Children and the Pandemic: Hastings Scholars Make Three Policy Recommendations
While school districts around the country are planning whether and how to hold in-person classes in September, “society’s commitment to children has gone largely unmentioned,” write Hastings Center research scholars Carolyn P. Neuhaus and Josephine Johnston in The Hill. “We did not forefront the interests of children in our initial pandemic response and they are seldom a focus of plans to ‘re-open’ the economy, even though their health and development is at stake.” Neuhaus and Johnson make three recommendations for federal, state, and local leaders: 1. Address children and engage them in government, as leaders in Canada and New Zealand are doing; 2. Direct relief funds to services and spaces that benefit children; for example, with the HEROS Act now under consideration in the Senate, and 3. Reopen schools, childcare centers, and other child-centered services not as they were but as they should be—roomier and with a lower teacher-child ratio. “Childhood is brief and precious. Our pandemic plans must seek to protect it.” Read their essay in The Hill.
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