County and state officials must safeguard the education of preschoolers, just as they do for older children. Orange County must shorten the required duration of preschool closures in the case of a COVID exposure.

Preschool classes are closing all over the county for 10-14 days at a time, with monumental effect. There are 116,000 children age 3-5 in Orange County, with over 66 percent of them in preschools. Evidence shows that interruptions in early childhood education hamper children’s cognitive and social growth. School closures also affect caregivers, especially mothers. A national survey showed that more than 1 in 3 female caregivers of children age 0-5 were forced to stop working or reduced their work hours since the start of the pandemic.

Preschoolers have been left by the wayside, unlike their older siblings. The Orange County Health Care Agency is quick to make accommodations for grades K-12. Our K-12 schools don't even require quarantine for children directly exposed to COVID-19; even if they are unvaccinated, exposed students can still attend school as long as they are asymptomatic and regularly tested. Moreover, K-12 schools rarely shut entire classrooms for days. Indeed, the State of California says that even a “temporary school closure due to COVID-19 should be a last resort.” Given the low threat the virus poses for most children, the state’s public health experts reason that the benefits of keeping a school open outweigh the risks.

We need a better policy for preschools. Currently, guidelines for our youngest children are absent from both the county and state guidelines. By default, contact tracers instruct directors to close classes for 10-14 days at a time, disrupting the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of families.

To be sure, infants and very young toddlers cannot mask, so they stand to spread the virus more than, say, second-graders do. But older preschoolers are capable of masking, and in many schools they mask all day, every day. What makes their right to a stable education any less important, their parents’ need to work any less acute?

Shorten closures to 7 days with a PCR test on day 5, as stipulated by the County for unvaccinated individuals. Our preschoolers have a right to education, and parents have a right to work!