Hi im Steve Clemons and i have a question as coronavirus challenges society and spreads across america whats the domino effect of keeping millions of students at home lets get to the bottom line. Across the u. S. So far about 5000 cases of coronavirus have been recorded and restrictions are going into effect one of the biggest decisions has been shutting down schools from coast to coast people more than happy to do what it takes to protect themselves and their families but no one knows how the School Shutdown will affect this generation of students and their parents what happens if the School Closures go beyond a few weeks does the entire term get written off what happens if it least one parent cant stay at home with the kids what happens to folks who depend on the free lunches and the breakfasts offered by the Public Schools and with all the talk about Distance Learning is america competent at scale to pull off such a feat so many questions today and fortunately were joined by people who have the answers or at least i hope they do from Atlanta Georgia dr marcus pleshette the chief medical officer of the association of state and Territorial Health officials from vancouver canada mckinnon a Science Writer focused on natural disasters and eat learning or she as she calls herself the master of disaster and in washington d. C. Mark mcghee the founder of the 50 state campaign for achievement now a nonprofit Education Advocacy group but before we start take a look at the sign of the times normally the studio would be bustling with all of our distinguished guests but now that were in a time of coronavirus our shows are virtual and i appreciate my panel for going through this with us today on a new venture thank you all for being with us i want to start with you dr plesch i know that youre in atlanta and that you interact on you know much more frequent basis with the center for Disease Control than i do what is the latest how would you describe the dashboard of coronavirus and the social impacts today. Well the concern today is that we are continuing to see increases in cases of coronavirus across the United States and what Everybody Knows has happened in the last couple days is weve moved to this approach called Community Mitigation and thats social distancing thats what were all talking about thats were going to be talking about on the on the show this morning. Thats really about trying to find ways to keep people from coming into contact with each other this is an Infectious Disease thats thats passed from person to person and we need to we need to shut that passage down we need to find ways to really slow the increase in the number of cases that were seeing and thats thats what all the focus is on now thats what the federal government is putting out guidance on and and i work with state Public Health departments and were seeing an increasing number of states now taking measures to try to keep their population safe and try to get people to do that social distancing how behind the curve were we on this you know when you look at issues like testing and you look at what south korea has achieved you know with was upwards of about 300000 test china upwards of 100 few 100000 more than that and that testing seems to be such a key piece of responding to this challenge where are we right now we hear about 2000000 tests coming online or test kits coming online do you find i mean are you confident right now as we look at this that were solving that part of the problem. Yeah i mean we have we have enough tests right now to begin to test people who need to be tested i think one of things thats very important for the public to understand is not Everybody Needs to be tested where were focused right now on Testing Health care workers and Emergency Responders were focused on testing people who are at high risk to have severe illness those are people who are older than 60 those are people who have Underlying Health conditions and then were testing anybody whos doctor feels they really need to be tested but most people outside of those at high risk are not at risk for a severe illness from this right now and whether theyre tested or not not as important whats important right now is the social distancing and im looking forward to talk a little more about how we make that happen well let me lets get into that and let me bring in mark for a moment to also address the fact that whats happening with our nations schools mark i know that you have been focused in your career and work on trying to make sure that kids have an equal chance at school that we have quality education for all students and as we look at whats happening in new york whats happening in texas whats happening in california here in washington d. C. We see lots of students going out and being told were going to have Home Learning were going to have Distance Learning were going to distance education but we all know that thats an uneven Playing Field and so id love to hear your concerns and guidance about the stay at home for kids challenge you know well you know our focus has been how do we make schools work better for kids and now were in a situation where or 3 out of 4 kids in america 37000000 out of 50000000 this week they dont have a school to go to 37 states out of 50 have completely shut down their Public Education system and so were in a situation where ideas around Home Learning on line education that might have taken months or years to put in place schools are now trying to put that in place in a matter of days. And when you look at that i mean i just ask you i mean i was asking this question about whether america could pull off such a feat at