This is what school can look like amid the coronavirus pandemic. Students attend classes four days per week, with groups of students alternating weeks of in-person and online instruction. It’s a pilot program the Connecticut school district designed to catch kids up on reading and help iron out the kinks for the fall, when millions of Americans hoped to send their children back to school. Kids would be able to learn, see friends and be with their classmates; their parents would be able to go to work. Even in a raging global pandemic, public-health experts say in-person schooling is possible, and classrooms have reopened successfully in countries across Europe and Asia.
But in much of the U.S., that’s not what will be happening. In recent weeks, more and more districts have announced that schools will reopen only remotely this fall. Money and time are too short to sort out the complicated logistics as the pandemic worsens in many states, spreading at rates that make in-person instruction too dangerous.
