How Federal Funds for Safe School Reopenings Would Pay Off

Money spent now to reopen schools would boost incomes of current K-12 students later, and the entire economy, for decades

Robert Roy Britt
4 min readJul 8, 2020

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Safe reopening of K-12 classrooms in the United States depends on several things, health experts and school officials say. Foremost, the growing pandemic needs to be reigned in, so there is less chance of spread in schools. But the coronavirus won’t be gone by fall, and it fact it’s likely to get worse, so experts say schools need to make significant changes to how they operate, and hire staff to handle new ways of educating and caring for kids.

But as I reported earlier this week, school districts simply do not have the funds to tackle the extensive mitigation efforts needed.

To recap the challenge, pre-K-12 schools across the country need somewhere between $117 billion and $245 billion, based on separate estimates from the American Federation of Teachers and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The money is needed for “instructional staff, distance learning, before- and after-school care, transportation, personal protective equipment, cleaning and health supplies, health staffing, custodial and cleaning staff, meeting children’s social and emotional needs and additional academic support…

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Robert Roy Britt
Robert Roy Britt

Written by Robert Roy Britt

Editor of Wise & Well on Medium + the Writer's Guide at writersguide.substack.com. Author of Make Sleep Your Superpower: amazon.com/dp/B0BJBYFQCB

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