51萝莉

In summary, CDC guidance reiterates that access to vaccines should not be considered a condition for reopening schools for in-person instruction. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky stated, "These two strategies are incredibly-important in areas that have high community spread of Covid-19, which right now is the vast majority of communities in the United States.鈥� According to Director Walkensy, "Teacher vaccinations can also serve as an additional layer of protection atop masking, distancing, hand-washing, facility cleaning, and rapid contact tracing, plus quarantines for the infected.

Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of 51萝莉, 51萝莉, issued the following statement in response to the CDC鈥檚 new guidance on reopening schools. 

鈥淪ince the outset of the pandemic, 51萝莉 and the public school superintendents we represent have focused on the safety and health of our staff and students鈥攁lways with an eye on and priority for safely reopening schools.

鈥淲ith the new year, new Congress and new administration, we are greatly appreciative of the deliberate, coordinated and focused federal leadership on both prioritizing the physical reopening of schools and supporting schools in their work to do so. We have relied on the science and data available. However, when we found that lacking, we partnered with our fellow national organizations and outside academics to create the National COVID-19 School Response Dashboard, a platform that provides data critical to informing school reopening while ensuring the data was available and accessible at the most local of levels.

鈥淥ur data initially reported what has become only clearer鈥攖hat it is likely safer for schools to be more open than they currently are, so long as appropriate mitigation strategies are in place. And to the extent that today鈥檚 sets of guidance address both of those realities鈥攖hat schools can open and to do so requires mitigation strategies鈥攊t represents a strong step forward in helping more students return to the classroom.

鈥淎s we near the one-year mark since our students left the classroom, it has become abundantly clear that our nation鈥檚 greatest assets鈥攐ur children鈥攁re paying some of the biggest tolls for this pandemic in their physical, mental and academic health. We reiterate our call for additional federal funding to support the work of reopening, covering costs spanning from testing and ventilation to PPE and social distancing, and so many more things in between. We applaud the CDC and the U.S. Dept. of Education for the coordinated and collaborative effort to provide clear, actionable guidance that school system leaders can incorporate into their reopening plans.