Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 07162020 20240712

Financial needs of schools planning to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic. Also a look at the recent rise of covid19 cases with dr. Drake deutsche dr. Drake dr. Jake deutsch. It isgood morning, thursday, july 16, 2020. A three hour washington journal is ahead. We begin on decisions being made in School Districts around the country about when and how children will go to school this fall. With the coronavirus creating debate over in person versus Virtual Schools and concerns about School Funding shortfalls areteacher shortages, we opening our phones to hear from educators and parents this morning. What is your biggest concern when it comes to School Reopening . Phone line split up. Educators, 202 7488000. Parents, 202 7488001. You can also send us a text. That number is. That number is 202 74880 2 3. Otherwise catch up with us on social media at facebook. Com cspan. A good thursday morning to you. You can start calling you now as we show you education secretary betsy devos reiterating what she believes is the need for students to be back in the classroom this fall. [video clip] kids in lowrom income situations, vulnerable backgrounds, those are the ones most negatively impacted by not having that School Routine and that focus on continuing to move ahead and learn. We talked about what some of my observations were. That absolutely the case today parents have a much clearer understanding of what their childrens experience was this spring. They have a better perspective on how their particular school did with continuing to provide Education Opportunities and they are looking for that leadership on the part of education leaders to ensure their kids can go back to a Forward Movement and learning new material with the backtation that when we go , there is going to be fulltime learning, fulltime operations, acknowledging that if there is an area where there is a flareup, there may need to be a pivot for a period of time to a distance environment. Host education secretary betsy devos, the keynote speaker at georgias 2020 legislative policy. The idea of students being back in school fulltime, the focus of the trumpet ministration for the last week or more. The president tweeting about it. Saying now that we have witnessed it on a largescale basis and firsthand, Virtual Learning has proved to be terrible compared to in school or oncampus learning. It is not even close. The president said on july 10 schools must be open in the fall. If not why would the president give funding . It will not. Education, the Los Angeles School district is one of the latest to say they are not going back to school in the fall. Mistake. What you tell parents and teachers who feel it is unsafe to go back . I would tell parents and teachers you should find yourself a new person, whoever is in charge of that decision, it is a terrible decision. Children and parents are dying from that trauma. They are dying because they cannot do what they are doing. Mothers cannot go to work because they have to stay at home and watch their child, and fathers. There is a tremendous strain on that side of the equation. Is a balancing act. It is a balancing act but we have to open our schools. Ont that was the president tuesday. Yesterday this was Speaker Nancy Pelosi talking about how democrats have disagreed with the president and his administrations approach on this issue. [video clip] children want to go to school. We want them to learn. Parents want them to go to school. We cannot risk the health and safety and the lives of anyone that they might bring this home. Our teachers, our custodians, our people who work in Public Schools need to be protected. We cannot follow the attitude of this administration if you do not open up, we will not give you money. No. We will give you money so you can open up. It is in the heroes act. Theannot follow the lead of secretary of education who said why shouldnt children take risks, astronauts take risks. Maybe when they are an astronaut they can decide to take that risk. We have to decide going to school is not a risk to their health and safety. Host nancy pelosi yesterday. The heroes actually refers to, the democratic bill for the next Coronavirus Relief package, congress promising more relief tocome, but have not come agreement on what that will look like. The speaker referencing the democratic version of that bill. Askingrst hour, just teachers, educators, and parents what your biggest concern is when it comes to School Reopening. Educators can call in 202 , 202 0, and parents 7488001. Todd is a teacher out of brentwood, california. You are up first. Caller i am a retired teacher. Questionee rand pauls of dr. Fauci on this topic in the senate . Host i do remember that. He was talking about the statistics of School Reopenings in other countries and the infection rates of children. We played that the next day afterwards. Caller excellent. Showed statistics from 11 countries in europe. The Washington Post covered it. They said generally in europe and asia schools have been reopened and there had been no spikes. Dr. Fauci agreed with this. Point. Eded rand pauls did you see the numbers in florida where the state of florida is reporting that dozens of Testing Facilities have reported zero negativity. They tested 7200 people and found 7200 positive and zero negatives. Dozens of Testing Facilities throughout florida. Did you see that . Host get your point on this. Your idea is that they need to go back . Caller certainly. What i am saying is we are looking at florida and getting all of these alarmist headlines, but certainly the numbers in florida are extremely unreliable , extremely dubious. 100 positivity and dozens of Testing Facilities. That is not possible. California, we have more alarmist headlines thats 8000 people tested positive. A new record. 26 , mortality rate is that would lead to 17 deaths. Diabetic,to be morbidly obese, people in hospice. We are getting all of these headlines. Half of these new cases are under 35 and a symptomatic. Be ready to go back to school this fall if you were still teaching . Caller certainly. 