As the Trump regime falsely claimed that the nation has turned the corner on the deadly coronavirus pandemic, the reality is that new cases of COVID-19 rose by over 69,000 across the United States on July 10, setting a record for the third consecutive day. America now has almost 3.5 million confirmed coronavirus cases that have resulted in over 135,000 deaths, the largest numbers of any nation in the world. With Florida, Texas, Arizona and California now seeing major spikes in new COVID-19 cases, almost half of all states are spiking at a faster rate than they had been in the spring.
While the nation is clearly in the grip of an out-of-control public health crisis, President Trump has demanded that public schools across the country reopen and threatened to withhold federal funds if school districts refuse to comply with his edict. Trump’s push to reopen schools, echoed by his pro-privatization Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, contradicts his own administration’s CDC guidelines, which warn that fully reopening schools and universities remained the “highest risk” for the spread of the coronavirus.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the 3 million-member National Education Association, the largest labor union in the U.S. Here, she takes a critical look at Trump’s effort to reopen public schools, and how educators will judge when a return to in-person classrooms can be done safely for both students and teachers.
LILY ESKELSEN GARCIA: First of all, let me just give your listeners this warning: Do not under any circumstances, take medical advice from Donald Trump. I would also say you don’t want to take education advice from Betsy DeVos, who had never stepped inside a public school. I’m not sure she even has to this day. But these are two people who do not know what they’re talking about in very profound ways.
And this false choice. When people go “Well, you know, kids need to go back to school.” Kids need to, of course, kids need to go back to school. Why isn’t anyone saying, “Now, what are the Dr. Fauci’s of the world saying you would need to do to open up that school when infection rates are down low enough, that you’re mitigating the risks of someone coming into that school and passing it to their friends and who pass it to their families?”
We’re trying to do it right. And they were obviously trying to solve a different problem. That was it. You know, I said, “We’re trying to solve the problem. How do we get the schools open, safely, get those kids back in, where we can care for them and love them?”
Something else was going on there. The economy – the next few months before the election is not going to get much better. And it has little to do with whether or not schools open with all the kids in or part of the kids in. If you opened all the schools tomorrow and it caused a huge spike in even more than that it’s spiking now in infections, the economy would get worse, not better. So, I think Donald Trump is banking — like everybody else is banking – on this is going to be a really horrible jobs report that comes out. This is going to be a horrible reflection on the economy and the poor way that he has responded from day one to this emergency.
And he needs some one to blame. I think he’s setting up a straw man, right now. He is hearing me say – and every educator – say, “And by the way, most of the parents say we are not going to open schools in an unsafe way. We are going to follow the CDC guidelines as a minimum safety for our kids.” So when that actually happens, school districts are all over the country already announcing we’re going to do a hybrid plan. It may be, “We’re not going to open till Oct. 1, not Sept. 1.” They’re looking at doing this in a very intentional, responsible way. So I have a feeling when all the bad numbers come out, he is going to turn his sights and make schoolteachers the target. He’s going to say, “Don’t blame me. Those teachers refused to open the schools for the children. And so their parents couldn’t go to work. And that’s why this is happening.” Write that down somewhere and see if I’m not right about that someday.
SCOTT HARRIS: Sounds plausible to me. For people listening now, what’s the most important thing parents and teachers can do in working with Congress as well, to ensure that if public schools can open, they open safely and without risking the lives of either students or teachers?
LILY ESKELSEN GARCIA: And here is what is happening right now. The House passed a bill called the Heroes Act, and it stands for health education, something, something, something. But we need some heroes right now. So your listeners can just remember the Heroes Act. They passed it in the House. It’s sitting on (Sen.) Mitch McConnell’s desk. He called it dead on arrival. Donald Trump said, “No way, no how.” Basically it’s for public services in your local community. And that includes your public schools. It would give about $200 billion to your local public schools to keep the school nurse on the payroll. By the way, they’re looking to lay off over a million teachers next year, because the school funding source, the tax revenue has fallen off the cliff. So while we’re trying to solve all these problems, “but can you do it with like 20 percent fewer teachers?”
Mitch McConnell has said, we’re not giving money to the public schools. We could, this is absolutely essential, critical to buy the equipment and the supplies that we’re going to need to clean those schools. We need to light dynamite under Mitch McConnell, who is sitting on this for – I believe, “You make a crisis, you make it so public schools cannot possibly succeed in the way that they need to. And then you call in the privatizers to subcontract it out.”
We’re not going to let them do that. We need the public. If you have kids in public school, if you don’t have kids in public school, if you just care about decency, call your senators. And if they say, Oh, there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s up to Mitch McConnell. Do not let them get away with that. You tell them, “It’s your job to tell Mitch McConnell that you demand to have a vote on the Heroes Act and send my schools the money that they need to open safely.”
For more information, visit the National Education Association at NEAToday.org and NEA.org/COVIDAction.
