President Donald Trump continues to urge states to reopen schools. But senior officials working on the federal government’s response to the pandemic are increasingly concerned about the urgency of opening schools as case numbers continue to climb.
In the last several weeks, Trump and his closest advisers have insisted that children will suffer mentally and emotionally if classrooms remain closed. Trump has pushed ahead with his call to reopen schools and colleges as part of his campaign to reopen the U.S. economy. ‘This thing is going away. It will go away as things go, ”Trump said of the virus in a recent statement Fox & Friends interview, adding that children were “purely immune.”
Despite major outbreaks in the south and southwest of the country, Trump’s coronavirus task force has supported the president’s demands. In talks with the nation’s administrators, Vice President Mike Pence, task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, and Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfield asked administrators to reconsider schools because they claimed it could be safe. serve. But officials did not say much about exactly how local officials could ensure that students did not contract the virus during school hours. In one conversation with board members, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos seemed to be concerned about transfer, saying “risk is embedded in everything we do,” from “learning to ride a bike” to the risk of hitting and shooting into a space capsule in a rocket into space. ”
Now, senior officials working on government efforts to crack down on the virus say they are increasingly concerned that state officials, especially those in the southern part of the country, do not seriously consider the health risks associated with recurrence. Officials said they had raised the issue directly with White House officials in recent days, asking the administration to increase reports on the potential risks, especially for those counties that have a business positivity rate of 5 percent or more . (In New York, where the governor recently committed himself to reopening the state, that rate is just 0.78 percent.) So far, those officials close to the president have rebuffed the idea of spending time on warnings; Some suggested instead devoting extra airtime to endorsing the president’s leadership over the government’s virus response.
The fears of officials are partly rooted in the fact that the White House is not worried about concerns accumulating hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of students may not be safe in schools at the same time. It is becoming increasingly clear that COVID-19 spreads most easily in confined spaces such as schools, and a growing body of research shows that children are better carriers of the coronavirus than originally thought.
“There is a real possibility that counties will implement all the measures mentioned in the CDC guidelines and will simply say, ‘Look, we’re doing the best we can and that’s it. ‘There is no one to maintain that game.”
“If you walk Trump out and say everything is fine, there’s a risk that that’s what people will think of going back,” said one senior official. “There’s a real possibility that counties will not implement all the measures mentioned in the CDC guidelines and will simply say, ‘Look, we’re doing the best we can and that’s it.’ there is no one who can maintain that game. “
Officials said they were particularly concerned about an uptick in cases at schools that have not yet developed concrete plans to implement good social distance, including grouping students into cohorts to better track potential outbreaks. Those fears were reinforced Sunday with the news of nine positive cases that surfaced at a school in Georgia, where days earlier photos of folop were circulating on social media.
“This is exactly what I was afraid of,” said another senior official, referring to the positive cases that arose at the Georgia school. ‘This will happen involuntarily when we send children back to school. But the real question is whether school districts are prepared for this and whether they will take it seriously. ‘
Asked to comment on the story, Judd Deere, a White House spokeswoman, said: “Not only does the president want to see schools open safely, but so do teachers, students, parents and health care. We can not allow that the mental and social development of our children be held hostage. “
On July 23, the CDC issued guidelines for schools that recommend students and administrators group students into “cohorts” over an extended period of time to limit contact, use extra school space to reduce classes, and require students to wear masks and train students. about best hygiene practices. According to two officials with immediate knowledge, the CDC is currently working on an additional document with recommendations for schools on how you can better protect teachers and administrators from fighting the virus. One official described it as an “update” and said the agency had been working on the document for several weeks.
Even with additional guidelines, officials said they do not predict the White House or the coronavirus task force, raising the alarm about the risks to children and teachers before school opens for the fall semester.
“So much emphasis has been placed on supporting this idea of getting children back to school that they will not go to back pedal.”
“So much emphasis has been placed on supporting this idea of getting children back to school that they will not pedal down,” said one of the officials who spoke to The Daily Beast.
Over the past month, Pence and Redfield have spent a significant amount of time talking to executives and in television interviews to promote the message that the federal government, and the CDC guidelines in particular, should not be considered by local leaders as a barrier to schooling again. . “We do not want to be the reason you do not open schools,” Pence told officials in a private call in July, saying the federal government would ensure states had the resources they needed to personally teach children from September. .
Redfield told executives in early July that it was never his recommendation schools remain closed and that he did not want the CDC to be the reason why they did not open. He repeatedly told drivers that the guidelines were not prescribed.
Some officials, including Birx, have been talking in recent weeks about the risks to counties experiencing an increase in positivity rates and hospital performance. In a recent interview with Dana Bash of CNN, Birx said she agreed with the CDC’s recommendations that schools should conduct virtual learning under certain circumstances. However, these guidelines only require the consideration of virtual learning. Birx said that if there is “high tax burden and active spread of the community … we are asking people to learn at a distance at this time.”
Her remarks marked a significant departure from the White House’s public stance on school reopening. The next day, Trump took to Twitter, Birx explained, calling her “pathetic.”
Since then, there has been a reluctance on the part of senior officials working with the task force and the White House to speak publicly about the potential for school outbreaks and the need to divert additional resources to local communities to contain the spread.
There are already signs that some state officials are not planning to implement the strictest protocols in September.
In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee told reporters last week that the state would abide by CDC guidelines “to the extent that we can.” Lee told Channel 5 in Nashville that his administration requires students to remember if they have been in contact with a classmate who tests positive for more than 10 minutes. Lee said only these individuals are required to quarantine, not the entire cohort, which the CDC recommends.
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