Can Public Schools Open Safely for Children and their Teachers? Trump Worries Instead About His Own Political Future
Should public schools reopen this fall? Is there a single plan that will work everyplace? Can school districts make social distancing workable with some kind of hybrid plan in which children are sometimes in class personally and sometimes online? Should schooling go online full-time for a whole semester or a whole school year? Whose interests matter when it comes to reopening? Should economic and political demands trump everything? What about safety? Do parents’ needs matter? And what about the well-being of children and adolescents themselves?
If you are not totally dispirited by President Trump’s bizarre and ugly July 4th allegation that, “against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country,” I urge you to read Jeff Bryant’s excellent new summary of the dilemma about reopening public schools next month in the middle of the pandemic. Bryant examines the arguments of people of both political parties. Then, with citations to important research, Bryant reminds readers about years of society’s failure to fund public schools and the consequences of our persistent failure to invest in an institutional infrastructure we need to fall back on today. He explains how lingering funding cuts from the 2008 Great Recession have left teachers underpaid in many places, classes too large, key support staff laid off, and buildings poorly maintained. Bryant reports on new recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics urging the reopening of schools based on new medical evidence that children are less likely to catch the virus or to be contagious. Finally he examines the contradiction in President Trump’s and Betsy DeVos’s demands that schools be reopened at the same time the Trump administration and Senator Mitch McConnell are blocking a bill already passed by the U.S. House of Representatives to provide federal relief assistance vitally necessary if schools are going to reopen. And Bryant adds that both Trump and DeVos are insisting on more federal funding for private schools at the expense of public schools. Bryant wonders: “So now teachers are expected to save the nation’s bacon?”
On Tuesday, President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos launched a full bore CONTINUE READING:Can Public Schools Open Safely for Children and their Teachers? Trump Worries Instead About His Own Political Future | janresseger
