COVID Policies

I think that most of us agree that our top priority is to keep our kids in school. The key to staying in-person is to keep teachers, staff, and students safe and healthy. Luckily for us, this is not March 2020. We now know so much more about how to minimize risk than we did two years ago.

We should:

1. listen to expert public health guidelines to the greatest extent practical,

2. continue to engage in public education efforts,

3. continue to encourage vaccinations and boosters,

4. support a rigorous testing program and

5. continue to mask, preferably in higher quality masks.

These measures should be paired with frequent, consistent, clear, thoughtful, and proactive public communication to ensure the entire community understands not only the policies, but why they are in place.

The way to balance is to set clear guidelines and then move mountains to make it easy for people to follow them. We have to fully consider what roadblocks people will encounter, and then figure out how to remove them. For instance, we should be making it easier to comply with masking requirements by supplying high quality masks to families, teachers, and classrooms.