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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2021
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APPEAL TRIBUNE
Did schools open safely?
Erin Richards,
Alia Wong and Aleszu Bajak
USA TODAY NETWORK
America’s schoolchildren are weath-
ering a third year of pandemic educa-
tion, and most are in class together
again instead of isolated at home. l
Grown-ups battled over the right way to
safely open schools amid a surge of a
more transmissible variant of the CO-
VID-19 virus. States and districts took
wildly different approaches. Some, like
Oregon, strictly required masks; others
banned mask mandates. Some states
let districts decide.
Positive virus cases, quarantines and
school closures sent kids back home in
the early weeks of the fall semester,
sometimes repeatedly. Millions of oth-
ers remained in class.
“Schools are intertwined with every-
thing that goes on in the community …
just like the pieces of a machine,” said
Doug Harris, an economist at Tulane
University who’s studied the effects of
school reopenings on COVID-19 hospi-
talizations.
The virus spreads at different rates
in different communities, and vaccina-
tion rates, mask wearing and rules for
behavior all play a role. School reopen-
ings triggered changes in social behav-
ior and health practices that influenced
community spread, Harris said.
Many children were tested for the
coronavirus more often once they re-
turned to school. Many parents re-
turned to offices. Taken together, that
meant more infections were captured
that may have otherwise run their
course undetected or unlogged.
“The increases that you were seeing
in school-aged groups, what was hap-
pening is you had so many kids quaran-
tined and parents were getting them
tested,” said Jason Salemi, an epidemi-
ologist at the University of South Flori-
da. “You were just detecting a higher
proportion of the cases that were out
there.”
The highly contagious delta variant
of the coronavirus was already surging
as school started, further complicating
the picture.
Some states have not reported all
child deaths from COVID-19. Many dis-
tricts decline to publicly report cases or
quarantines.
But data from several sources can
help draw some conclusions about
school reopening decisions.
Schools stayed open
The back-to-school season looked
like it was headed for disaster. By early
September, more than 1,000 schools
had closed because of high numbers of
students or staff in COVID-19 quaran-
tines, according to data from Burbio, a
company tracking districts’ responses
to the pandemic.
Among them, Takena Elementary in
the Albany school district temporarily
moved to remote learning for the first
week of October after more than a dozen
students tested positive. And Central
Linn junior and high school did the
same for the last week of September af-
ter reporting a “high number” of CO-
VID-19 cases.
Most of those closed schools nation-
wide have reopened because of in-
creased COVID-19 protocols or the wan-
ing prevalence of the delta variant. The
majority of students are in classrooms
full time, regardless of their school’s
mask or vaccine policy.
That’s good for students’ mental and
social health – and crucial for their
learning.
A total of 2,176 schools have partially
or fully closed at some point this school
year, or about 2% of the roughly 100,000
K-12 schools in America, according to an
analysis of Burbio data as of Oct. 20. Al-
most 1 million students were affected by
these closures. (The data doesn’t account
for all the students who quarantined
while their schools remained open and
may be an undercount in districts that
do not share data publicly.)
Many kids who get COVID-19 don’t
need to go to a hospital. Many don’t even
have symptoms, though long-term ef-
fects are unclear.
COVID-19 case counts among kids
spiked after their schools reopened.
Data shows the growth rate for each
state’s school-age kids was higher than
among adults. (School start dates vary
from district to district; for each state,
USA TODAY used the start date of its
largest school district.)
Doctors point to the start of school
as the main cause of the surge in pedi-
atric cases.
“Cases didn’t go up so much with the
delta variant,” said David Buchholz, a
professor of pediatrics at Columbia
University’s Irving Medical Center.
“They increased when school went
back into session.”
Bryan Jarabek, a physician and chief
medical informatics officer at M Health
Fairview, saw the same trend in Minne-
sota. “It started right when we started
school.”
Nationwide, cases in children grew
by 129% in the six weeks after schools
opened compared with the same period
before classes started, according to a
USA TODAY analysis of data from the
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Centers for
Prevention.
