School reopenings aren’t going so well, and on Wednesday former Vice President Joe Biden stepped up to talk about what’s gone wrong, and what he would do. More than 60% of Americans say school reopenings aren’t going well, COVID-19 is growing fast among kids, and universities that reopen are seeing massive clusters emerging. “Let me be clear,” Biden said, “if President Trump and his Administration had done their jobs America’s schools would be open. Instead, America’s families are paying the price for his failures.”
Those failures are many: “Failure to take this virus seriously early on in January and February as it spread around the globe. Failure to take the steps we needed back in March and April to get this pandemic under control, to institute widespread testing and tracing to control the spread. Failure to provide clear national, science-based guidance to state and local authorities. Failure to model even basic responsibilities like social distancing and mask wearing. And failure to make sure educators and administrators have the equipment, resources, and training they need to reopen safely.”
Biden hailed the efforts of parents and teachers alike to keep things going for kids. Parents “struggling to balance work and child care and educational duties. Or worrying about their lost paycheck and how they’ll make ends meet while trying to keep their kid on track with remote learning,” while teachers “are taking on countless hours of additional training to learn how to use remote learning tools so they can still be there for their students,” and knowing that the students who most need schools as a place of stability and as a source of regular meals are suffering.
Where Trump has pushed to reopen schools in person no matter what, Biden argued for doing it safely. ”If I were president today, I would direct FEMA to make sure that our K-12 schools get full access to disaster relief and emergency assistance funds under the Stafford Act,” Biden said. He would also work with Congress to get the full amount of funding schools need—estimated by the nation’s school superintendents at $200 billion—for everything from improved ventilation systems to added teachers to make small, socially distanced classes possible to added school counselors to help kids deal with the trauma of this time.
Of course, Donald Trump has a minimum of four and a half more months to keep screwing this up, and he’s using the time not just in accidental failure but in intentionally undermining public education. Biden’s reminder that it didn’t have to be this way is an important one.