scale just moments ago i can tell just in the tone of your voice a great degree of doubt it is a very challenging time you know education in america and were having to tackle a hierarchy of needs so yes we want to figure out how to get learning going and we want to make sure that kids dont lose a full half year of education but we also need to worry about how kids are going to get fed so many kids in america who count on the meals that schools provide we dont have that infrastructure and how were going to keep kids safe theres so many kids who need that safe protective environment of school and if parents have to leave the home are they leaving the home and we kids there alone you know. Youve been a early adopter an early teacher if you will on Online Education ive just read the 10 points that you recommend to people and how to make it work how to make it a fulfilling engaging experience and i have to admit that i know people from from you know kindergarten now through universities that are all of a sudden having to do what mark just said and find a way through Education Online which are new habits and there are lots of doubts about it but tell us what your Early Experiences have shown you about what society can do to make this challenge easier than it would otherwise be there is a huge difference between doing Remote Learning with advanced planning and what were facing now which is this reaction to a catastrophe there is on all types of disasters if you can think about it and plan and prepare in advance youre always going to have an easier time thats everything from having your bookshelves attached to the walls for an earthquake through to having a bit of a flexible learning plan for your classroom. Everywhere that doesnt have it is having to slam their classes up online as quickly as possible and that means that youre not trying to replicate that teaching experience youre just trying to get through it has to be a very different set of expectations is not about can we make a perfect learning environment perfect is the enemy of good on this one we just need something functional for my classes even though they happen to be very well suited to be going online im still reducing my expectations for my students for the next week at least while we go into this transition i know a lot of them are not necessarily they didnt sign up to be taking an online class so they dont necessarily have the technology or the Internet Access at home i actually ran a survey of my students to find out how many even had desktop or Laptop Computers versus how many are going to be accessing all of our Course Materials on their cell phones and some who dont even have that sort of access and mobility to being able to continue their education but what is the answer there i mean i think you know one of things i was in ohio recently in ohio the state of ohio for instance has about 20 percent of its students do not have regular Broadband Access at home a big part of appalachia is they are when you look across the country you know depending on your zip code again it comes down to zip code you have very Different Levels of access to to broadband into internet to make this real and so im wondering whether this notion of going online this is far down the road as we have or whether we end up with at least for the time being an incredibly unfair and very uneven educational experience for 4 children. One of the 1st things we can do is go away from this idea of having synchronous education of everybody in class at the same time and move it to being a synchronous so if youre providing say a video to go along with your Course Materials instead of Live Streaming that video which runs into problems if you have Older Technology or you have a more unreliable Internet Connection or even if your household just has a lot of logistical challenges that are making it difficult to keep to a very strict and regular schedule if you instead move asynchronously you record those videos you make them shorter so you do a series of 5 minute videos instead of an hour long video then that just by itself makes it a little bit easier to be able to say set all the videos to download overnight its also you know when i think that a great is going on going to be a one size fits all well thats a good thing yeah i think that maybe because really right about this i mean we we have to realize this is not going to be a seamless response no parts of it the medical and Public Health part has certainly not been seamless and its not going to be Going Forward and some of these other pieces were just going to have to figure it out as we go along and i think we can do that i think we were a very creative and Ingenious Society of people and were going to figure out a way to get through this dr pleshette youve been somewhat i would say critical but raising questions that i found fascinating about whether the steps were taking on closing schools actually solves the problem whether this increases social stress and tension and that the efforts now to deep clean schools are you know i think to use your words you know sort of wrongheaded at the moment it sort of hits the wrong priorities and id love to have to understand how you think we should be taking this challenge as opposed to just bandwagon you know lets shut down the schools what would you say is perhaps given what the science is a more appropriate response for the times. Well you know 1st of all it is really disruptive to shut down the schools and thats what were here talking about this morning is how to how to deal with that how to deal with the educational pieces but im very concerned about the disparities were