CNN reports that Trump urged the nation’s governors to give serious consideration to reopening schools.
“Some of you might start thinking about school openings, because a lot of people are wanting to have school openings. It’s not a big subject, young children have done very well in this disaster that we’ve all gone through,” Trump told the governors on a teleconference call, according to audio of the call obtained by CNN.
He also asked the Governor of Nevada when he plans to reopen Las Vegas.
Trump owns a hotel in Las Vegas.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Mayor of Las Vegas wants to re-open everything also, but she said she will not mandate any ordinances (and she has the authority to do so) about social distancing, leaving that to the casinos to figure out.
I guess she wants her slot machines and and gambling to take priority over public health. How very American. At worst, if too many patrons spread and die of the virus and don’t fuel the casinos, the casinos can always get a bailout from us taxpayers. It’s a win-live / win-die situation for this mayor and casino owners.
I can see the casino signs posted by law changing to: “If you think you have an addiction to gambling or if you are having a hard time breathing and have the chills, please call 1-800-IM-DUPED.
Does anyone else remember the time honored technique of getting parents to agree to let you do something? Keep asking over and over in as many different ways and places until they either ground you for life or give in? Of course, there was always the final option where you did it anyway. Then there was always the bully way. Encourage someone else to do it and observe what happens from the sidelines. Then any blowback was on the kid you coerced into doing it.
“it’s not a big subject”
What he means, if one translates from his toddler English, I think, is that opening schools wouldn’t be consequential.
Which brings me to the diminished cognitive ability that this comment illustrates. If, as a result of reopening schools, kids die, this counts, I think, as consequential. Silly me.
So this decision is Trump’s to make? Or a decision made by governors? Or governors in collaboration with others? Or the ten-yacht lady who only cares about privatizing education with vouchers?
This recommendation is typically ignorant, off the cuff, no consideration of the implications. Trump’s repeated use of the phrase “a lot of people” (say, want, think) means that Trump has no idea what he is talking about.
People call me. They say, you really get it, Mr. President. Wash coal and poof, it’s clean. Belgium is a city. China pays us billions in tariffs we place on its goods. Send astronauts to the sun. The Continental Army during the Revolutionary War took over the airports. Inject disinfectants. Reopen schools during a pandemic. Climate change is weather. Grab ’em by the ______. They let you do that if you’re a celebrity. The blacks, they love me. I had this uncle at MIT.
Open schools! Buy Denmark! Deck your organs in Christmas lights!
The decision belongs to the states, not to the president. He never heard of federalism or the 10th Amendment.
Skipped civics and government. Only took biz classes.
Even at that, his highest grade in the business classes as an F+.
Guvs encourage XLV to “seriously consider” opening a vein.
LOL
. . . and letting it bleed completely?
No need, he’s all leech …
But hey, I’m just being sarcophagous …
Inject! Inject!
Next thing you know, he’ll suggest Clorox as a facial moisturizer and Purell as a pasta sauce. Substitute Ajax for parmigiano, and you’re in for some very clean eating.
Trevor Noah says that Trump doesn’t know what a disinfectant is. He has never cleaned anything in his life.
How ironic, Diane. Trurmp is one of the biggest germs in need of a very big and potent disinfectant.
He should take his own advice and cleanse his own system.
I’m just being sarcophagus. ROFLMAO!
I love jokes in this vein.
Call me crazy.
This is not below tRump and Putin. Wouldn’t be surprised if tRump get paid by Putin for bounty.
What a dope. Who does he think would be teaching all these young children?
And he doesn’t understand that those young children go home to families, which often include grandparents. A lot of parents likely will still be working and therefore at risk.
I would not send my children until it was guaranteed they would be safe. I don’t think teachers and support staff should be forced to take any risk, either. We are not close to it being safe at this time thanks to the greed and ineptness of this administration.
I’m a Nevada teacher and thank goodness, our governor, Steve Sisolak is a Democrat. He has closed schools for the rest of the school year and we are doing distance learning. My state has joined California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado in their Western States Pact for reopening. These states have three agreement principles: residents’ health comes first; health outcomes and science — not politics — will guide reopening decisions and states will be only be effective by working together.
“I don’t take responsibility at all.”
–Jabba the Trump, March 13, 2020
Are there any known examples contact tracing studies done around the world showing/suggesting transmission from a child to an adult? I have found none.
