There is no reason for "sowing fear" or making excuses about returning America's children back to school this fall when there are "clearly safe ways" to make that happen, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos insisted Thursday.
"We can make those decisions, take those steps forward to getting schools fully open, fully operational, and to serve the families that we have made a promise to," DeVos said on Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "Kids need to be back in school. There's nothing about the data that suggests that they shouldn't be back in school and everything frankly that suggests they should."
Catching or spreading coronavirus is "one consideration," she conceded, but children's well-being is also a major consideration.
"The most important part of going to school to get an education," DeVos said.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to pull federal funding from schools that don't reopen this fall, but DeVos said that the administration isn't suggesting pulling money from education altogether.
"American investment in education is a promise to our students and families, and if schools aren't going to reopen we are not suggesting pulling funding from education but instead allowing families to take that money and figure out where their kids can get educated if their schools refuse to open. "
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have released a list of strict recommendations for reopening schools, but DeVos pointed out that the agency never suggested in the first place to close schools.
"Every state and every community has school leadership that can sit down and can figure out solutions to the problems of reopening," said DeVos. "It's not a matter of if, it's just a matter of how."
Education leaders have said they are concerned about teachers who have special factors such as age or pre-existing health conditions returning to schools, but that doesn't mean schools shouldn't open, DeVos said.
"There are different ways of approaching these problems or these issues," she said. "It just takes the will to get them done and find the solution."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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