Physician support for full reopening of WNY schools

March 7, 2021
To New York State Legislator,
On behalf of Western New York physicians, and parents, I am writing to you to plead our case to fully reopen WNY schools 5 days a week. The Erie- Niagara Superintendents Association eloquently wrote to the Commissioner of New York State Department of Education a few weeks back. We would like to echo their statements that opening our schools is necessary, important, and safe.

The last time the schools received any direction from New York State on reopening guidelines was back in July. The purpose of this letter is to acknowledge that as infection rates have continued in a downward trajectory over the past weeks, the Department’s guidance to school districts should change to reflect this. We would also like to share our concerns about the academic and non-academic costs to children of intermittent (hybrid programs), or fully interrupted (fully remote programs) in-person school attendance.

The knowledge base of experts in public health about the transmission of COVID-19 in schools continues to expand as the relative benefits of non-pharmacological mitigation strategies (masks, six feet of distance, hand hygiene, etc.) are coming into clearer focus. We also have to be realistic about the potential benefits that would be immediately conferred on our students by returning them to daily in-person attendance.

Among the current understandings that weigh heavily on our collective minds and hearts:

• According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the “physical distance between desks should follow current public health guidance, and desks should be placed at least 3 feet and ideally 6 feet apart.”

• Dr. Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings Program and an associate professor at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health stated on the topic of physical distancing in schools that “the rule should be three feet for child-to-child interaction.” He went on to say that “the combined efficacy of two children each wearing a blue surgical mask is 91% immediate exposure reduction” and that exposure reduction increases even more by just opening the window by a couple of inches. He made these comments in this WFAE-Charlotte (local National Public Radio affiliate) in support of opening schools without a six-feet physical distance requirement.

• While the CDC does not consider vaccination of adults who work in school settings a prerequisite for in-person school attendance, recent projections make it seem likely that most school employees in New York State will have the opportunity to be fully vaccinated by April 30.

• Young people would have much greater access to important on-demand mental/emotional health supports. As you know, students who suffer from mental illness are more likely to consider suicide, or to engage in other self-harming behaviors, when they are isolated from peers and kept away from the mental health professionals and other caring adults at school.

• Greater access to in-person learning at school returns children who suffer from abuse and neglect in their home to their safe place. As you know, it is school-based adults who are most likely to report child abuse and neglect, and they are best able to do so when schools have the students in their physical care each day.

• Students are far less likely to be engaged in high-risk behaviors, like alcohol and drug use when they are in school five days a week.

We recognize that the closure of schools in the early weeks of the pandemic was prudent and necessary, given our lack of knowledge of this novel disease. However, recent studies have shown that the K-12 school setting is not the high-risk environment for the spread of COVID-19 that had been originally feared. School reopening policy should be determined by applying accepted scientific and epidemiological evidence. Per the NYAAP social distancing in schools is also desirable, but there is no evidence to support requiring six feet of distancing between masked individuals. Furthermore, a study of Massachusetts data indicates no substantial difference in cases among students or staff with 3 versus 5 feet of distance since schools reopened.

Schools should be treated as essential services, and should be the first entities to reopen following improvement in a community’s disease incidence and spread. School closure should be the last strategy employed as a community wide mitigation technique.

We implore you on behalf of the health and well being of our children to vote to reopen schools fully now based on the science that we have learned over the past year. Opening our schools is necessary, important, and safe.

On behalf of Western New York physicians and parents,

Amanda Werthman-Ehrenreich, MD
Emergency Medicine Physician