Jan Resseger reviews the Catch-22 situation in which schools are trapped: Trump demands that they open in a few weeks or he will cut their federal funding. The CDC says that a safe opening requires hyper-vigilance about health, safety, social distancing, small classes, cleaning, masks, etc.
But Trump and Congress have refused to pay for reopening.
Bottom line: schools can’t reopen unless it is safe for students and staff.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But the U.S. is doing so much better than other countries!! Why shouldn’t our schools open when other countries who are doing worse than us open their schools? Trump never lies./s
Trump said in a tweet Tuesday morning, “You will never hear this on the Fake News concerning the China Virus, but by comparison to most other countries, who are suffering greatly, we are doing very well….”
Idaho health care leader says schools shouldn’t open right now
BY CHADD CRIPE
JULY 22, 2020 04:00 AM
The positivity rate for coronavirus tests in Ada County is too high to safely reopen schools right now, a health care leader told the Central District Health Board of Health on Tuesday.
Primary Health Medical Group provides much of the testing in the Boise area, CEO David Peterman said. It has nearly 20 clinics in the Treasure Valley, with most of its testing performed in Ada County.
Primary Health has seen positivity rates around 15% each of the past four weeks with complete data, Peterman said, and he expects a similar result for the most recent week.
He also provided charts showing increased infections in children in recent weeks.
“My opinion is the positivity rate is too high for schools to open,” said Peterman, who also is a pediatrician.
He said ideally the rate should drop back below 5% before schools open but he’d settle for getting it below 10% with a downward trend.The Boise School District is scheduled to begin classes Aug. 17 — less than four weeks away. The Caldwell School District delayed its Aug. 19 start by a week on Tuesday night.
Idaho set a new high for its 14-day moving average of new confirmed and probable cases Tuesday with 514 per day.
“This is just an enormous surge of cases — absolutely frightening,” Peterman said…
Read more here: https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/coronavirus/article244397072.html#storylink=cpy
The question posed in the title of Diane’s post has a very simple answer.
Here is Trump’s and DeVos’s formula, and it will have a decent chance of proving effective:
Step 1: Federally mandate the opening of all schools.
Step 2. Withdraw the already meager, paltry funds the federal government gives to public schools, as we all know they are financed largely through local property taxes and state aid.
Step 3: As the federal government, supply negligible or no funding to help schools retrofit their crumbing infrastructures with proper HVAC, staffing, staggered schedules to reduce school population densities per learning session, etc.
Step 4: (This one is difficult for me to to write but it has to be said): Have children and school personnel get seriously ill or die from the virus.
Step 5: Hold lots of congressional testimonial sessions and press conferences by swooping in as the federal government to point out how public schools are once again failing the children and how charter schools and private schools are doing a superior job at protecting their health and safety. Cite actual real life examples.
Step 6: Add the data to the school choice / school privatization propaganda machine.
Step 7: Observe how easy it will be to increase charters and vouchers to create that competitive, capitalist, free market spirit and choice (with the usual winners and losers) that Ms. DeVos has envisioned for decades.
Step 8: Lick your federal chops as your scheme successfully increases fear and puts some credibility into your diabolical scheme, lessening parents’s and guardians’s support for public education.
Step 9: Gather your cronies to absorb all those privatized charter school contracts and open up all those new private facilities to “educate” the newly growing enrollment.
Step10: Continue to dumb down the population over the next 10 years with the wild west version of mass education.
Step11, last step: Enjoy and harvest the fruit of your federalized, plutocratic efforts as you seize even more power and wealth, shrink the middle class, and step into the new, virtually permeant oligarchy that you always envisioned the United States to be. Congratulations! You are the new Russia, the new China, and the New Mexico combined.
Voilá . . . . There you have it. 11 easy steps . . . Easier than following the numbered directions on a Betty Crocker cake mix and just as sweet . . .
This was very well stated. Thank you, Robert Rendo.
Indiana officials aren’t counting how many teachers quit due to COVID-19…privacy issues they say.
Yes, Carolmalaysia.
Everything about privacy is direly respected until it comes to someone wanting to know a teacher’s salary or pension, and then all of sudden anyone from anywhere can easily access that information.
But I suppose that crime is nothing compared to peaceful protestors getting arrested and jailed without warrants or due process in Portland Oregon . . .
Parents, like the ones I know, should simply refuse to bring/take/send their children to schools that haven’t (read: couldn’t/can’t ) complied with recommendations that would keep their children safe. A few may go to jail, but every parent in the state?
Yes. We need massive civil disobedience on this.
And then there goes our funding. There are a lot of people in my state (including some legislators) that are demanding to “defund schools” if we don’t open full time.
