Schools are just starting to get regular access to testing, teachers are still paying out of pocket for masks and air purifiers, and qualified substitutes and bus drivers can be hard to find:
A music teacher, a superintendent and an instructional coach who typically trains teachers all told NPR they are pinch-hitting as substitutes. Other teachers said they are giving up their planning periods to cover classes.
Making sure students have the right safety supplies adds another layer of difficulty. Neimark, in San Francisco, says,"The kids are going to come with either their own cloth mask, which is almost useless, or the surgical mask, which is almost as useless because you can't really have a 5-year-old double mask. They need those little KN95s, but we don't have those yet."
"We can feel the intensity," says Gonzalez, in Florida."I don't want to say hysteria, because it's not hysteria — it's warranted. But you can start feeling the mounting pressure here again, that it's coming back."