Opinion

Are Educators to be Sacrificed to Fuel Trump’s Agenda?

The COVID-19 crisis may ultimately destroy our public school system

Photo by Nathan Lindahl on Unsplash

There are excellent reasons to want to reopen public schools. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does an excellent job of listing these on its website. The focus, however, is on the health and well-being of students. The only reference to the risk to teachers is this:

“Based on current data, the rate of infection among younger school children, and from students to teachers, has been low, especially if proper precautions are followed.” — The Importance of Reopening America’s Schools this Fall, CDC website

There is no reference in the CDC article to the risk faced by school staff or administrators. Why aren’t their lives important to the United States government? Are they expendable precisely because the Trump Administration’s end game is to abolish the public school system?

“In a country that has long been hostile to big government, public schools succeeded because almost every family was a stakeholder” — Johann Neem in USA Today

The fact that Trump appointed Betsy DeVos as the Secretary of Education is an indicator. DeVos has never attended a public school, nor have any of her children. She…