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August 2, 2020In these uncertain times amid the pandemic, there are lots of fears—both founded and unfounded—about the dangers, transmissibility, infection rates, and more—about returning to in-person school and parish faith for-mation programs. Understandably, parents are concerned as well as teachers, but the only remedy to this fear is truth—truth based in data-driven facts. Far too much of the “news” today is emotion-drive, for many reasons—politics being one—and that emotion-drive misinformation produces no good.
In my new role as Archdiocesan Vicar for Education, Evangelization and Catechesis I have been inundated with lots of studies and “white papers” on the pros and cons of returning to classroom instruction of all kinds. I thought I would share with you some information and their sources so that everyone may have a logic and data-driven conversation—after all, what matters most is what is best for the children in our charge.
The following is taken from the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC 24/7 Saving Lives, Protecting People document, Appendix A; The Importance of Reopening America’s Schools This Fall, Updated July 23, 2020. So what does science and data say about school children and Covid-19”?- Aside from a child’s home, no other setting has more influence on a child’s health and well-being than their school/classroom.
- Children under 18 years old accounts for less than 7% of COVID cases and less than 0.1% deaths.
- In this pandemic, deaths of children are less than in each of the last 5 flu seasons. (Children with underlying health issues have increased risk.)
- COVID transmission among children in schools is very low.
- Rate of infection from students to teachers is extremely low – 0 data.
- Among families, children are not the primary source of transmission.
- Children are not the primary drivers of COVID spread.
- "Long breaks from in-person education are harmful to student learning.”
- “Extended closures can be harmful to children’s mental health and can increase the likelihood that children engage in unhealthy behaviors.”
- “Studies conducted on pandemic found a strong association between length of quarantine and PTSD, avoid-ance behavior, and anger.” CDC, AAP July 2020
parish program:- The safety of our children is paramount and all precautions and mitigation practices in social distancing, mask wearing, and sanitizing on a reg-ular basis is key and shall be followed here at St. Catherine of Siena;
- For your safety and the safety of your child our parish purchased and now uses mobile UVL sys-tems to eliminate 99.9% of all bacteria which the virus needs to survive;
- Following the protocols and guidelines of all the experts (CDC, Connecticut State Department of Public Health, experts including John’s Hopkins and Yale Universities, and recommendations from the Connecticut State Department of Education and the AOH OEEC’s guidelines: we have prepared various phases of faith formation programs de-pending on what the pandemic’s level in our com-munity, from some in-person classroom instruc-tion to a mix of remote learning via educational media platforms as well as individualized collateral material learning for all students.
Kathi Bonner has issued a survey to all Faith Formation parents—it’s on the front page of our
parish website (stcatherine.info) PLEASE OPEN IT AND RESPOND. We need your input for your children’s program.
