Washington Post piece highlights how schools that did 'less' to contain COVID 'flourished'

A Washington Post article highlighted the Lewis-Palmer school district in Colorado Springs Monday, concluding that their doing "less" to contain COVID-19 and keeping schools open meant students "flourished."

The piece, authored by D.C. education reporter Perry Stein, noted that teachers and teachers unions across the country, especially in cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, fought to keep schools closed and continued with virtual learning throughout the pandemic. 

"But, over time, these measures also imposed costs: Today, students are contending with significant learning loss and mental health issues," Stein wrote. 

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The article added that despite there still being an ongoing debate on what the right thing to do was, "the experience of systems like Lewis-Palmer offers evidence for those who say schools could have avoided some of the prolonged closures — and the serious academic and social impacts that came from them." 

The Washington Post reported that the school district supported early decisions and studies which "found that children under 10 didn’t transmit the virus at high rates." 

The school district did close its doors in March 2020, much like schools across the U.S. did as well. 

"They learned online for the remainder of the academic year, and teachers quickly saw many students’ progress slow," the article said, adding that students became depressed and anxious. 

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Education experts and concerned parents sounded off on how school closures have affected children at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference.

"You hope that, even with the delays we're seeing, the older children, some of the extreme emotional problems, that there will be a way through that," Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway told Fox News Digital. "But, that's why it's really just horrific what we've put young people through, and all these … I think a lot of the people that are making the decisions are protected from it. They were wealthy enough, or cloistered enough that they didn't feel the ramifications. And particularly when we're talking about poor children who don't have resources at home, it just breaks my heart to think about what we put them through." 

Both Republicans and Democrats have agreed that the adverse effects of school closures could be felt for some time. A group of politically diverse parents recently shared their children's unfortunate stories on "Face the Nation." A dad who identified as a Democrat, for instance, said that the school closings resulted in a "nasty mental health crisis." 

"My middle child is going to college and they, at colleges, they really have a nasty mental health crisis – it's not made up," the father, Alejandro, said.

School officials talked to parents in the district and determined that a return to in-person instruction in the fall was necessary, according to Stein's reporting.

"School system officials surveyed parents in July and determined that more than 60 percent said they were ‘very likely’ to return to in-person learning. Fewer than 10 percent of families said they were ‘very unlikely’ to return. More than 60 percent of teachers, who are not unionized, felt confident the school system could reopen schools safely; just 15 percent disagreed," the article read.

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Over 5,200 schools across the country closed during the first week of January after a surge in COVID cases due to the omicron variant. Homeschooling increased from 6.5% in May 2020 to 8.5% in May 2021 as many parents who were working from home full time struggled to keep up with their children's curriculum as well. 

The Washington Post reported that the school district encouraged mask-wearing for kids under the age of 10, and required they wear them only in the hallways. They were permitted to take off their masks in the classroom. 

"We wanted it to be as normal as possible, and children wearing masks is not normal," Chris Taylor, the president of the Lewis-Palmer school board, told the Washington Post. "The focus of the board was to give parents as much choice as possible and children could wear masks if they wanted."

The article noted that politics still played a role like it did across the U.S., with some parents fighting for harsher mask requirements and others calling for no masking. Overall, the school district didn't report any massive COVID outbreaks.