If class size for physical classrooms is cut in half (which may still not yield safe spacing, depending on the dimensions of the classroom), then won't schools have to double the number of teachers? Surely they're not considering have a teacher cover twice the number of courses (even if the number of students taught remains the same). School budgets are being slashed because of dwindling state revenues. How are schools going to INCREASE the number of teachers?

Mandatory standardized testing has made education increasingly dependent on teachers taking on the role of shoveling facts into students. If we restructured education to enable students to be independent learners (and this is not as hard as it sounds because kids love to learn, as long as the desire isn't knocked out of them by a monolithic top-down structure), then teachers would be freed up both physically and emotionally.

It's a little late to switch to an independent learning model in order to solve the COVID-19 problem, but if we don't start now, we'll never get there, and education will be continually subjected to whatever threat arises.