As summer begins to wane, most children and teenagers across the United States getting ready to go back to school.

Not long after the start of the school year is the typical start of the season for respiratory viruses, including influenza, RSV and COVID-19.

Since early May, Covid-19 test positivity and emergency room visits diagnosed as Covid-19 infections have risen steadily, although hospitalizations and deaths continue to remain at historically low levels, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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Despite these upward trends, school officials from various districts told ABC News that they feel prepared to deal with cases of respiratory viruses that may emerge and to try to prevent classroom disruptions due to them as much as possible.

“We’re preparing all the time, and I feel very confident that we’re going to have a good school year, and we’re going to get through this respiratory season with no problems,” Kim Baumann, Superintendent of Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) in Georgia, told ABC News.

Limiting school closures

During the first year of the pandemic, the schools switched to distance learning to help stop the spread of the virus.

Since then, individual classrooms and in some cases entire schools have done so temporarily become virtual when outbreaks have appeared.

This year, schools are generally trying to avoid closing if they can, should another viral outbreak emerge, in part to avoid the losses in student academic performance widely seen during pandemic distance learning. A recent study conducted in collaboration with the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, looked at math and reading scores for grades three through eight, for example, and found that “academic achievement gaps that widened during the pandemic remain and have worsened in some states.”

Arizona State Superintendent of Education Tom Horne told ABC News that he wants schools to operate normally, regardless of an increase in cases. While noting that Arizona is a “local control state,” meaning it’s up to local school boards to decide whether to close schools, he is adamantly against school closures.

“Closing the schools that happened last time was an incredible disaster,” he said. “Kids are way behind academically. We’re still experiencing that now, and I think some of them will be affected for the rest of their lives.”

Horne pointed to research that has suggested COVID-19 infection tends to affect children less severely than older adults or those with pre-existing medical conditions.

“So, there’s no point in closing the schools, and I’m going to strongly advocate that,” Horne said.

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By comparison, leaders in Gwinnett County, Georgia, say they are not advocating closing schools, but that any decision on whether classes need to be held remotely because of the outbreak comes after conversations with the local health department.

Vaccinate to prevent severe disease

Doctors and other public health experts say one of the best things students can do to prepare for the year ahead is to get the updated covid-19 vaccine. CDC recommends everyone 6 months and older gets an updated vaccine.

Vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna will be available for those 6 months and older, while the Novavax vaccine will be available for those 12 years and older. The updated vaccine is likely to be released either in late August or early September and will target the JN.1 variant of the virus, an offshoot of the omicron variant.

The vaccine “reduces, not only the chance of hospitalization, but also reduces the burden of disease overall, just so that both children and adults are not seriously affected by it, and of course it continues to be recommended,” Dr. Jay W. Lee, a board member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told ABC News.

Lee said he sometimes encounters parents who are reluctant to vaccinate their children because of research that suggests children are not affected by Covid-19 as severely as adults. However, he said he tries to explain to parents that the benefits of vaccinating children far outweigh any risks, using their reluctance as “an opportunity for me to lean in and ask questions about why it is that they feel that way.”

Lee said he also tells parents that “we continue to have ongoing concerns about prolonged covid and the effects that it has on cognitive abilities as well as respiratory and heart problems,” adding that “The science is not completely complete yet about the effects of prolonged covid , but we’re seeing more and more of it as we escape the gravity of the pandemic.”

Kim Baumann, Gwinnett County’s chief nursing officer, said schools in the district will host vaccine clinics in coordination with the local health department throughout the year “that will include covid and flu, or whatever that combination will look like this coming fall .” and further notes that “we always provide frequent vaccine clinics and send that information out to our families to make it readily available.”

Clear language on how to stay safe

School officials said they are notified when parents should keep their children home from school.

Tom Horne, of Arizona, said that whenever a student or employee is sick — whether they have Covid-19 or a common cold — they should stay home so they can rest and not infect others

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Baumann said one of the ways officials are preparing for the new school year is to send reminders through school newsletters, websites and other media about best practices for staying safe, including “Good hand washing, (and) using respiratory hygiene, as far as covering your coughing and sneezing.”

Baumann also said there is a team of custodians who make sure schools, especially in high-touch areas, are cleaned and disinfected throughout the day, especially during peak respiratory virus season

She added that children can wear masks to school if they wish. GCPS also distributes reminders about reasons to stay home, including if a student develops respiratory virus symptoms such as fever, chills, fatigue, cough, runny nose and headache, Baumann said.

“We understand that Covid is going to be with us. This is not something that’s going to go away. It’s going to be something that we’re going to have to continue to deal with,” Bernard Watson, director of community and media relations at GCPS, told ABC News. “So, we’ve kind of accepted it as part of our new normal, and that’s why we’re taking all these steps to make sure we’re hitting the high-touch areas to make sure they’re clean. We have our nurses on standby to handle situations where students are ill.”

“But the most important thing … is letting parents know and letting our staff know that if (students or staff) feel sick, it’s okay to stay home and seek treatment, because we all know that if we have a healthy environment in our schools, then our children learn better,” Watson continued. “But if people come to school when they’re sick and they spread it, that’s not good because it puts other people at risk of getting sick, and it interrupts teaching and learning, which is our primary focus.”

Dr. Lee of the American Academy of Family Physicians said one of the best things schools can do to be prepared for a potential viral outbreak is to offer clear guidelines and language about when students should stay home.

“There is a lot of pressure on parents to send their children to school. Maybe they have work or jobs or other obligations,” he said. “Unfortunately, when you send a kid to school who has an illness and they’re confined in small spaces — and especially younger kids, (who) aren’t as good at washing their hands or covering their mouths and those kinds of things — it can be a source of rapid spread in a community.”

“And so, I think if the schools can continue to have very clear language and policy around when kids should stay home under the direction of local public health authorities, I think that would be very helpful,” Lee said.

As students go back to class, are schools ready to deal with covid-19? originally appeared on abcnews.go.com