Parents and concerned citizens are protesting. Merrillville, IN is about 15 minutes from where I live. [NWI is Northwest Indiana Times paper]
I sent a protest letter to Governor Holcomb [R-IN] yesterday. I’m currently watching a Frontline documentary on the difficulties and abuse immigrant workers face in picking farm produce and working in meat packing plants. How long before there is a Frontline special on the deaths/illnesses that are spreading through our schools?
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NWI Times] Parents, grandparents contest Merrillville schools’ 2020-21 reentry plan
Jul 21, 2020 Updated 11 hrs ago
MERRILLVILLE — Not everyone is happy with the Merrillville Community School Corporation’s 2020-21 reentry plan.
The School Board of Trustees listened for more than an hour at Tuesday’s board meeting to comments, questions and concerns from some 10 parents and grandparents.
The overall message, which at times took on an emotional tone from those who spoke, was for the board to consider letting students continue distance learning for at least the first trimester when school opens Aug. 18.
“This is a very scary time for parents,” Tiffany Jones, a parent, told the board.
The Merrillville Community School Corporation’s reentry plan, which was approved by the board on July 7, set up two options for parents to select…
https://www.nwitimes.com/high-school/parents-grandparents-contest-merrillville-schools-2020-21-reentry-plan/article_8db5f2d4-091c-5432-b80e-d97a6f30ee6c.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share
Trump and DeVos have little intention of helping public schools open safely. In his typical braggadocious way, Trump intends to bully and threaten public schools. For many states with high rates of positivity, opening would be a risky move. This is the reason that the FEA has filed a lawsuit in Florida. The FEA is trying to protect teachers and students from being a prop in Trump’s campaign while the virus continues to surge in the state.
Public schools are economic engines. People that work in public schools generally spend their money on goods and services in the local economies unlike private charter companies chains that act like carpetbaggers. Under privatization of education local dollars are spent in the community at a much lower rate. Most of the money in charter schools goes to a few overpaid administrators and corporate headquarters outside the community. In contrast public schools and public employees enhance and invest in the local economies where they are located.
Insted of sending your children to school try using easy ways to teach them at home. As a teacher for several years and then a school princapel, I suggest things for parents to do on my blog. But here I will tell you to begin with young children by pasting written messages around your home. Where you keep childrens clothing write the names of close on the places where they are kept. Also write the names of food and toys so your children can find them easaly. Seeing words is a good way to begin to learn how to read. With olderchildren I sugest that writing mesages to frends is very good for older children, and you can help them by giving them written copies of a few words they don’t know how to spell. Tell them to copy those words, and if they do they will learn how t spell many of them. Recently I have suggested many things parents can do at home that will help children to learn, and I won’t stop until schools are safe enough for all kids to go learn there every day.
One more district in Indiana is having qualms about opening face to face.
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[NWI Times] Hammond schools to require masks, continue sports suspension as district prepares for reopening
Jul 22, 2020 Updated 17 min ago
…Superintendent Scott Miller stressed the plan accepted Tuesday is fluid and that he would not reopen schools in-person based on current positivity rates in Lake County, but that could change before the district’s scheduled start date of Aug. 19.
“The rates are higher now than when we closed,” Miller said, referencing statewide school closures this March. “But, we will not say definitively tonight whether students will start on Aug. 19. That will come at our Aug. 4 meeting.”
Until a decision is made in that meeting, parents will be allowed to opt into e-learning during registration, which remains open through the end of July. More information on Hammond’s plan for the 2019-20 school year is available on the school city website at hammond.k12.in.us.
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/education/hammond-schools-to-require-masks-continue-sports-suspension-as-district-prepares-for-reopening/article_8f50074e-e9d6-52c8-afb7-a6471f20f6d4.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share
Yes, I know. I’ve asked you to pick up trash stuck between the train tracks. Yes, I know that there’s a blind curve up there and that trains come barrelling through at random intervals. But it’s really a matter of whether you have the patriotism to care about a clean America, about America the Beautiful. And here’s $20 TO ENSURE THAT YOU CAN DO THIS SAFELY. Go buy a bicycle helmet. However, let me be clear about this–the $20 is contingent on your committing to 7 hours a day on the tracks.
Bob,
????
Please clarify what you are referring to. Thanks!
Good analogy, Bob. That is about the same tepid level of concern of governors in red states.
Now I get it! TY!
And remember, Robert, to tell people where you got that spiffy helmet!
Crumbs and carrots for us = democracy for the ruling class.
He mentions the size of the room as important in considering how many students can be in a room at the same time, as well as staggering times students go into hallways.
