Education Secretary Betsy DeVos received strong criticism after she doubled her call to reopen schools, even as coronavirus infections continue to skyrocket across the country.
CNN host Dana Bash repeatedly pressured DeVos on Sunday about the school’s reopening guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control, which have warned that a complete reopening of the school would be the “greatest risk.”
“The CDC guidelines are just that: They must be flexible and applied as appropriate to the situation,” DeVos said.
“Yes or No: Can you assure students, teachers, and parents that they will not get coronaviruses because they are going back to school?” Bash pressed.
“The key is that children have to go back to school,” DeVos replied as he dodged the question. “And we know there will be hot spots, and those must be addressed on a case-by-case basis. But the rule should be that children return to school this fall. They have missed months of learning.” “
Bash noted that a Missouri summer camp was forced to close recently after 82 reported infections, and Texas has reported 1,300 infections among children and employees at child care centers.
“This is what the CDC guidelines say: ‘If children come together in groups, it can put everyone at risk. Children can transmit this virus to others who are at increased risk of serious illness from COVID-19.’ “Bash said. “Those are the guidelines of your own federal government.”
“There will be an exception to the rule, but the rule should be that children return to school this fall. And where there are small outbreaks or hot spots that can be treated on a school by school basis or on a case by case basis,” DeVos repeated. .
“So I want to be clear about you: As the secretary of education, should schools in the United States follow the CDC’s recommendations or not?” Bash asked.
DeVos again insisted that the guide only included “recommendations” and stated that the federal government was “very much on the same page.”
“Children need to go back to school. They must go back to the classroom,” said DeVos. “Families need children to go back to the classroom and it can be done safely.”
DeVos said in another Fox News interview that “there is nothing in the data to suggest that children attending school are in any way dangerous.”
“We know that children contract and have the virus with a much lower incidence than any other part of the population,” he said.
Some countries, like Israel, have already been forced to close schools after the early reopens caused hundreds of new infections among children.
DeVos also defended President Donald Trump’s threat to cut funding for school systems that won’t reopen entirely in the fall.
“Isn’t cutting funding exactly the wrong answer? Don’t you want to spend more money to make schools safer, be it with plastic shields or health checks, various other systems?” host Chris Wallace asked. “Doesn’t it make more sense to increase funding for schools where it is not safe rather than reducing funding?”
“If schools will not reopen and will not deliver on that promise, they should not get the funds,” DeVos replied. “Then give the families who decide to go to a school that lives up to that promise.”
“Well, you can’t do that,” said the Fox News presenter. “You can’t do that unilaterally. You have to do it through Congress.”
“Well, we are looking at all the options, because it is a promise to the American people and their families,” said DeVos. “And we want to make sure that promise is kept.”
Health experts have rejected DeVos’s arguments.
“While the balance of the data shows that children are less susceptible to infection and less likely to transmit it, less susceptible does not mean that they are not susceptible,” Scott Gottlieb, former Trump chief of the FDA, told CBS News on Sunday. “No other country, with the exception of Sweden, reopened its schools or kept its schools open in the context of so much spread that we are trying to do in this country.”
Sweden “literally gained nothing” by staying open during the pandemic, even “with no financial gain,” the New York Times reported last week, while recording the highest death rates in the world.
Scott Brabrand, the Fairfax County Superintendent of Schools, whose Virginia district was cited by DeVos Sunday, rejected his argument.
“You can’t put all the kids back in school,” he told CNN. “COVID affects us all, and the guidelines for six-foot social distancing simply mean that you can’t put all kids back in a school with the existing square footprint. It’s that simple.”
“I would need another five Pentagons of space to be able to safely house all students in the Fairfax County Public Schools,” he added.
The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a joint statement with the nation’s largest teacher unions last week warning that “the evidence, not the policy” should guide decisions to reopen schools.
“Schools in areas with high levels of COVID-19 community spread should not be forced to reopen against the judgment of local experts. A one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate for back-to-school decisions,” the statement said. “Withholding funds from schools that don’t open in person full-time would be the wrong approach, putting financially struggling schools in an impossible position that would threaten the health of students and teachers.”
Democrats blasted DeVos after the interviews.
“You have no plan,” wrote Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. In a tweet addressed to DeVos. “Teachers, children and parents fear for their lives. You point to a private sector that has put a profit on people and has taken the lives of thousands of essential workers. I would not trust you to take care of a domestic plant and much less for my son. “
“What we heard from the secretary was embezzlement and breach of duty,” Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, told CNN after the DeVos interview. “This is terrible”.
Pelosi argued that the Trump administration was “playing with our children’s health.”
“Going back to school presents the highest risk of the coronavirus spreading,” he said. “They ignore science and ignore governance to make this happen.”
