The Disaster of School Closures Should Have Been Foreseen

Summary

School closures during COVID-19 were effective in controlling the pandemic but caused unintended disruptions, including financial hardship for families, increased home transmission risks, and lacked a clear strategy for reopening schools. Without a structured exit plan, reintroducing normal routines was challenging, and lessons from past pandemics like H1N1 highlight the importance of strategic planning to avoid long-term societal impacts. The article underscores that while closures were a health measure, they also had significant social, economic, and political consequences due to reactive responses rather than comprehensive preparedness.

Additional Summaries

Of the many mistakes made in the COVID era, none were as glaring as prolonged school closures. The school closures that would be implemented the following month—and that endured through the end of the school year in nearly all of the roughly 13,800 school districts in the United States, in regions that had wildly different infection levels—showed this directive was not followed. A 2011 paper by researchers from Georgetown assessed the decision making behind—and the consequences from—several hundred brief school closures enacted during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. With prescience, and comic understatement, the authors noted that school closures would be among the “most controversial” elements of the plan. Although the initial school closures may have been justifiable (even if off-script in many locations), there was no plan on when and how to reopen.