creating and also about the access to basic things like food is as mark said earlier many kids get their meals at school you know what i think we did in the end i think we did the right thing in the places where were starting to see the schools closed the question is can we close them for a little while try to get a sense of how well were controlling this this outbreak right and then maybe we can get to a place where we can open them back up and we can open them back up doing some of the social distancing types of things but i dont know how long thats going to take i mean 2 weeks thats a little optimistic. Mark what are you hearing now from. You know so i think its really important be listening to parents right now because we havent planned this were rolling it out it has huge effects that we need to better understand for example getting food to parents a lot of cities like atlanta have created spaces around the city where parents can go and pick up food but i talked to a mom who said she doesnt have a way to get to those places she cant access the transportation she cant get in a car so how are we going to track what the implications of this are we have kids coming home from you know different schools and parents are saying one kid came home with 4 weeks of perfectly spaced out work and one kid came home with nothing and so these huge inequities that were starting to see emerge and we need to creatively problem solving around those and were seeing some Companies Step up and say well provide Free Internet weve seen districts like Loudoun County in virginia that just made an emergency order for 15000 chrome books to ship those off to parents and we really need to approach it with this attitude of constantly listening to parents and solving problems you are about to commit. I had so this idea of wait and see about reopening the schools theres a problem with having too much uncertainty with my students i work with a University Age students one of the things that they needed was to know what to make plans for final exams and thats a month away for my particular university but making the decision of you know what were staying closed no matter what happens next allows everybody to prepare to plan to be able to figure out where do i need to be and what technology do i need access to in order to succeed in this class as that is. Yes we need to be flexible along the way but we also have to make some decisions instead of delaying them in delaying them delaying them and say 2 more weeks out of classes 2 more weeks 2 more weeks 2 more weeks because the more time we give people to plan and prepare the better this is going to be executed. I think thats exactly right and uncertainty right now for teachers and parents is really typical if we dont think schools can actually open in 2 weeks then we need to say that and we need to start planning for the longer term and that its starting to feel like across states that this is not going to be a problem that goes away in a couple weeks its going to be months of disruptions per School System im interested in all 3 of you get me to has something i will describe you because i cant show it to you online right now but its a its a hand written hand drawn. Sign that basically says to her neighbors and folks in her community do you need a pandemic power and its as if youre high risk and limiting outdoor exposure we can help we have grocery does that livery dog walking medical pick up were low risk and work from home with a big heart for me im interested in how this is being taken up and im interested in the creative side because theres a lot of talk about people pulling away from each other social distancing but we are communities and im interested in the guard the the unusual the innovative things that people are doing to hold society together and this is one of them ive seen what are you seeing out there whats the response been. Theres a huge difference between social distancing and social isolation one of the common factors in disasters is how well a community recovers has to do with this Community Resilience if you think about all the good times youve ever had with your neighbors if youve thrown block parties if you have a neighborhood mailing list and are all on the next door app together if you go out to the volunteer firefighters picnic and have a giant fundraising festival each year all of these things are like adding piggy banks into our coins into a piggy bank of good will and then when you have a major social disruption some sort of disaster coming through our hurricane an earthquake a pandemic you can smash that piggy back open and the have all that good will to spend out and that trust and social connection that youve built up right now were not in a situation where we can have a party because were trying to have social distancing but i wanted to make sure to reach out to my neighbors to the people who are geographically close to me and see if theres anybody who needs extra assistance it is easier to offer help than it is to ask for help i did this on my Community Social media group but i also know the highest risk populations are also those who are least likely to have secure access to technology the elderly are not necessarily all online all of the time the older you are the less likely you are to have connections into the Community Facebook group or anything like that if youre poor and the have less access to extra resources youre not going to necessarily have a strong Internet Connection at home miss some of these things so i made a couple of handwritten notes and i pinned them up in the high traffic areas of my community and once i did it a few othe