KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City, Missouri, Public Schools plan to have students return to the classroom by March as teachers will soon be able to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
"The anxiety's going to be high, but we just have to get ourselves ready for the reality that we have to get back to in person and also the reality that we have to live with this virus," Superintendent Dr. Mark Bedell said.
Many other school districts in the Kansas City area have had kids in classrooms, operated on hybrid schedules that included some remote learning or also plan to bring students back in-person during the coming months.
There's little doubt that the pandemic has put a strain on school district, students and teachers as well as parents.
"I feel like it has gotten more difficult recently, and I really don't know why," Peggy Tuttle, a mother of three children in the Shawnee Mission School District, said.
Her daughters transitioned to the hybrid learning model this week, but Tuttle doesn't feel completely comfortable with students learning in-person with everyone inside.
"I'm not the biggest fan of the kids going back with the entire class in there full-time," she said. "I don't think that can be done particularly safely."
But with supply and distribution struggles hampering efforts to vaccinate the public against COVID-19, children under 18 aren't likely to begin receiving inoculations anytime soon.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, who leads the White House Coronavirus Task Force as President Joe Biden's chief medical advisor, hopes children could begin receiving the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as the spring.
"You can say it may not be necessary because children do very, very well," he said. "They don't seem to spread it in the context of school, even though when you have serious outbreak, children are involved. So, you would like to vaccinate as many children as you can."
Dr. Barbara Pahud, the director of infectious disease research at Children's Mercy Hospital, said she's been encouraged by the low rates of transmission seen to date for in-person school settings.
"I truly believe, of course, with vaccination it's going to be even safer, but we have proven that going back to school is possible as long as people do all the measures that have been recommended," Pahud said.
That includes social distancing, mask wearing and restrictions on certain high-risk activities.
Pahud is part of the clinical trial at Children's Mercy to study the effects of the vaccine on children, which she points out will take longer because there's more variables to watch out for in kids.
"Children are not little adults, so you cannot just assume that because something worked in an adult you can give them the same thing but smaller," she said.
To help get a COVID-19 vaccine approved for kids, Tuttle enrolled her two youngest daughters in the Children's Mercy trial.
"Zero hesitation about giving my kids the vaccine," Tuttle said. "I believe in science and it's very strongly behind these vaccines."