Disease
Control
and
Masks, vaccines mattered
Pediatric hospitalization rates were
generally far lower in states with high
numbers of vaccinated children.
The start of school was followed by fast-
er COVID-19 growth in kids versus adults
in most states, but the school effect tended
to be more pronounced in places that
banned schools from enforcing mask
mandates or gave districts the ability to
choose.
This analysis has limits. The same anti-
mask-mandate states that saw the biggest
pediatric surges also had lower vaccina-
tion rates at all ages. In other words, it’s
hard to separate the two effects.
“Having a low vaccination rate was as-
sociated with greater hospitalizations, and
having no mask was also associated with
greater hospitalizations,” said Julie
Swann, a professor at North Carolina State
University who has advised school boards
and health departments on the spread of
COVID-19 in schools.
Most states had a surge in pediatric
hospitalizations tied to schools reopening,
especially states that barred mask man-
dates. Together with the trend in CO-
VID-19 cases, that suggests schools con-
tributed to the spread.
Even states like Oregon that mandated
masks had bursts in pediatric COVID-19
cases and hospitalizations linked to the
start of school.
“Just having a mandate didn’t mean
masks were worn or actually enforced,”
said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at
Johns Hopkins University who studies
global health security policy. “This is why
people have called for clinical trials to be
done. But even mentioning that makes
people want to fight.”
Oregon is one of the few states that
didn’t see a spike in pediatric cases direct-
ly linked to the start of the school. Pediat-
ric cases started rising in late July and
peaked at about 2,500 new cases per week
in mid-September, around the time
schools started to open. They’ve been on
the decline since then.
Hospitalization of pediatric COVID-19
cases is rare, between 1 and 3 per 100,000
depending on the child’s age. Oregon has
reported three pediatric deaths related to
the coronavirus.
Statesman Journal reporter Connor
Radnovich contributed to this article.
Contact Erin Richards at (414) 207-3145
or erin.richards@usatoday.com. Follow her
on Twitter at @emrichards. Contact Alia
Wong at (202) 507-2256 or awong@usa-
today.com. Follow her on Twitter at
@aliaemily. Contact Aleszu Bajak at
(646) 543-3017 or abajak@usato-
day.com. Follow him on Twitter at
@aleszubajak.
Program gives Oregon farmworkers tools to improve their future
Dora Totoian
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
Yadira Sanchez spent the summers in high school wak-
ing up at 3 a.m. to harvest parsley, spinach and cilantro
around King City, Calif., work she described as challenging
and exhausting.
Years later, she and her three children shuffled between
California and the Mid-Valley for her husband’s seasonal
job in the Christmas tree industry.
When she learned of the National Farmworker Jobs
Program through Oregon Human Development Corpora-
tion after moving to Woodburn full time, she was in-
trigued.
Now, after completing the program, she and her hus-
band work more stable jobs with higher pay and benefits.
She is a support specialist at OHDC and he is a janitor.
“I like everything about my job. I just feel good because
they see I have potential,” Sanchez, 31, said. “I always let
[my kids] know that’s a good job. It doesn’t mean that
working in the fields is a bad job, but it’s kind of a heavy
and tired job.”
The National Farmworker Jobs Program is a Depart-
ment of Labor training program started as part of the Civil
Affected by the
Oregon wildfires?
Find resources to
help you recover.
Rights Act of 1964. In this state, Oregon Human Develop-
ment Corporation, a non-profit that supports farmwork-
ers’ economic advancement, administers the grant, in
partnership with the Oregon Employment Department.
The jobs program provides access to education, job
training and case managers for farmworkers to transition
to jobs outside of agriculture or move up within agricul-
ture. It also runs a scholarship program for children of
farmworkers or young farmworkers.
Across OHDC’s 11 offices in Oregon and one in Nevada,
the National Farmworker Jobs Program reaches about 300
people per year, according to Silvia Muñoz Lozano, the
program director and a graduate of the program.
Most participants choose to pursue opportunities out-
side of agriculture, she said.
