The C.D.C. says schools are safe

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent a striking message on Tuesday: Children should return to classrooms because it’s safe for them to do so.

The agency said the “preponderance of available evidence” indicated that in-person instruction could be carried out safely as long as mask-wearing and social distancing were maintained. Its researchers found “little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission” when proper safety precautions were followed.

One important caveat: Local officials also must be willing to impose limits on other settings — like indoor dining, bars or poorly ventilated gyms — in order to keep infection rates low in the community at large.

In one example, researchers looked at 17 elementary and secondary schools in rural Wisconsin where mask-wearing was routine, and the incidence of infection was lower in schools than in the community at large. During 13 weeks in the fall of 2020, there were 191 infections among staff and students — and only seven came from in-school transmission.

The report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, adds weight to the consensus among public health experts: With testing and other safety protocols, schools should be the last institutions to close and the first to open. It also jibes with President Biden’s push to reopen most schools within 100 days.

Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, told Erin Burnett of CNN on Tuesday that there was one missing ingredient that explains why so many public schools are closed in places where private schools are open.

“I’ll give you a word: money,” Klain said. He pointed out that the Wisconsin schools in the C.D.C. study got “a sizable grant from a private foundation to put in the kinds of safety measures they needed.”

Asked about unions that have opposed some reopening plans, he again cited the need for financial resources.

“I don’t think the unions are overruling the studies,” Klain said. “I think what you’re seeing is schools that haven’t made the investments to keep the students safe.”