As the heated debate continues around the country over the nation’s school kids returning to in-person education, even the left-“leaning” New York Times has been forced to admit that a return to school will not lead to surges in COVID spread, according to scientists.

“Researchers once feared that school reopenings might spread the virus through communities. But so far there is little evidence that it’s happening,” the NYT article began.

Months into the school year, school reopenings across the United States remain a patchwork of plans: in-person, remote and hybrid; masked and not; socially distanced and not. But amid this jumble, one clear pattern is emerging.

So far, schools do not seem to be stoking community transmission of the coronavirus, according to data emerging from random testing in the United States and Britain. Elementary schools especially seem to seed remarkably few infections.

According to Brooke Nichols, an infectious disease modeler at the Boston University School of Public Health, children returning to school have not been shown to spread the virus.

“The more and more data that I see, the more comfortable I am that children are not, in fact, driving transmission, especially in school settings.”

As the NYT reported, Dr. Michael Beach, a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledged on Wednesday that the agency’s guidance on school reopenings [sic] does not reflect the latest research showing that children can become infected with the coronavirus and transmit it to others.

“It does appear that children can become infected” and that children “clearly can transmit,” Beach, the agency’s deputy incident manager for Covid-19 response, told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

Dr. David Dr. David Rubin, a pediatrician and infectious disease expert at the University of Pennsylvania, agrees with Nichols and Beach.

“I think there’s a pretty good base of evidence now that schools can open safely in the presence of strong safety plans, and even at higher levels of case incidence than we had suspected. If you’re really trying to keep kids in school, you have to do this in a much different way.”

That “different way,” Rubin explained, is not with an expectation of “zero risk,” but of risk managed by safety measures, such as masks for students and teachers, physically distanced desks and improved ventilation.

Moreover, according to a survey of more than 57,000 child-care providers conducted for the journal Pediatrics, as noted by the NYT, children returning to school are no more likely to become infected with the coronavirus than adults in the community as a whole.

Ironically New York City, which held the distinction earlier in the year as America’s epicenter for the virus, became the first big city in the country to reopen its schools.

So how’s it going, so far, according to the NYT?

New York City mandated precautions for its 1,800 schools, and the virus’s prevalence in the city has remained low since its deadly surge in the spring. Random testing of more than 16,000 staff members and students has turned up only 28 positives and no big outbreaks, apart from localized clusters in two communities.

Well, whaddya know. Yet, Donald Trump has been absolutely torched by the Left and the liberal media lapdogs for months for calling for the reopening of all schools across the country — to absolutely no surprise, of course. The president in July threatened to withhold federal funding from school systems that refuse to reopen.

Trump threatens to cut federal funding for schools that don’t reopen in fall https://t.co/CFa8DWOKdH pic.twitter.com/vGI3MsEPz6

— The Hill (@thehill) July 8, 2020

Note that Trump’s demand was at odds with the “omniscient” Centers for Disease Control, which has flip-flopped on COVID advice throughout the pandemic more often than Joe Biden lies changes his answers on whether or not as president he’d ban fracking. Okay, maybe not more often than Biden, but just as much.

I disagree with @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 8, 2020

Okay, lefties, say it with me: “Donald J. Trump was right and the CDS was wrong.” See how easy that was? Doesn’t it feel better to just admit it?

In somewhat related news, as I reported last week in an article titled Oregon Gov Sued for Allowing Small Public Schools To Reopen; Christian Schools? Not a Chance, Democrat Gov. Kate Brown, the dictatorial ruler of the Beaver State, whose residents have pretty much been over her draconian lockdown orders for months, including the state’s schools, was sued after allowing public schools with less than 75 students to reopen, yet denying that same right to Christian schools. Hey, it’s Oregon — what do you expect?

Something tells me the Left might just relent on its opposition to the complete reopening of the nation’s school — on November 4. Then again, that might very well depend on who wins the election.