How about we only open schools for in-student learning when it is safe to do so. There is a very successful model --- nearly all the countries in Europe from this fall who followed clearly defined safety measures. Of course the first hurdle for the U.S. is that the local positive test rate (7 day average) must be below 5% --- nearly everywhere in the U.S. this positive test rate is above 5% thus it is not safe to open schools. Get your local community spread down and enact proper safety measures in your schools then your kids can go to school with minimum COVID risk.
The data from the EU clearly demonstrates how to safely open schools without having large number of COVID cases among the staff and students -- unlike the U.S. which tried to open schools without decent safety precautions and endured 10s of thousands of cases.
Trying to judge school openings strictly on the number of students who died is completely idiotic. There are many students enduring long COVID. We shut schools in the U.S. for polio which did not kill many students -- they merely enduring long term effects. Ignoring the staff members hospitalized and dying from COVID while parroting the "prove they got it at school" right-wing talking point is absurd.
