Whitmer’s school shutdowns were a lesson in catastrophe

John Fetterman, the Democratic Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, wasn’t the only politician who got mixed up on a debate stage Tuesday night. Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s Democratic governor, seemed to confuse herself with Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.

In an exchange with her Republican opponent, Tudor Dixon, over Whitmer’s draconian coronavirus policies, the governor claimed that in school shutdowns, “kids were out for three months.”

That was true… in Florida, not Michigan.

In July 2020, DeSantis ordered all Florida schools to reopen in the fall for full-time, in-person learning — including all public schools, public charter schools and private schools that accept state scholarship money. Schools were directed to provide all services required by law, including specialized instruction and services for students with learning disabilities, and to set up monitoring systems to make sure students were not falling behind academically.

That decision spared Florida students from the catastrophic learning losses that have plagued children in many other parts of the country.

Whitmer, by contrast, did the opposite: She signed an education package in August 2020 that did not require school districts to offer in-person learning to be eligible for state funding, leaving the decision up to local school districts and their teachers-union overlords.

Data analytics company Burbio reported a majority of Michigan schools were using virtual or hybrid learning at the start of the school year. On

Dec. 21, 2020, Whitmer’s administration finally allowed — not required — schools to reopen.

According to Chalkbeat Detroit, in January 2021, only 23 percent of Michigan schools were fully in-person. Detroit, the state’s largest school district, was fully remote until the last three months of the 2020-21 academic year, which means Detroit students were out of school for a full year. The Ann Arbor school district stayed partly remote all the way to 2022.

In March 2021 Whitmer finally signed a law requiring some Michigan school districts to offer in-person instruction in order to receive increased emergency pandemic funding. But even then, the law affected less than a third of Michigan schools and required only 20 hours of in-person instruction.

Test scores in Michigan plummeted. The National Assessment of Educational Progress — better known as the “Nation’s Report Card” — just revealed that fourth-grade math scores declined five points nationwide. But in Detroit, fourth-grade math scores fell 12 points.

Across Michigan, fourth-graders recorded their lowest reading scores in 30 years, wiping out three decades of reading progress.

The denial of in-person learning also helped spark a mental health crisis. One study found that 71 percent of parents said the pandemic had taken a toll on their child’s mental health, citing social isolation, remote learning and excess screen time as most damaging. In 2020, mental health-related emergency room visits increased 24% for kids 5 to 11, and 31% for those 12 to 17, compared with 2019.

The damage done by Whitmer’s lockdown policies is devastating. Perhaps that’s why her race is tightening. Michigan parents know that Whitmer kicked their kids out of school. On Nov. 8, they’ll have a chance to return the favor — by kicking her out of office.

Or, like so many others fleeing blue lockdown states, they could always move to Florida.