On the day before school resumed this past August, when the COVID-test positivity rate in our West Texas community was soaring past 25 percent and th

First, You Decide That Kids Belong in School

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2022-01-27 18:00:08

On the day before school resumed this past August, when the COVID-test positivity rate in our West Texas community was soaring past 25 percent and the local paper’s headlines trumpeted the rapidly worsening situation, my elder daughter, who was entering the fifth grade, told me she couldn’t wait for classes to start.

It was only August 2, weeks before the Midland Independent School District would ordinarily have opened. But in an effort to mitigate the academic losses associated with one and a half disrupted years, our public schools wanted more face-to-face time with students. Ready to coax and cajole my summer-loving children out the door, I was unprepared for my daughter’s enthusiasm. She was glad, she told me, that school would be back to normal. From her perspective, COVID was over.

This wasn’t true, of course. Unbeknownst to her, the coronavirus was again straining our local hospital that very day. Now, as the Omicron wave has yet to crest in much of the country, the virus remains a daunting threat: At the local hospital, which draws patients from around our region, an average of one patient a day has died in January with COVID on their chart.