Two states—Texas and Florida—are moving forward to open their schools for five-day, in-person instruction, even though the rate of coronavirus infections in both states is rising.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has demanded that schools across the nation restart and become fully operational, although she has no power to force schools to reopen when local officials believe it is unwise and unsafe. She and Trump are trying to force schools to open as if there were no pandemic and no risks to students and staff. They think that opening schools will be good for the economy and help his re-election. It’s hard to see how it will help his standing in the polls if the pandemic continues to spread and claims more victims.
DeVos made a point of praising Florida Commissioner Richard Corcoran (former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives who has no background or qualifications in education and has expressed his desire to totally voucherize every school in the state) for ordering every school to reopen fully in mid-August.
As reported in Education Week, Corcoran left a loophole:
Corcoran’s Monday order says that, when they reopen in August, “all school boards and charter school governing boards must open brick and mortar schools at least five days per week for all students.” But those decisions are “subject to advice and orders of the Florida Department of Health, local departments of health” and other state orders.
Calling on schools to open “at least five days per week for all students” seems to eliminate the possibility of hybrid remote learning plans that have been among the most popular models for districts around the country. While the Trump administration has not clarified what exactly it expects from schools, DeVos has criticized hybrid plans as inadequate.
The school boards in Palm Beach County and Miami-Dade have announced that they will seek exemptions and continue remote or hybrid programs rather than reopen fully.
Texas has been promoting reopening, but local boards and teachers in hard-hit areas of the state are resisting.
The Trump administration has been citing the American Academy of Pediatrics as its justification for forcing schools to open, but AAP President Sally Goza pushed back and said that schools should not reopen without the financial resources to do so safely.
She told NPR that the AAP does not support rigid state mandates:
“We will be sticking to what our guidelines say —that if it does not look safe in your community to open schools, that we need to really have that looked at. We also need to make sure that schools have the needed resources to reopen safely so that a lack of funding is not a reason to keep students home, which we’re hearing in a lot of communities—to do what we’re asking people to do to make schools safe is not really financially feasible in some of these communities.”
When every school has the same testing equipment, staff, and protocol as the White House, then start looking at opening them.
Is the wrongful opening of schools, that causes injury, a tortuous event (https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Tortious)? maybe a rich area for aggressive attorneys
It is good to learn that Sally Goza and the American Academy of Pediatrics are not 100% on board for stupid, one size fits all. Ed in the Apple is highlighting an issue I have not heard much about…legal liability for teachers and other staff who may be identified by contact tracing, same for students and their parents.
Mitch McConnell and state legislatures are doing nothing about funding but they are working on passing liability protection for themselves and other decision makers to protect them from lawsuits if anyone gets sick.
Yes, and I think I also heard something about large companies closing or having people work online for liability reasons. How can schools be exempt from this?
Mamie-
Justice for the rich and injustice for the 99%.
The Business Roundtable (rich, white men) avoid situations where they would be exposed to Covid. Teachers, mostly female and, children of workers and the poor are expendable.
Especially expendable, teachers who vote Democratic.
Good morning Diane and everyone,
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I am actually going to teach if we go back to school in person. I think people might have the idea that everything will be “normal” in schools if we go back in person. Kids will be able to socialize and everything will be fine. I imagine me standing more than 12 feet from the kids giving a lesson. I’m wearing a mask and a face shield and kids are wearing masks (hopefully). They all have their laptops in front of them. After I give my spiel, they do some work on the laptop and submit it to me. All the windows are open regardless of outside temperature. I am NOT circulating around the room helping kids. I will have students minimize talking so as not to spread the virus (or other cold, flu germs for that matter!!!). I may hand out papers but to do this I will have to go into the faculty room (which is small and has no windows) to make copies. I’m NOT going to have students hand in any papers. There won’t be any group or pair work. Since we won’t be able to do that, what will I substitute for communicative activities (I teach French.)? Maybe we will watch more French movies. Maybe I’ll read them a French book. They may do more writing on their laptops. No more art projects because even if they have their own materials, they will want to talk to each other while doing their project. I’m not encouraging that. So, my teaching is not going to look like it normally would, and it’s possible that I’m not going to be teaching much of the same material. I’m certainly not going to stay after school to help kids with work. And even if I did, we would have to stay far apart. Kids aren’t going to be able to socialize as they normally would. They won’t be able to sit with friends for the most part. They may have to stay with a particular group. I’m concerned about going into the small faculty bathrooms that have no ventilation. They are also close to student bathrooms which are small and have no ventilation. So, just because kids are back in school doesn’t mean a whole lot of socializing will take place. Of course, it will probably be different at the elementary level. I’ve also brought up the psychological issues of constantly being aware of the safety of one’s environment and how learning will take place therein. I’m wondering how the teachers out there are envisioning teaching in person in school. Have they thought about the logistics of this and if they will have to change their curriculum at all and if so, how? Thank you.
I was kind of preparing for this as well, sort of a college library atmosphere in the Classroom as it were. Physical movement greatly limited, no shared materials. I’d have to figure out how to sanitize laptops between groups quickly. Very much a return to the old model. Me sitting at the front, kids sitting at their desks. Kids post questions and turn in work via computer. I can work with remote kids while sitting in front of them, that’s when it’ll have to be. I am certainly not doing it when I get home, unless the BOE chops some hours off of our seven hour school day. IDK how I can enforce this absent a strict district wide policy of zero contact. Restorative Justice can’t get off the ground w/o adequate hiring, and we are short staffed in the first place.
