Schools are closing for millions of kids as teachers get sick and COVID cases surge. Some districts are holding out.

Schools are closing for millions of kids as teachers get sick and COVID cases surge. Some districts are holding out. Even if their local COVID case rates are high, some schools plan to stay open. But as more teachers are sick or quarantined, that has become difficult Erin Richards and Elinor Aspegren USA TODAY

After weeks or months of operating in person, schools are shifting students back to remote learning as the nation grapples with soaring COVID-19 infections. Starting Monday, millions more students will be connected to their teachers only by whatever internet or phone connection they can secure.

In many cases, schools are closing because too many teachers are quarantined or infected with COVID-19. Others are responding to high rates of virus transmission in their communities. Kentucky's governor announced a statewide closure of schools to take effect Monday, a move that followed Michigan closing all high school classrooms and New York City schools — the largest district in the country —  moving back to all-remote learning.

Already, just over 40% of schoolchildren are attending only virtual classes, a figure that's risen from 36.9% Sunday, according to Burbio, a company that aggregates school calendars. ...

Adding to the confusion and stress of the moment: The metrics used for closure, and the scope of the shutdowns, diverge wildly, sometimes even within the same county. Schools can be considered safe in one town or state and ordered closed in another, even though that area has less community spread of the virus. 

Many of the closure announcements are facing political pushback, including from the White House and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's in addition to parent gripes about rearranging work schedules or again subjecting children to the subpar experience of virtual learning. Underscoring it all are doubts about whether school closures actually work — or cause even more harm. ...

For months, schools have lacked consistent guidance about how rates of virus transmission should affect decisions to hold in-person classes. That's part of why there's so much debate among parents and politicians, and why, in many cases, superintendents and individual school leaders have made the calls on their own.

New York City is an outlier in using such a stringent rate of community transmission — a 14-day average of 3% in positive tests for the virus —  to trigger schools to move to remote learning. The CDC and the World Health Organization have recommended schools could operate safely in person with virus positivity rates at around 5% or less. And Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease specialist, once said districts shouldn't bring people together if the rate of local positive virus cases exceeds 10%. 

But some states and districts have been operating schools with different rates in mind. ...