Republicans find common ground: Reopen schools
Democrats may pay the price in Virginia, New Jersey and possibly California if campuses stay closed.
WASHINGTON — Closed school buildings have attracted a lot of Republican political hopes recently.
In California, Kevin Faulconer, the former mayor of San Diego who is running for governor, has posed in front of several school buildings as he launched his campaign this month, including a news conference in San Francisco last week at which he declared “it’s time for schools to be reopened, not renamed.”
Across the country, his counterpart Kirk Cox, the main establishment-backed Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, has made reopening schools his chief theme.
House Republican leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (RBakersfield) jumped into the issue with a tweet after Democrats introduced immigration legislation backed by President Biden.
“Democrats have a plan to open America’s borders but not America’s schools,” he wrote.
That’s a very unified message for a party that’s been much divided of late. Republicans have found an issue on which they believe Biden and his fellow Democrats are vulnerable, and after weeks of being on the defensive, they’re seizing it.
There’s reason for skepticism about whether the theme will pay off to the degree the GOP hopes. But if large numbers of schools remain closed in September, it’s a good bet that Democrats will pay a price in races for governor in Virginia, New Jersey and California, assuming the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom qualifies for the ballot.
As with most significant political issues, the fight over reopening schools has a substantive side and a political one.
On the merits, there’s little question that distance learning has hurt kids, especially ones from low-income families who already face big inequities in school. There’s also strong evidence, as Biden said in his CNN town hall on Tuesday, that schools, especially in early grades, are at low risk for COVID-19 transmission.
Those two facts provide a strong argument for getting students back in classrooms as quickly as possible. But low risk isn’t no risk. Weighing how much risk is acceptable — and to whom — is where the politics come in.
Many teachers worry about potential exposure, and their unions, reflecting those concerns, have resisted efforts in some cities and states to get students back into classrooms that the unions say aren’t yet safe. That’s one element in a standoff that has kept the vast majority of California’s students out of classrooms. The issue appears to be coming to a head in the Legislature, where lawmakers may vote as early as Monday on a $6.6-billion plan to start reopening schools in April.
Critics, who include Republican elected officials, accuse the unions of dragging their feet and allowing exaggerated fears of contagion to outweigh the educational needs of children.
“It’s the teachers unions that want to keep the schools closed,” Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who heads the House Republicans’ campaign operation, said in an interview on NBC. He accused Democrats of “standing with their specialinterest donors instead of the students.”
Union officials deny that.
“No one wants to return to in-person education more than educators,” said Karen White, deputy executive director of the National Education Assn., the nation’s largest teachers union. But, she adds, if schools aren’t “enforcing basic mitigation” adamantly measures, including masking, distancing and improved ventilation, “those aren’t going to be safe schools.”
The best solution, she says, is for local districts to bring teachers in on the decision-making about how to reopen and for states to give educators priority for vaccination. About half the states give them priority now, at least in part.
Newsom had initially resisted doing so California, saying that with vaccines still scarce, guaranteeing a priority for teachers would push many elderly Californians too far back in line. But on Friday, with more and more seniors having received their vaccinations, Newsom announced plans to start setting aside 10% of vaccine the state receives each week for teachers, day care workers and other school employees.
In both Washington and Sacramento, the fight has put Democratic chief executives in a tight spot, advocating for reopening schools, but not wanting to get crosswise with the unions, which have long been a major Democratic ally. Newsom, for example, will need help from teachers unions to hold on to his job if the recall qualifies, as most political observers think it will.
The issue “is a godsend for California Republicans,” said GOP strategist Rob Stutzman. Rather than being forced to talk about former President Trump, candidates like Faulconer “are able to talk about opening schools and the fundamental services that government is supposed to provide.”
In Washington, a poll this month by Morning Consult found Biden getting 60% approval nationwide for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, but on handling schools his approval dropped to 48%, with 32% disapproving.
The question is how lasting that political dynamic will be.
This isn’t the first time Republicans have waded into a fight with teachers unions hoping for a political payoff. In the 1990s and 2000s, the party invested heavily in promoting voucher programs that would have allowed parents to use tax money to pay for private schools. Then, as now, party strategists believed the issue would widen their appeal with voters and deal a blow to a big Democratic interest group.
The strategy never really worked. In California, advocates of vouchers lost two heavily financed ballot campaigns. Suburban voters turned out to mostly like their public schools as is, while urban parents, who had reason to be angry about conditions in their schools, didn’t trust Republicans.
The same dynamic may apply in this case.
In the Morning Consult poll, a majority of voters, 55% to 34%, said states should “wait to reopen schools until teachers have received the vaccine.” That sentiment was especially strong among Black and Latino voters and those living in cities. The poll also found that 54% of voters said they trusted local teachers unions to decide on school reopenings, the same share who said they trusted local school boards.
“Voters really trust educators,” White said.
Time, however, could erode that trust. A lot depends on how much longer campuses remain closed.
Having millions of children stuck at home has contributed heavily to the massive disruption the pandemic has caused. To date, most parents have put up with it as a painful necessity. As the nation moves into a second spring of closed classrooms, however, patience is wearing thin.
So far, Biden doesn’t entirely own those closures; he can point to them as part of what he inherited from his predecessor. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain crystallized that point in a message Thursday on Twitter:
“Schools closed under President Trump, and they will reopen under President Biden,” he wrote.