By: Jonathan Xu
The United States’ situation with the coronavirus has only gone downhill recently. The CDC has reported that yesterday (Wednesday, July 15th) had over 67,300 new cases in the US, only shy of approximately 1,000 cases of the previous record set only a week ago.
As the number of coronavirus cases reach 3.5 million, many records are broken. Two states broke their single day death records: Alabama and Idaho. Despite these conditions, President Trump has continued to pressure school districts to get students back to the traditional classrooms. Trump has even “threatened to cut federal funding for school systems that defied his demand to reopen classrooms:” six days ago, Trump tweeted, “Now that we have witnessed it on a large scale basis, and firsthand, Virtual Learning has proven to be TERRIBLE compared to In School, or On Campus, Learning. Not even close! Schools must be open in the Fall. If not open, why would the Federal Government give Funding? It won’t!!!”
Despite these warnings from the President, many school districts have still come upon the decision of starting school in the fall as distanced and online learning. For example, in San Francisco, the superintendent, Vincent Matthews, wrote that “[They] hope to provide a gradual hybrid approach (a combination of in-person and distance learning) for some students when science and data suggest it is safe to do so.” Some states, including Kansas, have postponed the return to regular schooling to at least until Labor Day (September 7th).
All of these officials have put these restrictions into place because they have realized the potential of the virus and know that a premature reopening of schools could lead to disaster, even if Trump has not yet realized it. The restrictions that were administered would indeed be a help in the long term, as the country decides to reopen during this PHE (Public Health Emergency).
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/world/coronavirus-updates.html