President Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos are pushing hard to get schools fully reopened in a few weeks, but neither has ever been in charge of setting up a classroom nor preparing to see students. DeVos and Vice President Pence do have long histories of favoring private, for-profit charter schools at the expense of public schools. I have to wonder if she is both bowing to President Trump's urgency to get re-elected, and seizing upon an opportunity to deal the public schools another blow. Based on my personal experience and California weather, I think from August to October, I would try and take my classes outdoors and find a bit of 95-degree shade, before crowding 30 junior high students into a normal-sized classroom. A teacher friend in Texas copied the questions below from a teacher somewhere else, and each is a valid question. We do have more questions than answers at this point. One consideration that had not occurred to me previously is that we can expect high teacher absenteeism. The district I just retired from had habitual problems obtaining enough substitute teachers to fill classrooms under ordinary needs, and many of those substitutes were former teachers, now retired, and often elderly. What happens to a school when a couple of teachers test positive at the same time and must each quarantine for two weeks? Ten school days is what most districts give their teachers in paid sick days. When there are emergencies and a teacher must be out for several weeks, other teachers often donate sick days, but what happens at a school when several teachers need the two or three months that Covid-19 patents (who do recover) often need before being back on their feet? Can we expect teacher stress levels to reach the strike threshold? Do we send in the National Guard to cover classrooms? Do we start the school year with full schedules knowing we may have to abort the plan in October or November? Or might it be better to start with a more limited plan, one we can have a better chance of carrying to completion?

Questions for School Openings:

• If a teacher tests positive for COVID-19 are they required to quarantine for 2-3 weeks? Is their sick leave covered, paid?

• If that teacher has 5 classes a day with 30 students each, do all 150 of those students need to then stay home and quarantine for 14 days?

• Do all 150 of those students now have to get tested? Who pays for those tests? Are they happening at school? How are the parents being notified? Does everyone in each of those kids' families need to get tested? Who pays for that?

• What if someone who lives in the same house as a teacher tests positive? Does that teacher now need to take 14 days off of work to quarantine? Is that time off covered? Paid?

• Where is the district going to find a substitute teacher who will work in a classroom full of exposed, possibly infected students for substitute pay?

• Substitutes teach in multiple schools. What if they are diagnosed with COVID-19? Do all the kids in each school now have to quarantine and get tested? Who is going to pay for that?

• What if a student in your kid's class tests positive? What if your kid tests positive? Does every other student and teacher they have been around quarantine? Do we all get notified who is infected and when? Or because of HIPAA regulations are parents and teachers just going to get mysterious “may have been in contact” emails all year long?

• What is this stress going to do to our teachers? How does it affect their health and well-being? How does it affect their ability to teach? How does it affect the quality of education they are able to provide? What is it going to do to our kids? What are the long-term effects of consistently being stressed out?

• How will it affect students and faculty when the first teacher in their school dies from this? The first parent of a student who brought it home? The first kid?

• How many more people are going to die, that otherwise would not have if we had stayed home longer?

(Note: 30% of the teachers in the US are over 50. About 16% of the total deaths in the US are people between the ages of 45-65.)

interesting this suggestion that Trump perceives that opening schools will help his election chances. wouldn't that imply that Trump thinks he is advocating for what the majority want?

The swedish experience has been the same. They never shut down schools in the first place so that's even more reliable evidence.