Harvard Researchers Issue Reopening Guidance For School Districts

BOSTON, MA — Schools planning to reopen in the fall should follow guidance based on the number of new daily COVID-19 cases in its district or county, Harvard researchers said in a study released Monday. The guidance issued has four levels — green, yellow, orange, and red — to correspond with numbers of new cases and priorities schools should have for reopening. Schools are also encouraged to look at neighboring districts’ and counties’ numbers.

Any recommended school reopening hinges on the school becoming “pandemic resilient learning spaces,” meaning they have upgraded outdoor air ventilation and filtration systems, distancing, and proper sanitary and hygiene procedures.

Districts with the lowest risk fall into the green category, meaning that there is less than one daily new case per 100,000 people in their district or county. The experts say schools in this category can reopen fully, as long as buildings meet the resilience standards.

The yellow zone has a slightly greater risk, with one to 10 new cases per 100,000 per day. It has three priorities: first is the return of in-person instruction for grades K through 5 and special education grades K through 8; second is reopening for grades 6 through 8 and special education 9 through 12; last is the opening of a hybrid system for high schoolers, where only a subset of students can be in-person at a time.

The orange zone, for districts where 10 to 24 new cases are reported daily per 100,000 people, the first two priorities are the same. In this category, however, grades 9 through 12 never return to in-person instruction.

Completely remote education is recommended for schools in the red zone, which includes areas where there are more than 25 new daily cases per 100,000 people.

The guidance stated that the best way to reopen schools would be to wait for a suppression of COVID-19, to “near zero case incidence.” The suggestions put forth are the second best option, the report said, as it is not possible to wait for complete suppression.

In addition to watching the number of cases in the district, schools should also watch the trend of case numbers, the report says.

The guidance, issued by the Harvard Global Health Institute and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, has recommendations for creating “pandemic resilient teaching and learning spaces” at the district, state, and federal levels. It includes assessing how much adaptation will be required to make classroom and hallway spaces safe, creating pods of students to minimize transmission, and creating networks to share information at the district and state levels.

The federal suggestions include: purchasing and distributing laptops for remote learning, providing hazard pay for staff in yellow and orange zones, giving access to disability benefits for staff in yellow or orange zones who cannot relocate to a green zone, testing adults in orange and yellow zones, and investing in building upgrades for both short and long term pandemic resilience.

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