Since the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S., 64,000 schools in 33 states are now closed by Governors, forcing more than 33 million students to stay home for at least eight weeks. " Closing schools for eight weeks or more may have a greater impact on mitigating the spread of the novel coronavirus than two- to four-week closures", the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said.
Shorter-term closures will likely make little difference in the spread of the disease, new CDC guidance states, even as K-12 school districts across the country began announcing school closures within the shorter time frame.
Closing schools also comes with its own setbacks, namely a potentially negative impact on academic outcomes and government assisted food programs for students.
On the first official day of a mandatory 3-week shutdown, the Centerline Public School district has already started to provide breakfast and lunches for its students via bus stop drops. “We have a route set-up”, says a district employee, “5 busses with 10 scheduled routes, we’ve delivered 200 bags of food from my bus alone”. Parents were notified of the stops and times via CPL’s website, then followed by a cellphone text reminder when the busses were in route.
Dear CLPS Family,
Our students are our top priority, even during this unprecedented coronavirus situation and the current mandatory school shutdown.
Center Line Public Schools is delivering breakfast and lunch each weekday to our students during the mandatory shutdown (March 16-April 3). Our food service staff will prepare meals that will be delivered by bus to designated bus stops each weekday from 10:00 to 11:00am (see schedule). An adult or older sibling may take food for the entire family of enrolled students in the district. School of choice students may go to any of the stops listed to pick up meals for that day.
The bus stop food drop will continue daily for students until school resumes.