Kid comes home on a Monday with a letter: “due to yada yada yada, jeopardizing the health and safety of others, Ralph will stay in RL for the remainder of the week”. On Ralph’s third such letter, his parents will be told that he’s RL for the semester. Going to be very hard for that group of Gardner’s “bodily kinesthetic” learners and those under their first influence of hormones.
What a sad place our classrooms will be? Not exactly what the AAP has in mind when they talk about social development. The district in which I teach is shortening passing periods and not giving lockers to “stop congregations of students.” Like THAT will stop kids from socializing.
Thank you for sharing your thinking about this! This is one of the many reasons why Diane’s blog is so important. Smart teachers share with one another here.
Reopening without a) being able to test everyone in school or, short of that, b) having N95 masks for everyone in school is INSANE.
Trump and those around him don’t care what the body count is. All Trump cares about is being reelected because he knows that the moment he is out of office, he will be subject to a long, long list of criminal and civil charges for everything from sexual assault to money laundering.
I suspect that this is why Melania was so upset at his winning the election (though not the popular vote). She is smarter than he and realized that all this would come out. Don the Con has done his level best to keep his taxes and other financial information from prosecutors, Congress, and the public, but yesterday’s ruling means that prosecutors will soon have this information in hand. Why does he want, so desperately, to keep this information private? Because he is a criminal. Same with his academic records. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he graduated at the top of his class, but we know from Mary Trump’s new book that his grades in the military school to which he was sent to straighten him out because he was bullying teachers and other students were so poor that he worried that he would not get into college and that he paid a student to take the SAT for him. None of that is news, of course. It’s obvious enough from his toddler speech and from his ignorance about almost everything that he wasn’t exactly a scholar.
I have ordered Mary Trump’s book. One of the reasons she got angry was that she discovered that he and his siblings had cheated her and her brother out of their inheritance. They artificially deflated the value of Fred Sr.’s estate and said he was worth $30 million. They are the children of the deceased Fred Jr., who was ridiculed by his father and younger brother and died of an alcoholism related illness. Mary and her brother cut their small share of the estate and signed a non-disclosure agreement. Later, as she relates in the book, when looking through her lawyer’s records, she realized that Fred Sr.’s estate was worth nearly $1 billion. She believes she was defrauded, making the NDA void.
Imagine cheating your dead brother’s children of their share of his father’s estate.
Trump is the lowest of the low. He has trailed slime through his entire life.
Counties in the panhandle have been announcing various options for students in the fall. I hope the feds do not try to override community decisions. Trump and DeVos are political animals. They do not care about students in public education unless they can monetize them. Peter Greene gave the best summary of the situation
“Who knew that Trump and DeVos thought schools were this important? I suppose the cynical view here is that they don’t give a rodent’s posterior about schools, but just want to get babysitting services up and running so that all the meat widgets can get back to work making their corporate overlords richer. Or the cynical view that Trump needs things to look normal to bolster his election. Or the really cynical view that by forcing public schools to open without the funding or resources they need to do so safely, the feds can drive worried parents away from public schools and into the waiting arms of the various privatized options.”http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2020/07/trump-and-devos-cant-make-up-their-damn.html
always the best line: ” They do not care about students in public education unless they can monetize them. ‘
This is a sick twisted win-win for Trump and DeVos who want to destroy public schools. If schools reopen fully and predictably there will be more surges and outbreaks of CV amongst school staff and children, then Trump-DeVos will blame the teachers and public schools. They will say, “See, public schools are a failure, they promoted a deadly virus because they were not competent or diligent enough!” Vote Democratic in the general election.
Well, here I am, I can’t help thinking that the main reason why schools will be opened now.
El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) leadership has made the decision to NOT open schools until AFTER Labor Day. That won’t set will with Dumb Trump and his even Dumber DeVos.
Hopefully EPISD will remain INDEPENDENT and let Trump/DeVos stew in their own foul juices.
—-is so that parents could go back to work at there jobs. There will be no health benefits for the children trapped in schools where one or more students will still be carrying the danger of the virus..
well said
Well, I accidentally cut off the first part of my coment, but I’m glad you got my point.
Trump and Betsy DeVos will have lots to answer for…so will Texas governor Greg Abbott and Florida governor Ron DeSantis. They are all the worst of the worst.
Thankfully, more sensible people will think more carefully about opening schools. As I noted in earlier comments, there remains a shortage of PPEs and testing. We cannot very well open schools “safely” under those circumstances. Because of Trump’s badly botched response to the pandemic, Covid cases are spiking and spreading across the country. Again, opening “safely” is highly questionable.
Utah, too. We had nearly 1000 cases today, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but Utah has only 3 million people. And yet we’re expected to go fully back. The governor just mandated that students will wear masks in schools, and you should SEE the screaming, crying parents about their kids having to wear masks. . Plus, HOW are we teachers going to enforce that? Remember, Utah has the largest class sizes in the country.
When significant numbers of K-12 children become carriers of the virus spreading COVID-19 far and wide in Florida and Texas, maybe that will motivate voters to flip those states blue and vote out the corrupt Red leadership in bed with ALEC and Trump that pretends they are Republicans.
According to studies, both Florida and Texas are ripe for flipping from red to blue.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-florida-is-not-redder-than-texas/
Polls suggest Joe Biden has a shot at winning Texas. How he fares here could reshape the state’s politics.
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/17/joe-biden-texas-2020/
US elections 2020
The Democratic war council working to turn Florida blue in 2020
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/17/democrats-florida-election-2020-strategy
The best source of polls is realclearpolitics.com
Biden is ahead in all the battleground states.
Johns Hopkins has produced a School Reopening Policy Tracker supplementing its worldwide COVID-19 tracker: https://equityschoolplus.jhu.edu/reopening-policy-tracker/