what did the american Academy of Pediatricians really say about re-opening schools?

A big-time news headline caught my attention this week.  You probably saw it, too.  Here's how it was worded in the version I saw:
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"U.S. Pediatricians Call For In-Person School This Fall"
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As we so often do with news headlines, my first instinct was merely to agree or disagree with it without any further reading.  I'm hoping very much that school can re-open in person, so I was excited to see the headline, because now I apparently had doctors supporting my desired outcome! I decided to read not only the rest of the news article, but the full, 11-page report from the American Academy of Pediatricians upon which it was taken. After doing so, I'm not sure that the headline I read is a fair summary of the report.  In bold, at the bottom of page one, it says:
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"You may want to consider reading beyond just the headline before forming an opinion."

...the AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.
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Is this the same as

"Pediatricians Call for In-Person School"
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???

​Seems like a stretch.  Even to someone desperately hoping for in-person school.

The main points - which are important - raised by the AAP are that:
1) While there is risk for kids attending school in-person, there are non-trivial risks associated with NOT attending school in person, too.  These risks even include potentially deadly ones, such as not having abuse or suicidal ideation recognized.
2) The evidence we have regarding Covid-19 indicates that children are less likely to become symptomatic, and possibly less likely to contract it in the first place or spread it to others (other sources appear to corroborate this finding - source 1 source 2).  

The report goes on to offer "high priority" and "low priority" strategies for minimizing risks at the different school levels.
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The report is long, but I'd recommend reading it.  It provides excellent guidance for what might be worthwhile to consider in an in-person school opening plan, as well as what might not be.  A short paragraph at the end is also devoted to considerations for staff, though coming from the American Academy of Pediatricians, staff is beyond the scope of their purpose for writing.  My current thinking is that issues regarding staff are going to be harder to overcome than student issues when it comes to re-opening, but I'll save that for a future post.

"If you read closely, the details tell a different story."

What I can tell you now, however, is that I don't think the news headline matched the substance of the actual report.  While pediatricians have much to tell us about just how important it is to set the goal of opening schools this fall, I don't believe they went so far as to endorse doing so.


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