'As US Hits 5 MILL COVID Cases, Teachers, Students Shuffle Back To In-Person Classes': DeVos On CNN
'As U.S. hits 5 million coronavirus cases, teachers, students, shuffle back into in-person classes,' by Marissa Higgins, Daily Kos Staff, Aug. 9, 2020. Ed.:
As of Sunday, the U.S. hit 5 million confirmed coronavirus cases, as reported by the Johns Hopkins University data tracking system. Of course, as experts have warned for months, our actual number may be higher than what’s reported, given how many people still have not been able to access a test. Meanwhile, Trump relentlessly pushes to reopen schools, much to the fear of many teachers, students, and communities.
Some counties have, in fact, already started in-person learning for the fall semester—and the results are exactly what experts and communities feared they would be. Earlier this week, Daily Kos covered 2 Georgia high schoolers reporting they’d been suspended for posting photos of crowded school hallways on social media; now, that same high school is reporting 9 cases of the coronavirus, spread among both students and staff. And this school isn’t alone, either. Also in Georgia, one county came up with more than 200 cases, or contact with a case, among district employees before students even returned to the classroom.
In Indiana, one school was open for less than one day before a positive case turned up among students. In Mississippi, one week saw 116 students being told to self-quarantine after a peer tested positive for the virus.
So, it’s no surprise, then, that many teachers and school staff are terrified about returning to the classroom amid the pandemic. One teacher in Fla. wrote her own “obituary” that quickly went viral; while she told Newsweek in an interview that she realizes she, personally, may not contract the coronavirus and die from it, it’s entirely possible that at least one teacher will especially given that students in Fla. are returning to in-person classrooms at the end of August.
Meanwhile, one 72-year-old cancer survivor in Oklahoma is returning to the classroom to teach—and his students aren’t even required to wear masks. That teacher is opting to wear both a face mask and a face shield, but when students aren’t required to wear face coverings as well, the concern is certainly understandable.
Kids are worried, too. One 10-year-old in Calif., for example, has gone viral for creating his own T-shirt & face mask combination, in an effort to make himself and his peers safer when schools eventually reopen.. Black & Latino residents are dying of the virus at a disproportionate rate, & Indigenous communities have been slammed...
More,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/8/9/1967848/-As-U-S-hits-5-million-coronavirus-cases-teachers-students-shuffle-back-into-in-person-classes
- CNN's Dana Bash speaks to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos about whether or not she has a plan for schools to safely reopen for students as Covid-19 cases surge in the US. July 12, 2020.
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