School Reopenings, Mobility, and COVID-19 Spread: Evidence from Texas

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of fall 2020 school reopenings in Texas on county-level COVID-19 cases and fatalities. Previous evidence suggests that schools can be reopened safely if community spread is low and public health guidelines are followed. However, in Texas, reopenings often occurred alongside high community spread and at near capacity, making it difficult to meet social distancing recommendations. Using event-study models and handcollected instruction modality and start dates for all school districts, we find robust evidence that reopening Texas schools gradually but substantially accelerated the community spread of COVID-19. Results from our preferred specification imply that school reopenings led to at least 43,000 additional COVID-19 cases and 800 additional fatalities within the first two months. We then use SafeGraph mobility data to provide evidence that spillovers to adults' behaviors contributed to these large effects. Median time spent outside the home on a typical weekday increased substantially in neighborhoods with large numbers of school-age children, suggesting a return to in-person work or increased outside-of-home leisure activities among parents.

The Impact of Schools on the Transmission of Sars-Cov-2: Evidence from Italy*

“…This paper provides additional evidence by focusing on the whole country and by investigating the impact of both school openings and closures, as they may have non-symmetric effects on infections. My results are in line with studies on the United States (Courtemanche et al 2021), but are in contrast with evidence from other European countries, e.g., Germany (Isphording, Lipfert, and Pestel 2021;von Bismarck-Osten, Borusyak, and Schonberg 2022), where school openings did not contribute to a higher viral transmission. Differences between Italy and Germany may be due to a variety of factors.…”

COVID-19 Mitigation Practices and COVID-19 Rates in Schools: Report on Data from Florida, New York and Massachusetts

“…Careful contact tracing would be helpful in focusing on the latter, but is not widely available. Finally, we do not focus on possible community spread as a result of schools opening, which is a separate consideration and has been considered in other work (Courtemanche et al, 2021;Harris et al, 2021;Harell & Lieberman, 2021).…”

The required size of cluster randomized trials of nonpharmaceutical interventions in epidemic settings

“… 2 , 3 , 7 However, more recent analyses suggested that school closure might reduce transmission, perhaps by as much as 15%. 4 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 …”

“…In the first waves of the pandemic, school closures, for example, were found to have relatively minor effects in various types of studies 2,3,7 . However, more recent analyses suggested that school closure might reduce transmission, perhaps by as much as 15% 4,8‐11 …”

“…2,3,7 However, more recent analyses suggested that school closure might reduce transmission, perhaps by as much as 15%. 4,[8][9][10][11] Ultimately, while this body of work has helped inform the policy landscape, important gaps remain. Different interventions often overlap in timing, and communities that adopt particular interventions may be similar in other ways, resulting in confounding that biases estimates, even under the null hypothesis of no intervention effect, and challenges the validity of hypothesis tests.…”