■ Some schools suspend in-person classes,

With COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the state spiking to record levels, bus drivers and teachers in quarantine, students getting sick and the holidays looming, Schools Superintendent Scott Hanback in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, made a tough decision this week.

The school system, he decreed, would switch to remote learning until after Thanksgiving.

It seemed like the only safe wayto proceed after themyriaddisruptions causedby the surging coronavirus.

“It has been very, very diffificult,” Hanback said, adding that he has been doing “a lot of prayer, rest and trying to just take care of my mental health and physical health just so I can stay sharp.”

Facing equally grim conditions, school systems around the U.S. and abroad are taking similarly tough action. Boston, Detroit, Indianapolis and Philadelphia are among those that are closing classrooms or abandoning plans tooffffffffffffer in-personclasses later in the school year, and New York City may be next.

Suchdecisions arecomplicated by a host of conflflicting concerns— namely, safetyversus thepotential educational and economic damage from schooling children at home, in front of computers, under their parents’ supervision.

Virustransmissiondoesnot appear to be rampantwithin schools themselves. Instead, many of the infections that are proving so disruptive are believed to be occurring out inthecommunity. Educators fear things could get worse during upcoming holiday breaks, when students and staffff gather with family and friends or travel to other hot spots.

Thenationhasentered“an extremely high-risk period,” said experts at PolicyLab, a Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia team that develops guidance. They shifted their advice this week, advocating online-only instruction for areas with rapidly rising rates, at least until after Thanksgiving.

Newly confirmed infections per day in the U.S. are shattering records at nearly every turn, hittingmore than 153,000 on Thursday and pushing the running total in the U.S. toabout 10.5million, with about a quarter-million deaths, byJohnsHopkinsUniversity’s count. The number of people now in the hospital reached an all-time high of over 67,000 on Thursday, accordingtotheCOVIDTracking Project.

In Hanback’s district in Tippecanoe County, which includes the city of Lafayette, 51 cases out of 13,800 students were confirmed during the fifirst nine weeks of in-person classes. In less than three weeks that followed, that number almost doubled, and cases among teachers and staff jumped fifififififivefold, Hanback said.

“The spread isn’t really occurring in the classroom. The spread is occurring in nights and weekends and holidays and social gatherings,” he said.

Because of the resulting shortage of bus drivers, studentswere arriving at school anhourlateandgettinghome an hour late, Hanback said.

“Inside the schools, the same thing was happening with classroomteachers and classroom aides,” he said. “We are exhausting our substitute pool and it became a daily struggle.”