We don’t have schools with enough classrooms, or teachers, to have students 6 feet apart.
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**Thomas Duszynski, MPH, epidemiology education director at Indiana University, Fairbanks School of Public Health speaks on decision to send children back to school”
Healthy IU Work + Life – An epidemiologist’s perspective: Parenting during the return to school
From Angela Reese on July 14th, 2020
Are you grappling with the decision to send your child(ren) back to school or continue e-learning? Do feel you need more information to make this important decision for your family? Healthy IU Work + Life is here to support you through the process.
We sat down with experts from across the university to get the answers to your burning questions, and learn strategies to consider during the transition back to school. Listen to hear what Thomas Duszynski, MPH, epidemiology education director at the IU, Fairbanks School of Public Health, has to share.
https://iu.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/Healthy+IU+Work+%2B+Life+-+An+epidemiologist%27s+perspectiveA+Parenting+during+the+return+to+school/1_bmpvaijt
We must always read between the lines with 45 and his administration. The idea is to push online schooling for everyone. 1st they make the statement that online is very bad schooling and then they push to open up the public schools (without adequate funding for Covid) or withhold normal funding. Of course parents can’t stay at home without income AND they can’t let their smaller children fend for themselves all day, and they don’t want their children exposed to the virus. A lot parents I have spoken to (K-5) are choosing to homeschool or try “online” schooling because with having the public school system do a virtual layout, parents are still tasked with “being a guide on the side” for computer help and still having to forgo an income due to the public school day schedule. They are willing to pay for online schooling because the kids can participate in the evening when the parents are home from work. Older kids or grandparents will be the babysitters during the work day. The money used for public schools will be rerouted to the online platforms so that they can “improve” their product. There is always a devious method to their madness. Betsy gets what she wants, public tax dollars flow into private business and unions are busted beyond repair. Win-Win for this administration….LOSE-LOSE for the people.
Elizabeth Warren: To Fight the Pandemic, Here’s My Must-Do List
The Senate needs to act now. There is no time to waste.
By Elizabeth Warren
Ms. Warren is a Democratic senator from Massachusetts.
July 21, 2020
Americans stayed at home and sacrificed for months to flatten the curve and prevent the spread of the coronavirus. That gave us time to take the steps needed to address the pandemic — but President Trump squandered it, refusing to issue national stay-at-home guidelines, failing to set up a national testing operation and fumbling production of personal protective equipment. Now, Congress must again act as this continues to spiral out of control.
…Those who frame the debate as one of health versus economics are missing the point. It is not possible to fix the economy without first containing the virus. We need a bold, ambitious legislative response that does four things: brings the virus under control; gets our schools, child care centers, businesses, and state and local governments the resources they need; addresses the burdens on communities of color; and supports struggling families who don’t know when the next paycheck will come.
Here’s what the next federal response must include:
Start with funding the robust public health measures we know will work to address this crisis: ramped-up testing, a national contact-tracing program and supply-chain investments to resolve medical supply shortages. Without these measures, we will not be able to adequately reopen safely, more people will die and there will be no economic recovery.
Our schools face enormous challenges, like figuring out whether and how to safely reopen, how to help students who fell further behind because of distance learning — disproportionately students of color. The next legislative package should include at least $500 billion to stabilize state and local governments and at least $175 billion for our public schools to help them reopen safely, avoid teacher layoffs and provide the mental health and other services our children require…
Warren is a great thinker. I hope she becomes vice president. I think her anti-corruption CORE Act is needed if more money is put into Covid relief.
I am wild about Elizabeth Warren. I hope Biden chooses her as his Vice-President. She would be ready on Day One.
Indiana mandates masks at school for most students and teachers
By Emma Kate Fittes Jul 22, 2020, 2:48pm EDT
May 15, 2020.
Indiana will require students in third grade and older, teachers, and school staff to wear masks when school buildings reopen. Andy Cross/The Denver Post
All students in third grade and above, teachers, and school staff will be required to wear masks when they return to Indiana school buildings this fall.
The new requirement, announced by Gov. Eric Holcomb on Wednesday, is part of a larger statewide mandate. Starting Monday, everyone across the state age 8 and older will be required to wear masks while in public indoor spaces.
“Our kids should not be getting mixed messages during the day,” Holcomb said. “When they leave school grounds, they should see that everyone is doing what they are doing.”
The requirement will force some districts to change their plans weeks before they were scheduled to start, and puts more pressure on schools to have a stockpile of reusable and disposable face coverings ready.
It’s a significant step for a state that, until now, left most decision-making up to local schools and communities. But the mask mandate could still be unlikely to ease the concerns of some district leaders. School districts have seen increasing pushback on reopening from both teachers and parents as COVID-19 cases increase statewide.
