Why three feet of social distancing should be enough in schools

The requirement for six feet of distancing has forced many schools to limit the number of students attending in person due to space constraints and thus has become a key factor keeping millions of kids home. That’s a mistake.

Six feet should be the default minimum for adults, but it’s past time we recognize that kids are different and the importance of schools is different, especially for the youngest learners. Three feet should be the default distance for schools.

First, decisions about physical distancing must factor in risks beyond covid-19. The severe harms of keeping kids out of school have been known for some time, such as loss in literacy, missed meals (including more than a billion this spring), virtual dropouts and increasing inequity — all of which hit low-income children the hardest because their parents often lack flexible work schedules to care for them at home.

Second, strict six-foot distancing rules that force schools into “hybrid” models, in which students rotate days at school, might actually increase community risk, as our colleague William Hanage warned in August. The reason is that kids are not always fully isolated at home; instead, they are likely to have an even wider network of contacts, increasing the chances of the virus entering schools.

Third, six feet is not a magical cutoff. It has a weak scientific basis, coming from a fundamental misunderstanding going back decades that the tiny droplets we exhale when we breathe and talk will fall to the ground within six feet. The reality is that while some large droplets do fall out of the air, most are tiny and will stay aloft for an hour or more — traveling well beyond six feet. There is no bright-line cutoff.