California Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t feeling threatened by a series of tweets recently issued by President Trump urging schools across the country to reopen in the fall.
“I’m not worried about the latest tweets,” Newsom said on Wednesday. “What we need to address is safely reopening schools, and we need to make that a foundational principle. That, to me, is not negotiable.”
States have been carefully considering a timeline to reopen schools with some ready to push for a fall opening despite recent spikes in coronavirus cases.
In anticipation of the upcoming school year, Newsom said his state will provide local schools with face masks, gloves, and sanitation supplies. The governor added that as some parts of California grapple with the virus more than others, there may not be a universal timeline on when school districts reopen.
“All of these things need to be managed at the local level with the foundational framework of keeping our kids and our teachers healthy and safe,” Newsom said.
California has seen nearly 300,000 cases of the coronavirus and over 6,000 deaths.
This week, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos expressed support for getting students back to the classrooms in the next couple of months as long as it’s done in a safe way. Her comments came after Trump tweeted his disagreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which offered strict guidelines on reopening schools. The CDC recommended the closure of communal areas for kids such as playgrounds and dining halls, urged students to bring their own lunches, and asked schools to install physical barriers for students to maintain social distancing, among other guidelines.
“While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things,” Trump said.
In a separate tweet, the president said he would consider cutting off federal funding to school districts that don’t reopen, a threat that is unlikely to hold up given that Congress appropriates funding for education.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force and one of the country’s leading experts on infectious diseases, said the country must maintain control of the virus in order for the reopening of schools to be a safe and healthy process.
