The schools open-versus-closed debate has raged since the earliest days of the pandemic. Early on, there were indications that the system, which was often regarded as antiquated prior the pandemic, was ill-suited to respond to the challenge of delivering personalized education to all 56.6 million children.

As Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times puts it, “School Closures Have Failed America’s Children.” Kristof notes that as schools lowered flags to half-staff last month to commemorate 500,000 COVID-19 deaths, millions of students had not been back to their school for nearly a year.