Schools become COVID-19 battleground

As the delta variant continues spreading rapidly across the country, causing a new wave of infections and hospitalizations, it is sending school administrators scrambling to adjust reopening plans.

Schools will open in the next weeks, but there’s no national consensus on how to keep classrooms safe, raising questions and conflicts for the nation’s teachers, parents and school boards.

Local districts in Florida, Arizona and Texas are at war with their GOP governors over the refusal to allow mask requirements.

Meanwhile, parents in Georgia’s largest school district are filing a lawsuit because the school requires students to wear masks.

School board members are being screamed at, and in one viral video, health care workers in Tennessee who advocated for masks were harassed after they spoke at a school board meeting.

In California, all teachers will need to be vaccinated — unless they want to produce a negative COVID-19 test instead. But proof of vaccination is required for anyone who wants to eat inside a restaurant or go to a gym in some major cities.

It creates an impossible situation for school administrators.

“Our superintendents are under tremendous pressure and have been, this is now going into the third school year that’s been affected by this pandemic. And they get it from all sides,” said Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators.