President-elect Joe Biden is repeating his call for most schools to reopen by the end of the first 100 days of his presidency, but some Republican lawmakers question why it should take so long.
During a recent call with 30 governors, of both parties, Biden said: “I’m going to ask, and I know it’s going to be controversial with some of you, but I’m going to ask that we’re going to be able to open schools at the end of 100 days,” adding, “That’s going to take a lot of money, but we know how to do it. If we have the money and the funding, everything from ventilation to more teachers to smaller class sizes — a whole range of things.”
Biden in early December requested that Congress provide money for schools to obtain needed apparatus and other resources to establish their safety protocols in an effort to meet the 100-day target. Most schools would carry on in-person instruction by the end of April.
Back in July, when President Trump first called for schools to reopen in the fall to the consternation of teachers unions, Biden released a plan to restart in-person classroom learning that he would send to Congress that could cost up to $30 billion.
However, many students have not had in-person learning since at least last April, and the school year for public school children would be just a few weeks away from wrapping up for summer vacation.
Indiana Republican Sen. Mike Braun, a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, told the Washington Examiner that a deadline of 100 days is too long to put children back into the schools.
“When it comes to schools being open, I think the data shows that they’ve been one of the safest places to actually keep in operation, and most of the schools back in Indiana have managed through. They had great protocols to avoid most of the instances of confronting with it, and when they do, they’ve got a way to handle it,” he said. “They basically kept the doors open. So, the idea that you’d get them back open in 100 days, I think, will be disappointing for any of those that by implication think they’re going to be shut down.”
The emergence and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines into states from the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed program in the past few weeks have the incoming Biden administration discussing its own plans on who will be vaccinated in the months to come.
Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, a member of the HELP Committee, defended Biden’s timeline, telling the Washington Examiner, “If we can do it, it would be very good. And I think he has also said that he would prioritize next, after, you know, health workers and seniors, he would prioritize teachers and child care workers, who are directly interacting with kids. So, if you could, in the prioritization of the vaccine, really benefit those who are with kids everyday, that’ll help. So, if we can make it work, that would be great.”
Kaine added, “He says, ‘Within 100 days.’ If you can do the vaccine deployment heavily with teachers even earlier than that, you just want to make sure it’s safe. I’m not the health guy. So, you want to follow Fauci and others saying when it’s safe, but prioritize those teachers and child care workers and school bus drivers with the vaccine.”
Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney told the Washington Examiner he hopes “schools can open sooner” than at the end of the 100 days.
“It’s being done at a district by district basis [in Utah], and I’m very pleased that the number of COVID infections in Utah is coming down, which indicates that the governor’s actions have had an impact,” Romney, a member of the HELP Committee, said of the school openings in his state.