Yes FLERP! – there are. In China they’ve done extensive contact tracing. They found elementary kids (K-5) are not good transmitters of the virus. Grades 6-12, they catch and share the disease like adults, but asymptomatically. So any family with kids in Grades 6-12 would likely be guaranteed to get COVID and give it to their parents – and guess who their parents will give it to?
This song just sticks with me through this.
And for a source because I forgot to include one – this is one of many reporting similar findings –
https://www.businessinsider.com/children-coronavirus-symptoms-spread-infants-teens-2020-4
and
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/23/scientists-effects-coronavirus-children-studies-carriers
https://time.com/5816239/children-coronavirus/
The CDC did drop school closures as a recommendation because of the low infection rate among kids but their role in asymptomatic transmission is still not know and more specifically VERY specific ages at when transmission kicks up if at all. They have an idea right now – but not exceptionally precise.
Do you have a link/source in the contact tracing re K-5. Redid 6-12?
I think the assumption has been that since children are humans and humans transmit the virus to other humans that children can transmit the virus to other humans. Can you think of any contagious disease that is passed only between people of a certain age? I can’t.
The question isn’t “can,” it’s “how commonly does it occur.” Don’t make assumptions with viruses. As people love to say these days, “listen to the science!”
I am admittedly making assumptions on the basis of limited information. The assumption, however, at this point is the rational one to make while too many of us still are faced with rising numbers of cases. Let’s just make sure that the cost/benefit ratio is acceptable to those who are likely to be part of the “cost.” Right now I am thinking of the workers in meat packing plants, not to mention healthcare workers. Nursing homes have also been hard hit and not just the residents but staff as well. How we open is going to be critical. No its not data on kids, but we know kids get it. If they can get it, chances are they can spread it.
It makes you think twice when your job could result in your death, or worse, the death of a loved one who you infected.
Exactly. And how do you live with yourself if you infected a co-worker who then died or…and so on. We are all in this together. Anyone who forces others back into dangerous situations should be right there with them, not sitting in an office somewhere, “social distancing.”
Fie! Trump takes stupid to levels previously unknown. Nothing should be reopening yet. Let’s face it, though, gradual reopening strategies are a joke. We can’t open retail stores without opening schools. Where are the kids supposed to go while the parents go back to work?
This is just another way for politicians to say “We need to open up the economy”. Sounds better than the Texas politician who was throwing the grandparents under the bus a few weeks ago. Parents are unable to work if their kids are at home without supervision and the “business leaders” know this. It’s also another slap in the face to teachers….glorified baby sitters is how they are being perceived. It seems like it will never change. It’s ALL about the $$$….greedy SOB’s.
Not only are we “just babysitters,” but we’re also sacrificial lambs if they open schools right now. Even if kids don’t get it (which is not true–a few kids have died of it, and some are getting gastrointestinal symptoms, per the British), those of us adults who work in schools are sitting ducks as we have 40 kids crowded into one classroom, spreading the disease like crazy. But, like that creep suggested older people do, are supposed to “sacrifice” ourselves to “open the economy.”
BINGO!!! And that’s really all there is to this, throwing the kids under the bus without saying so because with schools closed parents can’t go back to work. And, when you go into the details of opening schools before the numbers of Covid victims go down really far, ASSUMING you have all the masks and other PPE you need, which isn’t happening anytime soon, and that you can get 100% of kids to wear them, which we know isn’t going to happen, and we hire a ton of folks to clean the schools properly on a regular basis, which already hasn’t happened, and we hire a lot more teachers, REAL ones, because we have binders full of them just waiting around, All that so social distancing can be maintained in the new schools that aren’t going to be built, well as you all knew, the whole idea is another disinfectant injection of idiocy by the figurehead in chief.
How about this….I’ll send my kids back to school when he and Melania send Barron back to school. Even though Barron goes to a tony private school with low class sizes, his school is located in the MD district that has the most reported Covid 19 cases. When Melania is comfortable sacrificing her only child, then maybe I’ll think about it for mine.
Biden’s AG better throw the book at the entire Trump clan in his first 100 days. Our future presidents need to know there will be consequences for their corrupt actions. Governors and others are beginning to throw out the idea of schools opening. The new rationale is that kids have a lower chance of dying if they get it. They ignore staff and teacher infections as well has kids spreading it within the community. It’s upsetting that the conversation is shifting to opening up when we do not have a vaccine, treatment protocols, or reliable and plentiful tests. Read between the lines, it’s all about retaining power and the riches that corruptly come with it.
and on top of all of this, there will be so much outsider decided policy pushed into schools and onto teachers and kids — with close to zero input from the actual employees
Even if the entire world were to be without even one Covid Case at this moment, school is done. If there had never been a cronovirus at all, school would be done right now, because testing would have made everything stop effectively for the whole month of April. Re-starting in May is something we are very familiar with. Every year it fails miserably. People who are not in the classroom with average children do not get it. It used to be that learning ceased when spring sports and field trips commenced on a constant basis. Then a binge of testing for three weeks intervened. Then test prep began in March.
