The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that schools can safely open as long as a range of precautions are in place, offering a road map for a return to classrooms that in parts of the country have been shuttered for nearly a year.
When infection rates in the community are higher, the agency recommends shifting to a combination of in-person and remote learning to minimize the number of people in school buildings at any given time. Fully remote learning is recommended only in certain cases when virus rates are very high.
And while the CDC reiterated that states should prioritize teachers for vaccination, the agency said it is not a prerequisite for reopening.
"Evidence suggests that many K-12 schools that have strictly implemented mitigation strategies have been able to safely open for in-person instruction and remain open," the agency said. "K-12 schools should be the last settings to close after all other mitigation measures in the community have been employed, and the first to reopen when they can do so safely."
It warned that even when schools take precautions, there will be infections and that schools need to be prepared to handle them. The agency recommended that school leaders engage with the entire school community in developing plans, which teachers unions have strongly advocated.
It advised that elementary school students appear to face lower risks of in-school transmission. And it recommended school leaders prioritize instruction over extracurricular activities, citing certain indoor sports as particularly risky.
The guidelines for K-12 schools are not that different from those issued last summer by the Trump administration, but the Biden administration hopes a retooled, more clearly written version will be seen as more credible by concerned teachers and parents.
Under President Donald Trump, political appointees repeatedly injected themselves into the agency's public health work. Now President Joe Biden is promising to follow the science, and the CDC has a body of evidence suggesting open schools have not seen significant transmission of the coronavirus, as long as precautionary measures are in place.
"Based on the data available, in-person learning in schools has not been associated with substantial community transmission," one of the documents says.
The much-anticipated release includes a 35-page operational strategy guide to safely operating schools, and an 11-page review of the science.
The agency highlighted five mitigation strategies and said they all help prevent virus transmission. The guidance emphasizes that there is more protection if multiple strategies are used.
Most important, the agency said, is mandatory and proper use of masks for students, teachers and staff, and maintaining at least six feet of distance between people, to the greatest extent possible. To ensure this distance, CDC recommends schools group students in cohorts to reduce the number of exposures.
Other important steps to mitigate transmission include handwashing, keeping facilities clean, and contact-tracing when exposures occur, combined with isolation and quarantine of people who may have been exposed.
Across the country, schools have responded in vastly different ways to the pandemic. Some states, urged on by Trump and Republican governors, have allow full-time, in-person school available to all children and have kept schools open regardless of community infection rates. Others offer part-time in-person and part-time remote learning. And still others, particularly in big cities, remain entirely virtual, though in recent weeks several large districts have announced reopening plans.
In its new guidelines, the CDC offered a color-coded rubric, based on community infection rates, to help systems determine what level of in-person learning is appropriate, but made clear some in-person schooling can be available even when rates are high if mitigation strategies are in place.
CDC recommends assessing transmission in the community based on total number of cases per 100,000 people in the past week, and percentage of tests that come back positive.
Based on these two factors, CDC classifies communities as in one of four color-coded zones.
Communities in the "blue" and "yellow" zones, those with the lowest levels of infection, can operate with full in-person learning, the agency said. CDC recommended schools in the "orange" zone, those with "substantial" transmission, operate with reduced attendance, which could mean a hybrid system where students are in school part of the time and at home the rest.
Finally, schools in "red" zones, the highest levels of transmission, can operate hybrid programs for all grades as long as they conduct screening tests for the virus. If they don't do this testing, CDC suggests red zone districts offer hybrid programs in elementary school and keep middle and high schools virtual only.
Like Trump before him, Biden has urged schools to reopen, setting a goal that most K-8 schools open by his 100th day in office, in April, a metric that surveys suggest the country has already met.
But unlike Trump, Biden has repeatedly tempered his call with an emphasis on safety, and has said schools should not be expected to reopen until they have guidance from the CDC and funding from Congress to implement the recommendations. He has asked for $130 billion for K-12 schools and lawmakers appear set to deliver it.
The question is whether recommendations from the Biden administration will carry more weight with teachers and their unions, who have resisted returning in many places, and with those parents - particularly parents of color - who believe it is too dangerous to return.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest union, said teachers are likely to have more confidence now because of the new administration's commitment to follow science. Trump's push to reopen schools was embraced in GOP parts of the country, but was seen by many Democrats as driven by a political desire to minimize the impact of the pandemic.
"I believe that the CDC has done their due diligence in following the science and reaching the conclusion that if schools put in place all of these mitigation factors and they have the resources, then it is safe to return to in-person learning," Pringle said.
She said she hopes school districts will work with teachers to study and implement these guidelines and said they will empower unions to demand that school systems fully implement the recommendations. Nonetheless, she said, some teachers may still resist a return to campuses.
"I'm not going to make a blanket statement that teachers will go along," she said. "It will vary from place to place."
Sasha Pudelski, advocacy director for AASA, The Superintendents Association, said she hopes the new guidelines will boost efforts of district leaders who are trying to reopen but running into resistance.
"The most important thing this guidance can do is provide leverage to district leaders to convince teachers and parents to agree to in-person learning," she said.
Already, she said, the conversation is shifting from whether the CDC's reopening message is trustworthy to whether districts are properly implementing the agency's recommendations. That, she said, "is a very different thing."
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The Washington Post's Lena H. Sun contributed to this report.