Around a dozen Indiana districts have followed a nationwide wave of state and local leaders pushing back the start of school, signaling a growing wariness. At least three districts in highly-effected areas — Washington Township, South Bend, and Gary — are starting school only online.
Holcomb has said he supports those local decisions, reiterating Wednesday that he would not set a statewide school start date. He appealed to districts, asking that they consider opening buildings and providing transportation.
“I want school districts to be very mindful of what that decision means holistically for the family,” he said.
Holcomb’s announcement comes more than a week after he met with the Indiana State Teachers Association, which called on the governor to require masks for grades six and above. The union’s argument was driven in large part by concern for teachers’ health and safety as schools reopen.
Holcomb didn’t address other demands from the state’s largest teachers union Wednesday, including eliminating standardized testing and providing clarity around when schools should close for COVID-19 spikes.
Some districts, including Indianapolis Public Schools, already were planning to open with strict mask requirements. All IPS students will be required to wear face coverings if they choose to attend classes in-person, according to the district’s reopening plan.
Other districts, including those in more rural areas where COVID-19 cases are less prevalent, were planning to stop short of a mandate, despite health officials emphasizing the importance of face coverings. Jay County Schools, for example, previously said administrators would only “strongly encourage” masks when students aren’t able to practice social distancing.
For districts that weren’t planning on providing masks, securing enough for each student on short notice could be difficult. Most Indiana districts start school in late July or early August.
The state has purchased 3 million reusable masks using federal coronavirus relief money. Holcomb said they will be distributed to 472 schools along with disposable masks and hand sanitizer.
Because this is how it’s supposed to work: Trump wants because it makes life nice for him. That means the world should just fall in line. Trump shouldn’t have to work to make it happen. Trump shouldn’t even have to consider how others are affected. That’s just how the world works if you are Trump.
If Trump wants to open schools why doesn’t he send his son to public school to test the waters? But just like masks, good for everyone else but not him. Hypocrite.
There Are Literally No Good Options for Educating Our Kids This Fall
But the real scandal is that we shouldn’t be in this position in the first place.
By Elie MystalTwitter
JULY 16, 2020
If we had successfully done the work of stopping the spread of the virus, as has been done in other countries, we wouldn’t have to pick which poison to expose our kids to. If we had committed to testing so as to track the spread of the virus, instead of not testing so as to manage Donald Trump’s asinine fear that testing causes cases, we might know which school districts could safely reopen. If we had leaders who cared about the health of our people nearly as much as they care about the health of their stock portfolios, we would be able to protect teachers instead of asking them to risk their lives.
Instead, our leaders view children as nothing more than tiny impediments to efficient wage slavery. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar put it most bluntly: “Parents have to get back to the factory. They’ve got to get back to the job site. They have to get back to the office. And part of that is their kids, knowing their kids are taken care of.”
Meanwhile, just last week President Donald Trump worried that CDC guidelines for protecting our children were too “expensive.” He tweeted, “I disagree with @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!”
And so, we are here. I wouldn’t let my children eat candy handed out by this administration…
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/covid-schools-reopening/
On Politics Poll Watch: Trump’s Unpopular Stance on Schools
On Thursday evening, Mr. Trump argued that schools ought to be able to “reopen safely,” even as he abandoned plans to hold the Republican National Convention in Florida because of concerns over spreading the virus.
“We cannot indefinitely stop 50 million American children from going to school, harming their mental, physical and emotional development,” he said, arguing that federal funding should be rerouted away from schools that don’t reopen in person and put toward voucher programs. “Reopening our schools is also critical to ensuring that parents can go to work and provide for their families.”
But polls show that Americans — parents in particular — remain gravely worried about sending students back to school.
An Associated Press/NORC poll this week found that most Americans said they were very or extremely concerned that reopening K-12 schools for in-person instruction would contribute to spreading the virus. Altogether, 80 percent of respondents said they were at least somewhat concerned, including more than three in five Republicans.
“I have yet to see any data where there are appreciable numbers of people who say, ‘Yes, I want my kids back in school,’” Ed Goeas, a veteran Republican pollster, said in an interview. “They want their kids back in school, but not right now. I think safety is taking priority over education.”
“It shows you how nervous Americans are about coronavirus,” he added. “Because let’s face it, virtual learning couldn’t be worse — yet large numbers of parents say, ‘We’re not putting our kids back in school.’”
Sixty percent of respondents to the A.P./NORC poll said it was “essential” that schools be able to provide a mix of in-person and virtual learning. Another 24 percent viewed this as important, though not essential.