35, the mortality rate will be driven lower than. 26 . We are looking at a rate that is below the flu mortality rates. Host taught in california. This is bob in massachusetts, a parent. You are next. Caller good morning, how are you today . Host i am doing well. Caller my point would be i think the kids can stay home and take their education online. I believe that information that they are doing poorly online is false. The reasoning for that would be when i have my kids doing their homework and their schoolwork, they do not want to do it, they mess around. If they want to play a game and they want to learn math through their game, they can break down math and all of that through these games. If they get interested in something they can pick it apart and learn everything you want. It is like anything else. Online learning can become a lot more interesting when youre not being harassed in a classroom. Our classrooms today are putting special ed kids inside the classroom with all the kids and that kid acts out the whole time. 10 minutes of learning is happening in a 45 minute period. This kid is acting out and they say no kid left behind. Host how old are your kids . Caller my kids are adults but this happened when they were children in schools. My wife works in the School System right now and we watch it happen every day. We used to watch it when school was in. Host what is your wife tell you when will she feel comfortable going back . Caller everybody here feels comfortable going back now. They think this is a waste of time. The dr. Fauci eight went to t to thedr. Fauci wen wuhan lab host we will hold off on the conspiracy theories. Dr. Fauci he was talking to students and young people about what they can do to mitigate the risk when it comes to coronavirus and also asked about School Reopening. This was dr. Fauci. [video clip] we should try as best as possible to keep the children in school for the reasons that the unintended downstream Ripple Effect consequences of keeping the kids out of school and the impact on working families and on other aspects of society can be profound, not to mention the negative effect on the children. Should try towe get the kids to stay in school. However, that will vary from where you are in the country and what the dynamics of the outbreak are in your particular region. That is the reason why, although is fundamental principle they have one other guiding principle that is overriding, it is the safety and welfare of the children and the safety and the welfare of the teachers. You have to take that into consideration. If you are in the part of a country where the dynamics of the outbreak are minimal, if at all, than there is no problem in giving back. If you are in a situation where you are in outbreak mode, then you leave it up to the local individuals in certain california schools, certain florida schools, in making a decision based on the judgment of making sure safety in the children and safety and the teachers are paramount. Lets try to get them open to the extent we can, but lets take a look at the dynamics of the infection in the area you are in. Att dr. Anthony fauci Georgetown University back on tuesday. Heres a story from todays Washington Post about what is happening on the ground in this part of the country, joining a growing National Push against reopening Public Schools, Prince Georges County Public Schools in maryland will start with 100 remote construction this fall and keep it in place at least through january. That is the proposal out of Prince Georges County. Recent surveys show significant support for distance education across the country. The Washington Post story noting more than half of educators and administrators responding to a june survey prefer that approach, as did 46 of parents, despite pressure and threats of lost funding from the white house. Some of the nations largest School System have announced plans to stick with the all Remote Learning, including districts in los angeles, san diego, atlanta, houston, and elsewhere. Prince georges county in maryland is among the countrys largest and one of the largest majority black systems. The chief executive of Prince Georges County announcement this week came a day after marilyns two largest teacher you get marylands two largest teacher unions urge students not go back to campus this fall. North carolina, this is a parent. David. How old is your kids . Caller he is 11. This instance shows how we could start revamping our transportation issues. Most communities only cater to certain crowds, and not all of the Community Like we need to. We need to start a bus route that goes from Fire Department to Fire Department to the grocery store, you know, the main city. We have compartments on our buses that are more modernized, that hold three people, because they can be sanitized easier than our personal cars at this point, and every time we try to get a good discussion on how to revamp the bureaucracy around our community, we always have something diverse from the real discussion something diver t bus from the terrorism happening around this nation. Host are you more concerned about your kids ending to school once they get to the classroom . Caller i do not want them inside. We need to think about new innovations to implement in society all around to consolidate services. Bus routes need to be at every Fire Department and we need to get the amenities upgraded because we do not have a cohesive system and the School System schedule does not fit the working american schedule before the pandemic. Host david in North Carolina. This is john in maryland, a parent. How old are your kids . Caller hello. Host how old are your kids . Caller my kid is 14 and going into ninth grade. Notid ok online but i would say it was stellar teaching. I would prefer he stay out this i am very concerned for my health, i am an older parent, that he might bring something home to me, and also one third of teachers are of the riskhey could be at high for contracting the coronavirus. Ok. you said he did what was good about the distance and what did not work for your 14yearold . I did not think they had enough facetoface where they theyally check in had google