For the past two decades, school has effectively been out in March.
For some reason, the president did not know this.
100%.
yes RT. My tenure. Started in 2000. When we go back the testing and its purse strings needs to be gone. Large HRs gone. Small groups. The small groups will require lots of other stuff to be suspended. Emphasis on SE lessons and physical activity. PE more often. Overnight camps, girls groups, boys groups. Message therapy.
I don’t think they’ll be a vaccine but I do think schools will re-open in the fall. They can’t close them forever and they’ll get better at evaluating risk and treating people who are infected and symptomatic as they treat more and more of them.
It isn’t just schools, either.They’ll have to reopen daycares. We can’t have a functioning modern economy without children having somewhere to go during work hours.
I see the sense in waiting until August or September but after that I think schools and daycares open “ready or not”. It just has to happen, so it will and it will be either more or less ricky than it is now, but open they will.
It will be difficult to social distance on buses. That’s s huge hurdle that will have to be overcome. There are not enough buses to adequately do this in most districts/ Many districts have students packed 3 to a seat.
Yeah, until people start dying again.
Day cares are already open for children of essential workers and I heard the kids don’t have to social distance or wear masks.
Huh?
Just because they need to – so parents can go back to work – they will?
Multilayered assumptions there, resting on a basic one, that a deadly virus will magically no longer be an operating factor in September. How? “Treatments” are wildly successful & in stock for use by all well in advance of vaccine availability? Therefore, biz can open full throttle just as soon as the pesky childcare situation is handled?
More likely what we’ll see– hopefully, or expect second wave– is all of it, biz along w/schools, re-opening in small part-time steps, as allowed by full social-distancing/ sanitizing measures. The re-started Denmark schools Laura C posted about are doing it w/10 kids per classroom, same teacher/ kids all day in same space, w/staggered-monitored use of gym & cafeteria. Unless extra bldgs were annexed, that would mean here, assuming ave class size 30, roughly 2 days/wk in bldg per kid on a Mon-Sat sched. Supplement w/at-home study. Maybe businesses doing something similar.
My sis, an AP in upstate NYS, thinks realistically we’re probably looking at school starting online in Sept, w/ PT in-bldg teaching starting Jan if viral #’s justify.
Looks like I’ll be “babysitting” and doing “home instruction” for the long term. I’m just concerned that my other daughter will start going into work instead of working from home and I’ll have a second “pupil” on my to do list,
Hey, kudos to you Flo! That’s important work, & think of the memories you’re making for them. But I gather it’s not entirely a bed of roses. 😀 I definitely have mixed feelings about pandemic-era teaching. My new role providing video Span lessons to the PreK cohort still signed up… at first it was exciting and fun– stretching to learn the tech, finding new ways to be creative etc. but I’m starting to feel like I’m shouting into a hole in the ground. No interaction, no feedback. Half the $ for 1-1/2x the work… My appreciation for what FT pubsch teachers are doing now is boundless.
Online teaching is definitely not what I expected. However, spending quality time with my grandson has been a bonus in this time of uncertainty.
NYC must have kept some daycares open or they wouldn’t have had any health care workers able to work, not to mention all the other “essential employees”
How did they manage that? They must already have some new practices in place for groups of children.
I think we probably learn to live with it- there’s no real long term other choice.
I’m kind of old and slow so it took me a while to get it. This president is in a big hurry to open everything because his hotels and resort properties are not earning much money these days. That should have been so obvious right from the beginning. His strategy is all about cutting his losses.
Opening the schools isn’t so much about education as it is getting the parents back to work.
And everybody knows that teachers and other school staff are disposable. Of course the kids can take it home to their parents and grandparents, etc. One big, happy family!
His statements are nearly identical to what Florida governor Ron DeSantis said a couple of weeks ago before being pressured to close school buildings for the rest of the school year.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/492152-florida-gov-desantis-says-coronavirus-doesnt-seem-to-threaten-kids-mulls
The virus doesn’t threaten most kids, but a small percentage are vulnerable.
It does however pose a threat to the adults in the building.
