A Dozen Ideas to Get Schools Open in the Fall

There are ways to make this happen. But we need to get creative.

For those of you, like me, with young kids, summer vacation has started. It’s a very different summer vacation than what we are used to — with camps across the country closed and many of us still working from home.

But it’s time we turn our sights to the school year to come. It’s clear to me that the lynchpin of any type of economic recovery rests with getting kids back to school — it simply is not feasible for many of us to work while our kids are at home. And no, I’m not an economist, but Emily Oster of Brown University is and she has been sounding this alarm for months now.

And while we’ve all gotten better at remote learning over the past few months, I’d be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to argue that the quality of education is as high via zoom as it is in person.

So how do we get kids back to school? I have been somewhat disappointed by the guidance put out by the CDC and even the American Academy of Pediatrics, which uses relatively broad and sometimes vague language — providing a lot of wiggle room.

The CDC for example says that when transmission in the area is minimal, schools should “Work with your local health officials to determine a set of…