During a press briefing on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany stated that "science should not stand in the way" of United States President Donald Trump's attempts at reopening schools in full amid the coronavirus threat.
Science and Trump
According to USA Today, McEnany said Trump's administration was keen on urging schools across the nation to open their doors and make way for in-person learning despite the pandemic still raging on.
The press secretary also noted that science was supporting Trump's vision of reopening schools. She said the president wanted schools to be fully open once again, where students are coming to school personally.
McEnany stated in the briefing that the environment was perfectly safe for children to study in and cited a study that showed the adverse effects of critical illness is weaker than that of the seasonal flu when found in children.
It was also noted that Dr. Scott Atlas, the former Stanford Neuroradiology Chief, called the debate on school reopenings hysteria when he was interviewed on Fox News.
The White House press secretary continued her statement by urging local authorities and officials to follow the science that suggests it is safe to reopen schools across the nation.
Trump has long been supporting the notion to reopen schools in the United States amid the coronavirus pandemic saying that children younger than 18 years are considered to be low-risk even if they happen to be infected by the virus.
However, experts worry about the possibility that infected students could potentially carry the virus back home and spread it to their elderly relatives. Professors and school staff have also expressed their anxiety about reopening schools as they are placed in harm's way of the virus.
Full-time in-person classes
Trump had previously required school districts to provide a full schedule of their classes and argued that parents had had severe difficulty in balancing work and their children's needs at the same time while being quarantined at home, as reported by The Guardian.
McEnany said she was in a meeting at the Oval with the United States president, where they discussed the notion of schools reopening. She added that the US was an outlier among nations in the west when it came to reopening educational establishments.
The press secretary noted that the situation was a dangerous time for children to be in, adding that there has been a lack of reported abuse due to being locked up inside their homes and that depression is not adequately addressed, causing an increase in suicidal thoughts of young children.
Trump's administration is looking to have students come physically to school five days every week. The country's districts are faced with a difficult challenge: maintaining the safety and security of their staff and students while adhering to the order of fully reopening schools for in-person learning, as reported by NBC News.
To combat the severe risk of a full in-person educational system amid the coronavirus pandemic, several districts have proposed a hybrid system where students would have a mix of in-person classes and online classes to mitigate the risk of spreading the virus.
Since the proposals have been given, however, Trump and his colleagues have criticized the ideas. On Sunday, Betsy DeVos, the United States Secretary of Education, told reporters that the hybrid proposal was not a valid proposal for families in the US.
