On Thursday, Governor Charlie Baker and school officials announced guidelines for school districts to reopen in the fall, putting emphasis on in-person learning with restrictions in school buildings like socially distant desks and mandatory facemasks.
Baker's announcement in a press conference on Thursday leaned on medical professionals who say studies show that children contract COVID-19 at lower rates than adults, and may also not be major factor in transmission, unlike the flu.
Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley said more guidance is yet to come.
Former Education Secretary Paul Reville told Boston Public Radio on Thursday this forthcoming guidance will have a "profound impact" on whether schools can successfully adapt to the recommendations.
In particular, Reville said transportation will be a sticking point for a number of districts.
"The early guidance coming out made it sound like buses would have to operate at 50 percent of their original capacity," he said. "If that's the case in a district like Boston you'd have to basically double your busing capacity. Busing already costs north of $100 million in Boston, they're not going to have $100 million, nor are there sufficient number of buses around there to do that simultaneously, thus you need more buses."
Reville is former Secretary of Education and a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education where he also runs the Education Redesign Lab. His latest book, co-authored with Elaine Weiss, is Broader, Bolder, Better: How Schools and Communities Help Students Overcome the Disadvantages of Poverty
