A School Reopens, and the Coronavirus Creeps In

As more schools abandon plans for in-person classes, one that opened in Indiana this week had to quarantine students within hours.

A student at Greenfield Central Junior High School in Indiana tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday, the first day of school.Credit...AJ Mast for The New York Times

One of the first school districts in the country to reopen its doors during the coronavirus pandemic did not even make it a day before being forced to grapple with the issue facing every system actively trying to get students into classrooms: What happens when someone comes to school infected?

Just hours into the first day of classes on Thursday, a call from the county health department notified Greenfield Central Junior High School in Indiana that a student who had walked the halls and sat in various classrooms had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Administrators began an emergency protocol, isolating the student and ordering everyone who had come into close contact with the person, including other students, to quarantine for 14 days. It is unclear whether the student infected anyone else.

“We knew it was a when, not if,” said Harold E. Olin, superintendent of the Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation, but were “very shocked it was on Day 1.”

To avoid the same scenario, hundreds of districts across the country that once intended to reopen their classrooms, many of them part-time, have reversed course over the past few weeks as infections have increased in many states.

Those who open again have to prepare for the almost certain likelihood of quarantines and sudden shutdowns when students and staff test positive.

Of the country's 25 largest school districts, all but six have announced that they will start remotely, although some in places like Florida and Texas hope to open classrooms after a few weeks when infection rates go down due to strong objections from Teacher unions.

More than 80 percent of California's residents live in countries where test-positive rates and hospitalizations are too high to open school buildings according to government regulations last month. And schools in Alexandria, Virginia said on Friday that they would be teaching remotely to get the entire Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area with more than a million children to fall into virtual learning for the fall.

In March, when schools across America were abruptly closed, it seemed inconceivable that educators and students would not return to school in the fall, as was the case in many other parts of the world. Now that the virus continues to rage, tens of millions of students will start the year remotely, and it has become increasingly clear that only a small percentage of children will likely see the inside of a school building before the end of the year.