Today is a really discouraging day. The Biden School Closing Plan is dressed up to make it appear they want schools to open but the details will have the exact opposite effect. This is a gift to unions and a betrayal of kids. 1/

The Biden School Closing Plan pins school openings to transmission rates which pediatric and public health experts overwhelmingly say is the wrong approach. It means that despite vaccinations, schools have an excuse to remain shuttered to children.

It leans into the "6 foot" rule. This means schools cannot open full time. They must cut class sizes in half. Many schools like ours have been on a 3-day-weekend schedule for a year. So it's two days a week for each half, even in the fall after vaccines are ubiquitous.

Note, the 6 foot plan was a "pre-vaccine" mitigation for returning kids to the classroom last fall. The Biden School Closing Plan means this has no end, even post-vaccine.

This plan is behind half of schools which successfully implemented in-school learning pre-vaccine. Does President Biden expect those schools to regress to meet this new standard or simply to reinforce the existing equality gap? Will he ask them to close? https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1360315016327684098

Last week the CDC indicated they were for opening schools. Then the WH told them to be quiet. Now we have a politically influenced document pushing things in the other direction. Exactly what people appropriately criticized Trump for doing.

Children are not Republicans or Democrats. They're just kids. Who need school. Who are suffering depression, anxiety, suicide, regression. Who are losing confidence, safety and nutrition. And politics, not science, are keeping them locked out of schools.

$68 billion was allocated in 2020 to help open schools pre-vaccine. Nearly all of that remains unspent. Yet the Biden plan says we need more money. Over the past ten years, K-12 staffing growth is +8% for teachers, +75% for administrators.

The Biden School Closing Plan means schools may not open full time until well into 2022. It could lead to a permanent education realignment and inequality gap. This isn't science, it's negligence.

Many in the media are getting it wrong and taking the nice things it says about school openings but ignoring the actual outcomes. Like the report says schools should take priority over everything else, but does absolutely nothing to operationalize that. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/cdc-school-reopen-guidelines/2021/02/12/43a1acb6-6cea-11eb-9ead-673168d5b874_story.html

Let's cut to the chase. More than half of America's schools are open. Kids are thriving 5 days a week in many places. But the biggest unions are keeping many districts locked down even post-vaccine. These kids are suffering and President Biden is leaving them behind.

I want teachers to be vaccinated ASAP. But after they are, parents should be making decisions on whether schools open. If you want your kid to remain home, ok. But if you want your kid in a classroom with a teacher (not a monitor), it is time you get what you paid for. ASAP.

President Trump did next to nothing to open schools, absent a tweet here and there. His leadership was abysmal. Yet, President Biden is showing that sometimes doing nothing is better than doing something. <end rant>