Seventy-seven percent of Americans said in the poll either that K-12 schools should reopen only if they made major adjustments (46 percent), or that they shouldn’t reopen at all (31 percent). Even among Republicans, 57 percent of respondents chose one of those options.
By a two-to-one margin, Americans said in a Quinnipiac University pollreleased last week that they thought it would not be safe to send children back to elementary school in the fall. And by roughly the same spread, they said they disliked how Mr. Trump was dealing with the reopening of schools.
According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released on Thursday, 60 percent of parents with children in elementary school said that they would rather schools reopen more slowly to ensure safety, versus 34 percent who said they wanted schools to prioritize reopening swiftly so that parents can get back to work and students can return to a normal learning environment.
Mollyann Brodie, the director of Kaiser’s polling operation, said her team’s research showed that many Americans — particularly working-class people — were indeed worried about getting the economy back up and running. But safety concerns won out.
“Getting parents back in the work force and getting the economy going again — he has a lot to gain from that, right?” Dr. Brodie said, referring to Mr. Trump. “But the problem is that before you get that win, 60 percent are worried about coming back.”
“Parents are between a rock and a hard place,” she said.
From a political perspective, this issue touches on a more deeply seated problem for Mr. Trump, one that his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., has worked to exploit: the degree to which Americans do — and more frequently, do not — see the president as empathetic and understanding.
In a recently filmed conversation with former President Barack Obama, Mr. Biden tweaked Mr. Trump for his “inability to get a sense of what people are going through” when it comes to the virus.
In an ABC News/Washington Post poll released this week, when asked to choose between Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden on who better “understands the problems of people like you,” 52 percent of Americans chose Mr. Biden; 35 percent chose the president.
Since the pandemic began, approval of Mr. Trump’s response has flipped from being generally positive to decidedly negative. Most polls now show the president’s coronavirus approval rating about 20 percentage points in the red.
Looking ahead to November, the issue of school reopenings could become an especially hot topic in key battleground states, particularly those like Florida and Texas where the virus continues to surge.
A Quinnipiac poll of Florida released Thursday found that 62 percent of voters there thought it would be unsafe to send students back to elementary school in the fall.
The state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has echoed Mr. Trump’s insistence that schools come back for in-person classes, drawing rebukes from Democrats and a lawsuit from teachers’ unions.
By a 19-point margin, Florida voters tended to disapprove of how their governor was handling reopening schools. They disapproved of the president’s approach by 23 points.
In Texas, recent polls have shown Mr. Biden with a roughly even shot at becoming the first Democrat since 1976 to win the state’s plentiful Electoral College haul. Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, backed off a demand that all schools return to in-person classes within the first three weeks of the semester.
Fifty-two percent of Texas voters told Quinnipiac interviewers that Mr. Abbott had pushed to reopen the state too quickly, versus just 13 percent saying he had moved too slowly, according to a poll of the state released this week. As in Florida, roughly six in 10 Texas voters said they thought it would be unsafe to bring K-12 schools back in person.
In Trump’s interview by Chris Wallace, he wanted statistics on the number of dead. Here they are and it isn’t a bit pretty.
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Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported each morning this week: Monday, 140,534. Tuesday, 140,909. Wednesday, 142,068. Thursday, 143,190. Friday, 144,305.
The United States on Thursday reported more than 4 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections (the country hit 3 million cases on July 8, little more than two weeks ago) (The Hill).
I lOVE this one.
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As Trump Calls for Schools to Fully Reopen, His Son’s School Says It Will Not
St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, the private school in the Maryland suburbs attended by Barron Trump, said it was considering either a hybrid part-time plan or going back to entirely online classes.
WASHINGTON — The school attended by President Trump’s son will not fully reopen in September out of concern over the coronavirus pandemic despite the president’s insistence that students across the country be brought back to classrooms in the fall.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, a private school in Washington’s Maryland suburbs, said in a letter to parents that it was still deciding whether to adopt a hybrid model for the fall that would allow limited in-person education or to resume holding all classes completely online as was done in the spring. The school will decide early next month which option to follow.
“We are hopeful that public health conditions will support our implementation of the hybrid model in the fall,” said the letter signed by Robert Kosasky, the head of school, and David Brown, the assistant head. “As we prepare to make a decision the week of Aug. 10 about how to best begin the school year,” they added, “we will continue to follow guidance of appropriate health officials and refine both our hybrid and distance learning plans.”
If the school does opt for the hybrid model, students in Grades 7 through 12 would rotate between on-campus and distance learning, with half of the students learning remotely each week. Barron Trump, 14, the youngest of the president’s five children, has spent the last three years at St. Andrew’s…