Background Mathematical modeling studies have suggested that pre-emptive school closures alone have little overall impact on SARS-CoV-2 transmission, but reopening schools in the background of community contact reduction presents a unique scenario that has not been fully assessed. Methods Therefore, we adapted a previously published SIR (susceptible-infectious-recovered) model using contact information from Shanghai to model school reopening under various conditions. Results We find that

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... ng schools for all children would maintain effective R0 < 1 up to a baseline R0 of 3.3 provided that daily contacts among children 10–19 years are reduced to 33% of baseline. This finding was robust to various estimates of susceptibility to infection in children relative to adults (up to 50%) and to estimates of various levels of concomitant reopening in the rest of the community, with minimal change in transmission when contact frequency in the rest of the community was returned up to 40% of baseline. Conclusions These results suggest that schools can reopen safely with proper precautions during conditions of extreme contact reduction and during conditions of reasonable levels of reopening in the rest of the community.