President Biden put on an early pandemic show by promising that a majority of American schools would reopen in his first 100 days in office. But on Tuesday we learned that it depends on the meaning of the word “reopening”.
“His goal is to have the majority of schools open, more than 50 percent, by the 100th day of his presidency, which means classrooms will be taught,” said Jen Psaki, White House press secretary, Tuesday. “So at least one day a week.”
One day out of five? We doubt that working parents define so openly.
Ms. Psaki tries to turn a humiliating political embarrassment into a virtue. Mr. Biden believed that his support for the teachers union agenda, along with more money, would encourage unions to reopen schools. Instead, he discovers what America’s parents have learned over the past year: unions run schools, and no one – no parents, no school districts, no mayors, not even a new Democratic president – will tell them what to do. So it’s one day of the week, buddy. To get used to something.
This really is one of the major scandals of the pandemic. First, the unions demanded that cases be dropped in their cities before schools open. Now the cases are falling almost everywhere. The unions therefore insist that teachers must be vaccinated before they return.
