学校什么时候应该为预防冠状病毒而停课?

学校什么时候应该为预防冠状病毒而停课?

The spread of coronavirus has compelled hundreds of K-12 schools in the U.S. to close, affecting more than 850.000 students, according to an analysis by Education Week. And those numbers are certain to increase in the coming days, as concerned parents call for more school closures.

《教育周刊》的一项分析显示，冠状病毒的传播迫使美国数百所中小学关闭，超过85万名学生受到影响。而这些数字在未来几天肯定会增加，因为担心的家长呼吁更多的学校关闭。

The growing health crisis presents school leaders with a painful choice.

日益严重的健康危机给学校领导们带来了一个痛苦的选择。

Closing schools — as has been done, so far, in China, Japan, Italy and elsewhere — is a proven measure that has been shown to slow the spread of disease and, in turn, save lives. But it also causes huge economic and social disruption, especially for children, millions of whom depend on the free and reduced-cost meals they get at school.

到目前为止，在中国、日本、意大利和其他地方已经关闭学校了，这是一个被证明有效的措施，它已被证明能够减缓疾病的传播，进而拯救生命。但它也会造成巨大的经济和社会混乱，尤其是对孩子们来说，他们中的数百万人依赖学校提供的免费和低成本的膳食。

Public officials don't want to close schools unless they absolutely have to, and many closures so far have been triggered by a known case of infection or exposure among staff or students. Yet research suggests the best time to close schools is before that happens.

政府官员不希望关闭学校，除非万不得已。到目前为止，许多学校的关闭都是由一宗已知的感染病例引发的，或是由教职员工或学生接触到病毒引发的。然而，研究表明，关闭学校的最佳时机是在这之前。

"If you wait for the case to occur [in your school], you still have wound up closing the school, but now you've missed the opportunity to have the real benefit that would have accrued had you closed the school earlier," says Yale University sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis.

耶鲁大学社会学家兼医生尼古拉斯·克里斯塔基斯说：“如果你等着(学校)发生这种情况，你最终还是还是会关闭学校，但现在你已经错过了获得真正好处的机会。如果你早点关闭学校，本来可以获得这些好处。”

"It's sort of closing the barn door after the cow is gone."

“这有点像在奶牛走丢后才关上牛仓的门。”

Marco Ajelli is a computational epidemiologist at the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Italy. He uses advanced math to model the course of disease outbreaks, and he has studied school closures. Ajelli said that "there is scientific evidence" that closing schools can buy time and delay the peak of an epidemic. "And it's really important to gain time at the moment," he says, "because if you have a lot of people that get infected all at the same time, the hospitals and ICUs have not enough hospital beds."

马可·阿杰利是意大利布鲁诺·凯斯勒基金会的计算流行病学家。他用高等数学来模拟疾病爆发的过程，他还研究了关闭学校的问题。阿杰利说“有科学证据表明”关闭学校可以拖延时间，延缓疫情的高峰”，他说：“现在争取时间真的很重要，因为如果你有很多人同时受到感染，医院和ICU就没有足够的病床。”

But this understanding is based on the science of previous diseases. Ajelli and his colleagues point out that there's something new and different about COVID-19. namely that children appear to be less vulnerable to it. And it isn't clear how that fact could affect the usefulness of school closures.

但这种理解是建立在以前疾病的科学基础上的。阿杰利和他的同事指出，COVID-19有一些新的和不同的东西，即儿童似乎不那么容易受到它的伤害。目前还不清楚这一事实会如何影响学校关闭的效用。

The fact remains that canceling school is a difficult decision because no one knows better than educators just how much some children depend on the support they get there.

事实仍然是，关闭学校是一个艰难的决定，因为没有人比教育工作者更清楚地知道，一些孩子在多大程度上依赖于他们(在学校)得到的支持。

"For a large number of our students, the safest place for them to be is actually in school," says Sonja Santelises, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools. That's why, she says, she resists canceling school because of weather, too. "It gets me some angry emails during snowstorms and inclement weather. ... I will just tell you, our mantra continues to be: Closing schools is a last resort."

巴尔的摩市公立学校首席执行官索尼娅•桑特里斯表示:“对我们的很多学生来说，最安全的地方实际上是在学校。”这就是为什么她也反对因为天气原因而停课。“这让我在暴风雪和恶劣的天气里收到一些愤怒的电子邮件。我只想告诉你，我们的口号仍然是:关闭学校是最后的手段。”

One big concern for school leaders is that many kids would be going home to empty households.

学校领导担心的一个大问题是，许多孩子将回到空空如也的家中。

"Yeah, I think that's the hardest contemplation for our districts," says Chris Reykdal, the superintendent of public instruction for Washington state, which has been hit hard by coronavirus. He's concerned about sending "a million Washington kids home knowing that for hundreds of thousands of them, they simply will not have any parents at home."

“是的，我认为这是我们地区最难思考的问题，”受到冠状病毒重创的华盛顿州公共教育主管克里斯·雷克达尔说。他担心的是“一百万华盛顿的孩子回家，因为他们知道，对于成千上万的孩子来说，他们根本不会有父母在家。”

One more big reason school leaders are so reluctant to close schools: Not only will many kids go home to no parents, but they also may not have ample food, either.

学校领导如此不愿关闭学校的另一个重要原因是：不仅许多孩子没有父母，而且他们可能也没有足够的食物。