Dr Sanjay Gupta: A roadmap for in-person school emerges

For millions of kids across the country, it may soon be back-to-school time -- finally.

After a long and incredibly hard year, the pieces of this complex puzzle seem to be falling together. Last month, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out new guidelines for reopening schools, highlighting five key mitigation strategies that should sound pretty familiar by now. Last Thursday, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan for Covid-19 relief, which provides $125 billion to public K-12 schools, and $2.75 billion to private schools, some of which will help pay for those very strategies. And finally, as of Monday, teachers in all 50 states became eligible to get vaccinated. Since the country effectively shut down just over a year ago, many school children in the US (and their parents) have been living in a state of suspended animation -- but the impact has been uneven. Some public school districts and private schools remained open, others have moved entirely to remote learning, while yet others have adopted some type of a hybrid plan (and those, too, have varied depending on the district or school).