgets and part of their lashing their budgets would involve slashing their education budgets which would be education employment what i personally was surprised by has that happened so early before they were even looking at their next budget year their next budget season you saw record numbers of job losses in K-12.
Education employment and that happened across the board in early July 2020 president trump tweeted he would pull federal funding from
schools that decided not to resume in-person instruction in the fall his threat highlighted a serious problem with returning to school how much will it cost how do you make a school safe to attend it costs money now they don’t even have enough money to teach the kids under normal circumstances in many school districts across America and you’re telling them to conjure resources somehow to do something unheard of according to one estimate it could cost the average US school district 1.7 million dollars in additional expenses for the school year.
In order to safely resume classes in person the white house has recommended the senate include 105 billion dollars for schools in the next round of stimulus it would only be available to schools that resume in-person instruction by the end of July 2020 president trump had backtracked slightly on his hard stance that every school must reopen regardless of the community’s transmission rates in cities or states that are current hot spots and you’ll see that in the map behind me districts may need to delay reopening for a few weeks and that’s possible that’ll be up to governors, the decision should be made based on the data and the facts on the grounds in each community.
But every the district should be actively making preparations to open while children are not getting sick at the same rates as adults there’s evidence to suggest that children over the age of 10 could be just as contagious public health experts say making sure the transmission of the virus is under control within a community is critical when reopening schools sending students back to school prematurely could run the risk of overwhelming the health care system in certain areas which could force states to shutter their economies and prolong the downturn.
When you’re in a situation where your hospitals are overrun your morgues are overrun you can’t get enough medical personnel you’re not going to take a step that you know on the margin is going to increase the spread. I mean you can’t argue that opening the schools isn’t going to have some impact on potentiating additional spread, even if it’s just among the teachers but the students themselves the evidence shows that they are vectors they may not be as robust vectors as they are when it comes to the flu.
But they are vectors in some sense so when you’re right on the precipice where your healthcare system is tipping over you might not be able to do this and the so the number one thing you have to do to reopen in schools is getting your spread under control the name of the game is not opening-up but it’s how to safely keep schools open in perpetuity because you can open up but then if you have an outbreak what’s going to happen and now that obviously we’re looking at being able to quarantine individuals that may have been exposed to somebody with COVID-19.
The backup plans in place the united states can learn from how other countries have reopened schools one study found that countries with lower transmission rates such as Denmark and Norway had managed to keep the number of cases roughly the same after reopening school sot her countries experiences show that taking safety precautions at schools is crucial for preventing a surge in cases Israel began reopening schools in early May 2020 by allowing young children to return to the class first the school implemented social distancing measures by keeping children isolated in small groups they called capsules.
So if a child in one group got sick only a limited number of students would be exposed during the initial experiment the virus didn’t spread in any meaningful way that led the government to reopen the entire school district a few weeks later without implementing the capsule method the country then experienced a spike in new cases two weeks later public health officials now say reopening schools too quickly wiped out all of the gains Israel made during lockdown while Israel is a country that reopens schools after containing their spread Sweden is an example of a country that reopens schools despite having a fair degree of community transmission.
Sweden closed schools for older students between March 18th and June 14, 2020, after which all students returned without major adjustment to class size lunch policies or recess rules researchers say antibody testing shows there was a high level of spread among students we also can’t compare the Swedish the population of children to the US we have more comorbid illness among young people in this country more asthma more obesity more diabetes and so there is going to be a higher risk with our school-age population the CDC released guidelines.
On July 23, 2020, for best practices for reopening schools safely which included many of the safety measures other countries have taken these include wearing face coverings increasing sanitation practices such as washing hands and surfaces facilitating social distancing by repurposing unused or underutilized spaces developing plans for what to do when a student or staff member test positive and minimizing contact between students by placing them into small groups similar to Israel’s capsule method the CDC also says that decision-maker must consider the rate of transmission in their community.
When planning the return to school notably, the guidelines do not give explicit instructions about when the school district should close in the event of an outbreak but the guidance does instruct administrators to work closely with local health officials to determine at what point the school should consider closing remember everyone who presents with a respiratory illness everyone who presents with a febrile illness come to fall is going to get is going to need to get rolled out for COVID first that’s going to overwhelm the system so we face a lot of risks heading into the fall and frankly, I think many of us hope we’d be at a better point right now and not have this much infection that we’re bringing into the fall.
Regards
TMS
