I have no idea what the right way to reopen schools is. But it is clear to me that the wrong way to reopen schools is to apply the same rules to every school.
Reopening is a really hard decision. It means trading off public health and employment. But the balance between health risk and job destruction is different in every community. It's different within every community. It's different from one side of town to the other. It's different between towns and outside of town. The availability of hospital beds, hospital workers, PPE and testing on the one hand, and how resilientpeople are to the income impacts of lockdown on the other, vary enormously from one place to another.
Enter the Trump administration (Trump and DeVos) to help, by attempting to impose nation-wide rules on how states, counties and towns around the country reopen schools, and threatening to withhold federal funding to enforce their edict.
A local board of ed that imposes the same rules on every school in its jurisdiction makes a big mistake, because conditions are different not only in every school district, but in every school. But the damage a board of ed can di is limited to that school district. A state governor who insists on applying the same reopening rules to every school district in the state makes a much bigger mistake on a much larger scale. Trump and Dovos are n=making an inescusable mistake on a vastly larger scale. For political gain, as they see it. (Keep digging, as I see it.)
The nineteen most un-American words ever spoken by an American president were delivered by Ronald Reagan on August 12, 1986, when he declared at a press conference: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
We don't know if Reagan was referring only to the federal government, or to state government, or all government. He probably was absent from civics class on the day they discussed the Declaration of Independence, which declared the independece of a new government, and made reference in passing to the independence of individuals. Reagan must not have returned to class until the day they discussed the Bill of Rights, some of which enumerate individual rights.
On the question of whether, when and how to reopen K12 education in America, however, Trump and Devos are not only telling us that the federal government is here to help. They are telling governors and mayors that the federal government is in charge.
Never mind that in 2018, responsibility for funding K-12 public schools in the USA was: state governments (governors) - 47%; local governments (mayors and boards of ed) - 45%; and thefederal government (Betsy DeVos) - 8%.
The federal funding for local K-12 schools mostly supports programs for the poor (school lunches) and the disadvantaged (special ed). But for school districts, 8% of the budget is not negligible. Nationally this amounts to $ [ ]. Trump threatens to freeze the funds unless schools reopen on his terms, even though the funding is unconditionally mandated by federal law. (School lunch and special ed are also very popular within the school districts themselves, but that hardly matters to the President, who knows that "these people" don't vote for him.)
But in his never-ending quest for leverage in a negotiation, His Royal Heinous sees an opportunity here for extortion. Think of it this way. The nation's school districts are represented by Ukrainian president [ ]. Trump says to [ ] here's a deal you can't refuse. If you reopen all the schools in Ukraine immediately and indict [ ] Biden, I won't cut off the [ ] in funding USA gives to the Ukrainian military, or the [ ] we give to K-12 education.
K-12 education for all Americans should have been a responsibility of the federal government from 1789 onward. That the Founders allowed the states to be responsible for K-12, and that the states then decided that real estate taxes should pay half the bill -- so that the quality of your children's K-12 education depends largely on the value of property in your ZIP-code -- is one of America's three great birth defects. (If you want to know, I'll say something about the other two in an addendum.)
But given that we are living with the birth defect of the way we fund K-12 in America, the question is this: with 8% of the responsiblity for funding K-12 coming from Washington, why should states, counties, cities, towns and local school districts not tell the federal government to butt out of the discussion about reopening schools while Covid-19 is rampant?
There is only one federal government agency whose views on reopening should matter to state and local school officials -- the Center for Diseases Control. If CDC director Redfield were saying that it is NOT safe, the locals should and surely would pay attention. But on July 8, the hapless Dr. Redfield said . "I want it to be very clear that it is not the intent of the CDCs guidelines [on Covid-19] to be used as a rationale to keep schools closed."
Redfield's remarks came on the day that Donald Trump's Twitter messaging focussed heavily on "pressuring" (Trump's word) local K-12 decision-makers to open the schools. To those officials I say, "Tough decision, but the people who are paying for K-12 elected you, not Donald Trump, to make these decisions. Weigh what you're hearing from responsible experts with what you believe to be the interests of your constitutents. It's a state and local political choice. That's your job, not Trump's."
To Trump and Devos I say, "Butt out until you pass a bill making K-12 a 100% federal government responsibility. Then we will listen."
Addendum
Of the other two other birth defects for which the Founders are responsible, one is the result of negligence, and the other of wilful perversion of one-man-one-vote democracy.
The Consitution and the Bill of Rights failed to make the federal government responsible for the health of citizens. It's clear today that this, along with universal access to equally-funded K-12, should have made it into the Bill of Rights. But on health, what happened instead was that the quality Americans' access to health insurance, and therefore to health care, depends largely on their job (if they have one).
But given the indifference in all nations towards any government role in ensuring the health and education of the people in the 18th century, it is a stretch to charge the Founders with gross negligence for ignoring health and education.
The institution of the Senate, however, is a different matter. It is no secret that the Founders found this wilful perversion of one-man-one vote to be necessary to ensure that the southern states would join the union.
Here's one result of this birth defect: if you voted in the Senate elections in Wyoming in 2014, 2016, or 2018, your voice by itself carried the same weight on the Senate floor when Trump's impeachment came up for a vote as the voices of 44 Californians, 36 New Yorkers, 26 Texans and 24 Floridians. In the House of Representatives, your voice had the same weight as a voter in any other state. But under the Constitution, only the House could (and did) vote to impeach, while only the Senate could (and did not) vote to convict.
