Texas Covid and school reopenings

Mostly I think American schools have been closed for way too long, but I am typically wary when I read “dogmatic” cases for universal school reopenings, especially when those reopenings are not done under the proper circumstances, namely good data and plenty of testing, or low case levels.  Here is one new piece that sheds some new light on the topic:

This paper examines the effect of fall 2020 school reopenings in Texas on county-level COVID-19 cases and fatalities. Previous evidence suggests that schools can be reopened safely if community spread is low and public health guidelines are followed. However, in Texas, reopenings often occurred alongside high community spread and at near capacity, making it difficult to meet social distancing recommendations. Using event-study models and handcollected instruction modality and start dates for all school districts, we find robust evidence that reopening Texas schools gradually but substantially accelerated the community spread of COVID-19. Results from our preferred specification imply that school reopenings led to at least 43,000 additional COVID-19 cases and 800 additional fatalities within the first two months. We then use SafeGraph mobility data to provide evidence that spillovers to adults’ behaviors contributed to these large effects. Median time spent outside the home on a typical weekday increased substantially in neighborhoods with large numbers of school-age children, suggesting a return to in-person work or increased outside-of-home leisure activities among parents.

That is a new NBER working paper by Charles J. Courtemanche, Anh H. Le, Aaron Yelowitz, and Ron Zimmer.  In other words, having the kids at home kept the adults tied down and less mobile.  Of course, even with this result, there is still a case for reopening the schools, but I am happy to see some of the trade-offs recognized.