Students may need to be in school, but educators sure don't.

I think everyone realizes our children need to be in class in order to learn at their maximum potential. Students need socialization. Students often rely on school for meals. And, most of all, they need to be sitting in person in a classroom to achieve the best education possible.

The problem is there’s one crucial factor to keeping children in school. Adults need to be there too. 

While students may be largely immune to the clutches of COVID-19, adults are not. For those who may not have noticed, many of our teachers are becoming very ill from this virus. We have an obligation to protect them.

I don’t think we should return to in-person classes after Christmas break. I don’t think we should continue with virtual learning either because I don’t believe it’s nearly as effective as classroom instruction and it’s doing our children a disservice.

Our children don't need to be isolated at home learning in front of a screen. That's not what school is about. Reading and writing are important, but so are clubs, school assemblies, and basketball games.

Students were already shorted two months from last school year when campuses closed in March. We were supposed to make up for that learning loss this year, but the pandemic has kept students out of classrooms again and exacerbated problems.

The Tennessean published a story Thursday dispelling a rumor that Gov. Bill Lee was considering a plan to delay restarting schools until mid-February. I think it needs to go much further than that.

Just like the virus didn't magically disappear after the election, it's not going to disappear just because the calendar changes from 2020 to 2021. It's here and it's raging.

We need to completely hit pause on public education. Let’s keep students in their current grades and restart this whole thing again in August, with the main exception being seniors could be allowed to graduate. Everyone else would largely stay in their current grade. There could be some exceptions to this.

We don’t need to keep pushing students down an ineffective road of remote learning. And we certainly don’t need to be sending students to school, which is a super-spreader event every day class is held.

We’re not being fair to ask our children to stay at home and learn remotely. And we’re not being responsible to send them to class to infect each other and their teachers.

So let’s examine what could happen if we pick Door No. 3. Who said we could only have two choices?

There will be many issues to address, but I think there needs to be serious discussion about putting this school year on hold and picking up in August with most students in the same grade they’re in now.

We have a summer vacation every year and no one thinks anything is wrong with missing nearly three months. The U.S. saw 247,000 new COVID cases and more than 3,600 deaths on Wednesday alone. We don't need to be having school.

Standard editor James Clark can be reached at 473-2191.