[D66] The ruling-class conspiracy to reopen schools

[R.O.]

"Reports are emerging daily of teachers writing out their wills and 
obituaries before the semester starts."

wsws.org:

The ruling-class conspiracy to reopen schools: Profit versus science
12 August 2020

A deadly catastrophe is brewing in schools throughout the United States. 
Hundreds of thousands of children and teachers are being sent back to 
schools for in-person learning each week, despite a growing body of 
scientific evidence that children both spread the virus and are 
susceptible to falling ill themselves.

A spreadsheet published in Education Weekly lists data on reopening 
plans for 382 school districts, representing approximately 3 percent of 
all the districts in the US, shows that 200,000 students are already 
back in classrooms and over 2.7 million will be back in school full time 
by the end of August. If the data is extrapolated to include all of the 
nearly 14,000 districts in the US, tens of millions of students, 
teachers and staff will be back in school over the next several weeks.

New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo has already given the green light to 
open the state’s schools, including in New York City, the nation’s 
largest school district, with over one million students and 135,000 
teachers and support staff.

Reports are emerging daily of teachers writing out their wills and 
obituaries before the semester starts. Students and parents are being 
forced to sign waivers to exempt schools from liability in the event 
that students get infected with the coronavirus when they return to 
schools and college campuses.

The drive to reopen schools has been justified by Trump and various 
right-wing governors with the claim that children are largely unaffected 
by the virus. The introductory paragraph of the revised CDC 
guidelines—produced under political pressure from the White 
House—falsely states that “children are unlikely to be major drivers of 
the spread of the virus.”

At a White House press conference Monday, President Trump dismissed 
reports of spreading infections among children, declaring, “I think, for 
the most part, they don’t get very sick… It’s also a case where there’s 
a tiny fraction of death, tiny fraction, and they get better very quickly.”

For their part, the Democratic Party-aligned teacher unions, the 
American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education 
Association (NEA) are doing everything they can to suppress popular 
opposition to the reckless reopening of the schools and have joined the 
chorus of corporate and political voices who falsely claim that schools 
can be reopened safely.

The claim that young people are “unaffected” by the virus is a blatant 
lie. Recent data shows a drastic surge of infections among small 
children and adolescents:

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