School district leaders feel the mercilessness of the Coronavirus Pandemic in ways most of us can’t appreciate. With school just weeks away, they face not only determining what school will look like but also how to retool existing systems to provide it. Whether starting the year with all students in buildings, with a hybrid model with some students in buildings on alternating days, or entirely remote learning, they face a dizzying array of decisions to make, tradeoffs to balance, and details to iron out before day one. With many on morning shows, in the media, and on twitter postulating how local leaders should open, an illustration of the logistical challenges leaders face this fall may be helpful. So let’s look at a simple case: bussing.
This fall, bussing might be the most straightforward in districts where all students return to buildings, but there are major differences this year. Implementing recommended social distancing is a big one. The CDC recommends sitting 1 student per row, or leaving alternate rows empty. Those measures can reduce bus capacity by 50% if students reliably don masks, or by 88% without them. This is an enormous problem since a third of public schools’ students, roughly 15 million kids, take nearly half a million busses to school.
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