Education chief repeats demand for all schools to reopen fully

DeVos threatens again to cut funding for schools that don’t

The top U.S. education official downplayed the risk of reopening schools in the fall, a high priority of President Donald Trump, and repeated a threat to cut funding to schools that don’t fully resume in-person learning as educators wrestle with the risk of coronavirus.

“There’s nothing in the data that suggests that kids being in school is in any way dangerous. We know that children contract and have the virus at far lower incidence than any other part of the population,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Trump and DeVos last week began to forcefully advocate that public elementary and high schools as well as universities reopen fully to students in the fall despite a resurgence in COVID-19 cases in many parts of the U.S., and suggested that funding could be pulled from schools that don’t comply.

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” DeVos said teachers who are at greater risk from coronavirus because of their age or underlying conditions should work it out with their local school districts.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, appearing on CNN after DeVos, said the secretary’s comments added up to “malfeasance and dereliction of duty. They are messing with the health of our children.”

Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said on “Fox News Sunday” that while it’s true that children are less at risk of serious COVID-19 infection than adults, the virus can still be dangerous. He cited a 5-year-old who died in South Carolina from the virus.