Image Courtesy : www.theprint.in

Herbart: "Yes. I believe that's important. I'm not so worried about student to student contact. I'm very worried about student educator contact. Children we know are less susceptible, it seems to be, through all the data from scientists, that adults are not."

She tells CNN that education is going to look very different. "We're going to have to wear protective masks, we may have to wear plastic gloves, we may have to wash. Learning will not be the same as it was prior to March 1. It just won't be, and we can't expect it to be."

She cautions that parents and school workers will need to be flexible in combining both distance and face to face learning and that communities and legislators will need to provide the necessary support to make that happen.

Robbins says he will highly encourage mask wearing at the university, and plans to wear one himself, but can't mandate students wear masks at all times. "The classroom is under the control of the professor," he says.

"We pretty much think that that will be sort of, at the, the professor's discretion and would be more mandatory if you will, that if you're inside our buildings you need to cover your face. And then for the open spaces, it's going to be more difficult to enforce. But that, that's sort of our current thinking."

Robbins recently appointed Dr. Richard Carmona, the 17th US surgeon general, to lead the university's re-entry task force. Together they are looking at robust safety measures and guidelines they can issue before welcoming students back.

How do we manage school bathrooms in middle and high schools where teachers and staff are generally not monitoring students in that space?

Herbart proposes sending kids to the bathroom one at a time. "One way we could do it is put X's on the hallway tapes, 6 feet apart, and one by one go into the restroom. Many elementary schools have bathrooms in classrooms so they've always had a one-on-one experience, but one of the things we're going to do as educators is teach children how to socially distance before we can teach them anything about academics."

She says you should expect lessons on day one about how you wash your hands, how you wear a mask, what a communicable disease is and what Covid-19 means.