Closed Schools, Closed Funding

President Trump recently spoke with education stakeholders at the White House to discuss plans for reopening schools this fall amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with his declaration to push for the reopening of schools across the nation, President Trump threatened to cut federal funding for districts that don’t resume in-person classes. Despite the United States being in the lead for most reported COVID-19 cases and related deaths, President Trump is vehemently rejecting the advice and assertions of healthcare experts and the Center for Disease Control, whose guidelines he has described as “very tough and expensive guidelines.”

Parents, teachers, and students have expressed concern for the reopening of schools. Among those concerns are questions of safety, quality of learning, increased safety measures and precautions, and feasibility of children being at home select days of the week in the hybrid learning model (half in-person, half remote learning) being proposed. Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Vice President Mike Pence, and Dr. Robert R. Redfield of the C.D.C. addressed plans to reopen schools, with discussion involving the Trump administration’s strong incentive to get states, as well as schools, to fully reopen.

President Trump’s declaration to cut federal funding for districts who don’t reopen their schools are accompanied by criticisms in a thread of tweets on Twitter that express neither support for compromise plans nor concern for the health and safety implications of reopening schools amid high rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths across the nation. President Trump made mention of countries like Denmark and Norway who have reopened schools; however, such countries have implemented measures that have allowed them to gain better control of the virus — some of which the U.S. have not fully implemented, resulting in the insurgence of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former CDC director, advocated the safe reopening of schools, sharing:

“Here’s the bottom line. The single most important thing we can do to keep our schools safe has nothing to do with what happens in schools. It’s how well we control Covid in the community.”

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former Center for Disease Control Director