Coronavirus: Donald Trump losing the battle to open US schools

Donald Trump is losing one of the most important political battles of the coronavirus: the reopening of schools.

Donald Trump, at the White House on Thursday, has been told by his advisers that the economy cannot recover strongly or even at all before the November election if millions of children remain at home from school without childcare options. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump is losing one of the most important political battles of the coronavirus pandemic as parents and teachers baulk at his call for American schools to reopen for the new school year as the virus continues to surge.

The question of schools resuming in-person classes is vital to Mr Trump’s hopes of re-election and he is now demanding that children return to school, saying it is more important than the health risks posed by the virus.

“Schools should be opened, there’s kids who want to go to school, you’re losing a lot of lives by keeping things closed,’ Mr Trump said this week.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Friday (AEST): “When he says open, he means open in full, kids being able to attend each and every day at their school.’

“The science is on our side here,” she said. “It’s very damaging to our children. There’s a lack of reporting of abuse, there’s mental depressions that are not addressed, suicidal ideations that are not addressed when students are not in school.”

But the surge in the virus across large parts of the country, especially in the south and west is leading many school districts to abandon their hopes of resuming normal classes when the school year starts at the end of August.

This week two of the largest school districts of Los Angeles and San Diego said their schools would remain shut with only online learning through to January.

Schools in Atlanta, Houston and other cities have also said they will also not resume in-person learning and other schools around the country are reconsidering their plans as infection levels soar in much of the country.

US schools are debating three options — whether to reopen in full; whether to make classes fully online; or whether to reopen with a hybrid model of several days of in-person learning in socially distanced classrooms and several days online.

Where I live in Washington DC, schools had planned to offer a hybrid model where students attend in person for two days a week with the rest online. But even this is in doubt after two school authorities in nearby Prince George’s County in Maryland and Arlington in Virginia announced they will pursue 100 per cent online learning despite virus levels being lower than in many other parts of the country.

“I think our parents will have a sense of relief,” Monica Goldson, head of Prince George County Public Schools said. “I’ve read their emails. Parents and staff.”

White House advisers have told the President that the economy cannot recover strongly or even at all before the November election if millions of children remain at home from school without childcare options.

Online learning means a parent must stay home from the children, often preventing that parent from doing paid employment which would help fuel the economic recovery the President is relying upon. Surveys show almost a quarter of American workers — roughly 38 million — have at least one pre-teen child at home.

Melissa Kearney, a University of Maryland economist says just 16 per cent of workers with a young child have a non-working partner to look after children who are not at school.

“There’s millions of workers that can’t go back to work if their kids don’t have a safe place to be most days a week,” she told the New York Times.

In the US, childcare options are more limited and more expensive than in Australia, leaving little choice for parents if schools remain closed.

For Mr Trump the issue goes beyond the economy. The ongoing closure of schools would be a blow to his efforts to portray life in the US as getting back to normal as the election nears. Most US schools closed in March as the coronavirus hit and their ongoing closure into the new school year would only underline the government’s failure to manage the pandemic.

Like in Australia, the debate about reopening schools in the US has centred around competing scientific opinion about how susceptible young children are to the virus and the dangers posed to them, their teachers and their parents.

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia