New study says 6-foot social distancing not necessary in classrooms

6-foot social distancing not necessary in classrooms, new study says A major new study found that spacing desks 6 feet apart offers no more protection than 3 feet of distance. YahooNews

WASHINGTON — Having students sit 6 feet apart in classrooms, as opposed to 3, offers no greater protection against the coronavirus, according to a major new study, whose findings come as schools across the U.S. struggle to reopen amid debates over safety.

President Biden has made bringing students back into classrooms a priority. The debate over classroom spacing is complicating those efforts. With these new findings, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may come under pressure to revise its guidelines, which currently call for 6 feet of spacing in most situations.

Having desks spaced only 3 feet apart would allow a greater number of students to sit in each classroom. At 6 feet apart, the size of each class must be severely reduced. And since schools often don’t have space to add classrooms or additional teachers to teach in them, some students have to stay home, even if other conditions for safe reopening are met.

The current CDC guidance of 6-foot distancing is “very physically restraining for a lot of districts,” said Emily Oster, a professor of economics at Brown University who has written on the damage caused by keeping schools closed and has tracked reopening efforts across the country. ...”

For the new study, researchers looked at 251 Massachusetts school districts that were open for in-person instruction in the fall of 2020. In those districts, 537,336 students went to school and 99,390 adults taught and worked there.

The study found “no significant difference” in coronavirus infection rates for either children or adults between the two classroom configurations. That means, researchers concluded, “lower physical distancing policies can be adopted in school settings with masking mandates without negatively impacting student or staff safety.”

Massachusetts has a mask mandate in place for all students, teachers and staff in public schools. An earlier study published by the CDC found that schools in Wisconsin were able to stay open safely, even during a time of intense community spread, simply by mandating masks. ...