“Unfortunately, a lot of farmworkers don’t get to see
their potential, and going through this program really does
bring the best out of you,” she said. “We pretty much can
do anything with help and a support system.”
Striving to make a difference
Who qualifies, and how it works
The jobs program can assist with training, crafting a
resume and taking English classes. The youth pro-
gram supports people in finding funding for college
and navigating the application process. Jobs program
graduates have started careers as nursing assistants,
commercial truck drivers, dental assistants and
more.
To qualify, you must:
h Have worked in agriculture or be the spouse/de-
pendent of someone who has worked in agriculture
within the past two years.
h Be from a low-income household that is below
federal income guidelines.
h Be authorized to work in the U.S.
h Not have knowingly and willfully failed to regis-
ter for Selective Service registration.
To sign up for the program, contact OHDC.
More time for family
Call today
1-833-669-0554
Open 24/7, every day.
dling emergencies less stressful, she said.
“When I had my babies, I didn’t have his (her husband)
support because he needed to work and pay the bills and
rent,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez said she remembers as a child her father re-
turning exhausted from work in the evening with little en-
ergy for more than showering, eating and going to bed,
which is similar to experiences she hears from children of
farmworkers in the National Farmworker Jobs Program
scholarship program, she said.
In contrast, Sanchez and her husband have more time
to spend with their kids.
“He used to come home around 7 or 7:30, and right now
it’s so different because we’re in the home early and we
spend more time with the kids all together,” Sanchez said.
“We do things together, like who’s going to clean, who’s
going to make the food, and I show my kids it’s better if we
work as a family together.”
Sanchez, the support specialist at Oregon Human
Development Corporation, and her family moved to
Woodburn two years ago and heard about the pro-
gram through a radio ad.
Her husband first completed the program and
found work as a janitor, and he also took English
classes. Sanchez said she’s seen his confidence in his
English skills grow and noticed he’s more eager to
practice English at places like the grocery store and
the gas station.
Sanchez filled in as a support specialist at OHDC’s
Woodburn office after completing programs that
teach skills such as answering phone calls, writing
professional emails and organizing documents, and
became a full-time employee over the summer.
The most notable change in her life now that she
and her husband work outside of agriculture is the
stability of their jobs and how it has changed their
time as a family, she said. They know their jobs are
consistent, and benefits like paid time off make han-
Xitlaly Ibarra, a freshman at Columbia Gorge Commu-
nity College, is also pursuing education with support from
the jobs program.
She was always determined to attend college while
growing up in Hood River and Mosier, but said the pro-
gram paying for her fall term makes it easier on her par-
ents, whose formal education ended in the eighth grade.
Her mother cleans houses and her father works at a
vineyard and occasionally harvesting cherries, which is
how she qualified for the scholarship program.
“When it’s wintertime, he has to be working outside, or
when it’s really hot,” Ibarra said. “Sometimes I’m just wait-
ing for the bus for like 10 minutes and I'm already freezing
and I'm thinking about what my dad has to deal with every
day.”
She said starting college with the help of the program
means her parents see their work was worth it.
“Parents sacrifice a lot to come here ... and I think it’s
just kind of rewarding to see that the hard work has had its
benefits,” Ibarra said.
She’s taking calculus, chemistry and watercolor art in
her first college term, and plans to transfer to a four-year
institution and eventually become an optometrist. Wear-
ing glasses most of her life has spurred a fascination with
how the eyes work, and she’s noticed a lack of Latino
health care providers.
“There’s not a lot of eye doctors that speak Spanish. I
don’t think I’ve ever met one,” Ibarra said. “I want to be
that person, so there’s no need for a translator. I can do it
myself and they can feel supported.”
'Tools to improve your future'
Anayeli Jimenez spent several years cleaning machines
at a snack manufacturing company in Hermiston, a job
she said was tiring and difficult, in large part because of
the high temperatures of the machines and the 6 a.m. start
time.
Dora Totoian covers agricultural workers through Re-
port for America, a program that aims to support local
journalism and democracy by reporting on under-covered
issues and communities.
You can reach her at dtotoian@statesmanjournal.com.