How America’s Schools Got So Sick
For students in low-income communities, the coronavirus crisis is layered on an existing public health crisis: deteriorated school buildings that are unhealthy places to learn.
This fall, the usual back-to-school anxieties have been coupled with a new one in the U.S., as wide swaths of the populace are desperately asking if their child’s classrooms can provide any level of safety. In many major U.S. cities, public school buildings remain fully or partially closed for in-person instruction due to the ongoing risk of coronavirus infection among students, staff and their families.
It’s a calamity that is not exactly as unprecedented as it appears to be. For many Americans, especially poor ones and people of color, American public schools have never been safe places to learn.