If you were watching the Democratic National Convention last night, you saw Jill Biden

give a speech from Brandywine High School in Wilmington, Delaware, a school where she

used to teach.

And as she almost immediately pointed out, Brandywine High felt eerie last night.

You can hear the anxiety that echoes down empty hallways.

There's no scent of new notebooks or freshly waxed floors.

The rooms are dark as the bright young faces that should fill them are now confined to boxes

on a computer screen.

High schools, elementary schools, and colleges across the country are facing some really

difficult decisions right now.

Keep kids at home where they don't get to really socialize, where they might fall behind

because of a digital divide or a lack of supervision or a lack of meals, forego millions of dollars

in tuition and housing needed to sustain massive institutions or bring them back too soon.

One of the biggest universities in the country to open during the pandemic just offered a case

study in the latter.

UNC at Chapel Hill opened on August 10th within a week over 100 students tested positive

for COVID with another few hundred quarantined and the school had to walk back its reopening

and move all classes online.

Mississippi reopened its public schools and within week 71 of 82 of its school districts

were reporting COVID-19 cases with over 200 teachers testing positive and with over 2,000

now quarantining.

And then there's Georgia, which you might have heard about.

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