Republican lawmakers introduced a bill Thursday meant to incentivize schools to reopen from coronavirus closures by September 5.
Republican Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin introduced the Reopen Our Schools Act Thursday, which would withhold federal funding from schools that don’t open in the fall for in-person learning.
“There are too many negative consequences for our children, their teachers and parents if we fail to reopen our schools in the fall,” Banks told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Schools must come up with a plan to safely reopen, and this bill is designed to push them to do it.”
The move comes as educators and lawmakers discuss plans to slowly reopen the United States after several months of shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic. (RELATED: Fauci Says He ‘Fully’ Expects Schools To Reopen In The Fall As Coronavirus Is Brought ‘Under Control’)
US Secretary of States Mike Pompeo watches US President Donald Trump speak during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House on April 8, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
The representatives pointed to a Wall Street Journal report that emphasized that remote learning during the spring of 2020 “didn’t work.” (RELATED: Lack Of Internet, Technology, Meals: Teachers Detail Pitfalls Of Remote Teaching During Coronavirus Crisis)
Projections from the Oregon-based nonprofit NWEA predict that students will return to school in the fall with less than 50% of learning gains in math, relative to an average school year, and 70% of learning gains in reading, the publication reports. The WSJ also noted that children who are from poorer families often lack high speed internet and thus could not complete their classwork.
“These open-ended school shutdowns have set students back, made it harder for teachers to teach, and pushed parents to the breaking point,” Tiffany said. “It’s time to reopen America and get back to school.” (RELATED: Evidence Suggests Kids Are Extremely Low Risk For Coronavirus)
Teachers had warned the DCNF in March, at the start of closures and school shutdowns, that remote teaching can be effective under certain circumstances, but factors like age or accessibility to internet, technology, and meals may be drawbacks.
“Long story short: Yes, remote teaching can work, but even under optimal conditions it requires considerable preparation and technology, which hasn’t been an option during this crisis,” Finnegan Schick, a public school high school teacher in a low-income south Boston neighborhood in Roxbury, Massachusetts, told the DCNF in March.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said during a May senate hearing that reopening schools without a vaccine was “a very risky and indeed a dangerous prospect.” Fauci, the top epidemiologist on the White House coronavirus task force, did not specifically say that schools could not reopen, but he warned that reopening schools could present problems.
Fauci also said in April that he fully expects that “by the time we get to the fall that we will have this under control enough that it certainly will not be the way it is now, where people are shutting schools.”
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