We’re more than a year into the coronavirus pandemic, but the debate over how to conduct K–12 education in the United States is still far from settled. A few academics have gained prominence as advocates for an immediate return to in-person instruction, claiming that in-person instruction poses minimal, acceptable risks of coronavirus transmission as long as students and teachers wear masks and perhaps the windows are cracked open to improve ventilation. They argue that universal testing, vaccination, and six feet of distance between students are not prerequisites for safely opening school buildings.

This group of experts also accuses teachers and their unions of ignoring “the established science” on coronavirus transmission, as Boston University professor Benjamin Linas put it earlier this week in a Vox op-ed entitled “I’m an epidemiologist and a father. Here’s why I’m losing patience with our teachers’ unions.”

In reality, the scientific evidence on the safety of in-person schooling during this pandemic is mixed. And the availability of resources that can make schools safer map onto existing patterns of racial segregation and disinvestment in public education that predominantly elite researchers pushing for in-person schooling seem happy to ignore, even as teachers in their own upper-middle-class suburban school districts sound the alarm on unsafe working conditions. With this latest attack on teachers’ unions, in-person proponents are not actually promoting “the science” — they’re engaging in racialized class conflict.