Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to be looking at Mississippi's school COVID-19 outbreaks as something to outdo. DeSantis is pushing schools to reopen in person, with their funding on the line if they refuse. But that’s not all!
Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran is telling school district superintendents not to rush to close schools when coronavirus cases emerge, and to consult with state officials before deciding to close. (Guess what the advice will be, there.) “Before you get to that point of closing a classroom or closing a school, we want to have that communication with you because we want to be as surgical as possible,” Corcoran told superintendents. Oh, but that’s not all, either.
The board of directors of the Florida High School Athletic Association is going ahead with school sports even though the association’s own medical advisory panel called for a delay. That should go well.
DeSantis has quoted a local superintendent in comparing school reopening with, get this, a Navy SEAL operation, saying “Just as the SEALs surmounted obstacles to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, so, too, would the Martin County school system find a way to provide parents with a meaningful choice of in-person instruction or continued distance learning.” And he’s apparently embracing the secrecy of a SEAL raid, with school officials in parts of the state refusing to disclose school COVID-19 numbers.
Meanwhile, the state is in mediation with the teachers union after the union sued to block DeSantis from withholding funding for districts that don’t reopen schools in person, even where coronavirus rates are high, in a state with seriously inadequate testing.
School reopenings so far have yielded outbreak after outbreak, with one tracking effort showing COVID-19 cases in more than 700 schools. Schools in 71 of Mississippi’s 82 counties have had students or teachers test positive, and the number has been rising rapidly. The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Notre Dame have both called off in-person classes after outbreaks started almost immediately after students arrived on campus, and Michigan State University looked at those examples and called off its in-person reopening.
But Ron DeSantis Does Not Care. He is on Team Trump and his state’s schools are damn well going to open in person, no matter the risks.