Plenty of adults that work with students have high blood pressure, diabetes or other health issues that may make them susceptible to contracting the virus.
Yes. Many in Florida were perplexed when the governor said those things that were later echoed by the president. It is as if they don’t realize that adults work in those buildings with kids. Many kids are raised by grandparents.
exposing the larger reality that so many legislators do not honestly fathom how children are raised/schooled: patriarchy has given us this legacy
Ciedie, responding to you way below to get more “margin.”
Every once in a while the President says something that makes sense, He did say today that distance learning is not as good as face to face learning in a classroom. I agree with that particular statement.
My question is what schools will look likr going forward next year. Will there be staggered school days – a morning and afternoon which in essence divides the class in half so social distancing will be achieved or will it be an every other day ABABAB school “week” with half the class attending each day? Will specials travel from room to room, a la Library/Art/Music on a Cart? Lunch in the classrooms? Field Trips via Skype? Will the school year be extended, starting earlier and running longer?
And the big question – with limited funds due to the effects of the virus – how many will be left employed to teach our kids?
Agree.
The president said distance learning isn’t as good because his kid and grandkids or whoever are at home and for once the 1%ers and .01%ers realize what teachers do.
As for opening schools, he’s never set foot in a public school – but possibly he’d like to come here and help distribute a week’s bag of food on Fridays, help distribute ipads that I am sure he and his cronies have not contributed a dime, meet with social workers who fret over the reports of abuse going down – because there’s no one to report them to…. and to see the incredible work and creativity teachers across the board are doing.
And reopen – is he ready to walk down a crowded hallway filled with kids (I’d love to see that virus or no virus).
Yes – closed schools affects parents and caregivers working – and many have lost their jobs. Could schools in the hot spots and surrounding areas consider some hybrid of opening .. sometime… sure. But lower class sizes and crowd sizes (shifts? half-days?), substantial increase in cleaning, more bus routes, technology… show me the money.
Oh – and if he offers you anything to drink on his visit – run Forrest run.
Sometimes I wonder if there is a bounty for kids and teachers, healthcare people, and generally those who “do good” for others.
Just picking up here from ciedie’s “exposing the larger reality that so many legislators do not honestly fathom how children are raised/schooled: patriarchy has given us this legacy” for a cultural meander.
Patriarchy sounds like an excuse. More like outta sight outta mind, & even, they don’t don’t freaking care. Euro cultures are generally patriarchal in nature, yet their nations are far more family-& child-centered than ours (except our “parent” culture in England). Hefty, healthy, active interest in the particulars of childcare & schooling by both papas and mamas. E.g., I remember when researching K-12 in Netherlands learning two-thirds of adults (not just parents) belong to an org I can only liken to a national PTA w/many little chapters whose job it is to know what’s going on in the local schools & feed back input/ druthers to their natl dept of ed. Those people are different. Dads in Nordic countries walk their kids to school & talk to teachers. &, OK, I’m extrapolating from 1st-2nd-gen Italian-American Dads, but I’m guessing over there they’re just as concerned w/their kids’ daily lives.
In the USofA, we’ve never had a forté [traditionally– culturally speaking] for asking kids how their day went, much less trying to get a picture of what their schoolday is like & taking that input to teachers or BofE to debate it. Whole lotta “children should be seen and not heard” in our deep background, not to mention, boys should be on a tractor helping Dad & girls in kitchen helping Mom by age 13 or 14 tops. You still hear it from libertarians: down w/compulsory ed, put those tykes to work.
Today that translates to a certain dismissal of kiddie school doings nationally, which sets in seriously once their own kids are out of the nest. As Peter Greene notes in above link, policies are being set by “people who have not been inside a school since they became adults… [and/or] have never met tiny humans at all.” How many times we have rued here that K12 education rarely gets on the political menu– & how many times one notes the vast majority of commenters to ed articles picture K12 school as it was [fill in blank w/their personal experience].
Part of it just goes back to “I’m an expert on K12 cuz I did it,” but more of it goes back to a lack of concern for children in our national DNA. Some attribute this to an ornery strain of anti-intellectualism. I’m down with that to a degree, it’s certainly in our DNA. But sadly I think there’s a deeper piece which says kids don’t count– & whatever hardships one endures as a kid makes you or or breaks you, & the broken are losers who don’t deserve a hand up from me. It’s part of pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, no excuses, it’s your own fault if you don’t succeed, count on no one but yourself, social welfare just encourages malingering etc. This stuff is deeply embedded in our culture, especially in the vast swath of states that were settled by pioneers.