This is how Mantua Elementary and all other public schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, are preparing for back-to-school in the age of Covid-19.
For now, students in this suburban school system, one of the largest in the nation, will only come physically back to school in a limited way: two days a week in the classroom. The rest will be virtual, and parents also have the option to keep their kids home entirely.
Scott Brabrand, the superintendent of Fairfax County schools, says this is the best option they could come up with to comply with US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
"We're going to have PPE for all of our teachers and students, and we're going to have a return to school in a new normal for Fairfax County and for school districts across the country," Brabrand said during an interview in a classroom amid desks stationed 6 feet apart.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos repeatedly calls out Fairfax County, Virginia, criticizing the school system's current plan for only two days a week in the classroom as insufficient. Devos has noted that it is well funded in one of the wealthiest parts of America.
"I would call it an elite public school system in America -- offered families a so-called 'choice' for this fall, and their springtime attempt at distance learning was a disaster. I give this as an example because things like this cannot happen again in the fall. It would fail America's students, and it would fail taxpayers who pay high taxes for their education," DeVos said during a coronavirus task force press briefing last week in which she pushed hard for America's schools to reopen full time.
"Covid hits all of us, and the guidelines for 6 feet social distancing simply mean that you can't put every kid back in a school with the existing square footage footprint. It's just that simple," Brabrand said flatly in response to DeVos.
He argues that they may have plenty of resources, but that doesn't make it any more feasible to pack students into schools and still follow social-distancing guidelines.
"This is the American Dream, American public education. We're here to offer it to all of our students and families, and those that would critique it, I don't think have the best interests of public education and of the United States at heart," he said, with a not-so-subtle dig at DeVos, whose goal is to move more public funds with students into private schools.
Fairfax County is one of the largest school districts in the country with more than 188,000 students in grades pre-K-12.
Brabrand said that in normal times, students are on average about 18 inches away from one another, and he calculates that in order to have enough space for all of his students to social distance, they would almost need another school system of 200 sites.
To make his point another way, he said the school system is the size of "five Pentagons."
"You would need another five Pentagons of space to be able to safely accommodate all of the students in Fairfax C
