Can Colorado’s public schools open in the fall, and will teachers be willing to take the risks to teach in-person?

That’s a decision that will be made on a school district level, but with guidance issued by the state Department of Education and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Katy Anthes, state commissioner of education, and officials from CDPHE rolled out those guidelines on Monday.

Antes said the guidelines are based on the same three protocols listed by the governor for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic: Stay at Home, Safer at Home and Protect Your Neighbors.

The governor wants districts to rely on local decision-making in the latter, Anthes said, as well as the presence of COVID-19 in those communities.

“We want to maximize in-person learning in as safe and healthy a way as possible. That’s the gold standard,” Anthes said. 

Dr. Brian Erly, chief medical officer for CDPHE, said they’ve relied on advice from the American Association of Pediatricians and what happened in other countries. The virus doesn’t seem to impact children as severely as other respiratory illnesses, according to AAP’s Dr. Sara Goza. Children are infected less, suffer less dire symptoms and less likely to transmit the virus to others.

They also looked at Sweden, which didn’t close its schools and didn’t implement strict social distancing guidelines. The country wound up with seven times the rate of infections than of neighboring Finland.

The guidelines announced Monday are based on “layering” protection, with multiple kinds of interventions, such as face coverings, social distancing and cohorts.

More distancing is better, but may not be practical in all situations. Add in adequate ventilation, and the potential for spread drops. A restaurant in China showed that even people within six feet of an infected person were less likely to contract the virus depending on the efficacy of restaurant’s ventilation system.

Masks are definitely part of the guidelines, but it’s based on age. Those 11 years and older must wear them unless its medically contraindicated. Those 10 and younger should wear them, so long as they can put them on and off on their own, and shouldn’t be worn during nap times for younger schoolchildren. Teachers and staff are also required to wear masks at all times unless medically contraindicated. 

The guidelines rely on cohorting: breaking schoolchildren into smaller groups that stay together throughout the day. Class size for those cohorts would depend on phase and age.

Schools should also stagger passing periods, drop off and pickup times, meals and recess periods, and open up all entrances, according to Therese Pilonetti, institutions unit manager for CDPHE. They’re still working out how to deal with an outbreak at a school that could either close the entire school and when they could back off to requiring a cohort of students to stay home.

One problem that hasn’t been worked out yet: he issue of staff and teachers who are more at risk and who require alternative work assignments. That could lead to a shortage of teachers in the fall who are willing to do in-person learning, officials indicated.

“Online and hybrid learning is likely to remain for a majority of districts,” Pilonetti said.

“We really are trying to allow this guidance to be driven by local environment and what’s happening at local level…We know that different districts are facing different levels” of the virus, Anthes added.

“We have never had to start school with an environment like this,” she said. “We’re trying to build guidance, layered with risk prevention, so that teachers, staff and students will feel safe, but we will not be able to eliminate all risk…We’re hoping to start school safely as possible, even if in a limited capacity for in-person learning to keep our teachers safe.”