Opposition to Trump's School Plans Is a Fear Campaign, DeVos Says

[Demovictory9]

(Bloomberg) -- Resistance to President Donald Trump’s push to reopen U.S. classroom doors comes from a “coordinated effort and a campaign to sow fear,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Thursday.

Her unsubstantiated claim on Fox News followed a day of arguments from Trump himself on the need to bring kids back to class and the release of a gauzy set of guidelines on how to do it. But some districts that followed the White House advice and threw open their doors in the pandemic are slamming them shut again.

Schools that reopened fully and early are seeing hundreds of students, staff and teachers put into quarantine as Covid-19 spreads. Some are closing buildings opened just days ago. Others are frantically looking for workarounds -- and for the money to pay for them. In Memphis, Tennessee, and Irvine, California, teachers must sign liability waivers in case they get sick.

DeVos didn’t say who might be fomenting opposition to Trump, and polls show that many parents are leery. A Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday surveyed 2,000 registered voters and found 59% opposed fully reopening K-12 schools for the start of the academic year, up from 53% last month.

And across the U.S., most districts are ignoring Trump’s full-speed-ahead advice. New Jersey on Wednesday reversed course on mandatory in-person classes, and Boston won’t attempt them. Still, too many insist on putting educators and communities at risk, said Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association and a sixth-grade teacher in Salt Lake City.

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To Eskelsen Garcia, the NEA president, the superiority of in-school teaching isn’t in question. “This is not about pedagogy,” she said. “This disease kills people.”


Her advice: “Listen to what Trump says. Then do the exact opposite of whatever comes out of his mouth.”


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/hundreds-quarantined-in-schools-that-followed-trump-s-advice/ar-BB17TmHt?ocid=uxbndlbing

[Tanuki]

1. Gee, now why would Trump send his kid to a school that engaged in a campaign of fear tactics?

https://www.saes.org/covid-19-information

...."Last spring, the school named three priorities that would guide our planning for the 2020-21 school year: Health and safety, learning, and community. For months our leadership team and faculty have worked tirelessly, devoting the full resources of St. Andrew’s to be ready to deliver an exceptional education for each student in the midst of an ongoing pandemic.

Given the ongoing shared risks that COVID-19 poses to our school community and larger society, our reopening plans must be grounded first and foremost in health and safety. We must acknowledge that local infection rates have risen and remained elevated in recent months, that there is not yet sufficient access to rapid COVID testing results, and that experts have therefore advised us that the coronavirus continues to pose significant risks if we resume in-person instruction too quickly.

We have the duty and determination to care for everyone in our school: each St. Andrew’s student and family, and every teacher and staff member who has dedicated their life to our school. Our community members come to campus from across the Greater Washington region, and we each return home to our families and loved ones every evening. In this time more than ever, we must care for the health and well-being of every Lion. We belong, and must be responsible, to each other.

For these reasons, our Board of Trustees and I have decided that St. Andrew’s will begin the year in our distance learning model for Kindergarten-Grade 12 through at least October 9. Our medical staff and advisors will continue to monitor local health conditions and guidance, and we will inform families by the beginning of October whether we believe it is safe to begin phasing in on-campus instruction via our hybrid model."... (more)

[Thekaspervote]

2. Sure...1,000 kids and teachers in GA either sick or quarantined, or both

[stillcool]

3. DeVos is a Fear Campaign all by herself...

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. Teachers should refuse to sign liability waivers.

Period.

Better yet, some appropriate legal foundation needs to challenge those waivers.

[Brainfodder]

5. Besides clowning power, what does Betsy DUHvos get out of this?

We need serious consequences for this witch!!!???!!! down the road, which is less than 6 months away, which is now less than 1% of my life, ugh....

I think I can make it.

I hope I can make it.

BUT DAMN IT, hurry the fuck up!

Ignoring this noise, she's a shit, a very rich one, what's her angle?

[Guilded Lilly]

6. Funny (but not) how everything that dribbles out of her mouth...

about the opposition is exactly what she and her illiterate thug boss practice all the time.

Children K-college AND their teachers/staff are falling sick like dominoes in schools that physically open because of these treacherous scum incompetent stains on humanity.

[MyOwnPeace]

7. EVERY Democratic office-holder that is a parent

should come out in public and say, "DAMNED right we're scared! Look at ALL of what this mis-administration has done to help our country with COVID-19!
Look at the schools that DID open already and have again closed."

"YOUR planning and leadership should make you liable for charges of child abuse and murder!"