classrooms, but it was not like they took attendance. Who go to the Prince Georges County School System, and they said they did more of the zoom system. When President Trump says he will not give anybody any money if they do not go back to school, i would suggest he needs to give more money to the schools to adapt to the Online Learning because a lot of these teachers i know teachers, people who still teach, i used to be a teacher, and i know they are working very hard on powerpoint. Some of them are not young and maybe not as proficient on the community on the computer as some of the other teachers. They are putting power points up and trying to adapt to this new system. It takes a wild to get adapted. I think it takes more funding, not less. Host you say used to be a teacher. What did you teach . Caller i taught elementary in Prince Georges County. And dohen did you retire you have colleagues who are making that decision right now about retiring or sticking around . I have colleagues who are still teaching and they are saints as far as i am concerned. Teachers some great to transmit the learning to these kids. They are working very hard to andt to the online methods some of them are doing a great job. I think Prince Georges County has stepped up very well with the new system, just talking to my friends who have kids in the system. I am in the Anne Arundel County system. My son could have done a better job. And this eighth grade whole year was difficult. Friends,ot visit their so they put on the headset and whatever, and they were able to socialize with their videogames in some , but i am not so sure about rand paul statistics and i think the numbers in the countries where they opened up are a lot lower than what they are in our country. I am not sending my boy back, even if they do open anne arundel up. I am an older parent, like i said. I am the sole provider. Risk getting sick and losing income. He can wait a year to get ninth grade as far as im concerned, if that is what they want to do. Host thanks for the call from maryland. John talks about the cost of Online Education and more investment in that. This is a recent report from the association of School Administrators, a report on what it would cost to actually reopen schools, to put in the health and safety steps needed to reopen schools while combating coronavirus. That report estimating 1. 8 million on average for a School District in this country. Questions about where that money would come from. We will talk more about those issues with Daarel Burnette of education week, a School Finance reporter, who will join us in a little over half an hour. Until then, your phone calls just for teachers and parents talking about your biggest concern when it comes to reopening schools this fall. Mike in illinois, teacher. What do you teach . It is caller interesting because the kids today could learn much better from home on the computer. Think about this. You have the best teacher in the world teaching your kid. In Chicago Schools you have teachers that are not very good, lets be frank, and they are protected by the unions. Right now if you can have your child learn from home on the computer, there been studies done, especially in the universities. Children are afraid to ask questions, especially in the large lecture halls. In the chat rooms, they are asking questions constantly. The ta is firing off all of the answers. So you have a hall of 200 kids. The ta is answering the questions of 50 to 60 kids. If you do not have online, you would have maybe five kids asked questions because they are intimidated. Host what you teach . Caller i am a high school teacher. Today what you have to understand is the whole system needs to be changed. This was all set up when the summersld be off in the , to help their parents farm the land. We are so behind the times it is incredible. What we have to do is let the people know how much money their tax dollars would go down if we closed all of these schools. Remember, in every town you have beautiful Park Districts. They say the kids need socializing. After they do their learning online, they can go to the Park District and they can play soccer and baseball and tennis, and they can interact with their friends and they can have their lunches and all of the things that supposedly these people think are missing if we close the schools. You are not missing these things. Schools are a small amount of learning. You have five classes. History,science, sociology, but after that it is a bunch of waste of time. In every town you have libraries. You do not need the School System the way it is set up today. All of these people are paying 6,000 to 10,000 a year in taxes for the schools to pay for these teachers we do not need because they can be done online. The best teacher in the world can you imagine your kid being taught math by the best math teacher, the best english teacher, the best science teacher. This is the way to do it. Host that is mike in illinois. Mike started to comment by mentioning teachers unions. Here is the front page of the washington times. Unions fight school reopens. Above that a picture of workers in one School District in sawing plexiglass barriers. The front page of the wall picking upnal also this idea of in person versus Remote Learning. The headline, Remote Learning widens americas education gap. Black, lowof mostly income students is hardest hit. The focus on the jackson public School System in mississippi, and they write in jackson, like many other districts, School Officials essentially gave up on requiring Remote Learning. In late april the district allowed students who are passing before the shutdown to skip the last two months of the school year and receive a passing grade. Some students do not have Internet Access from parents available to help. Even teachers could not get online at home when schools closed. The story suggesting Research Suggests kids will return to school in the fall with 70 of learning gains in reading relative to Normal School year and less than 50 of gains. It expects a greatest learning laws for minority and low income children with less access to technology and families likely to be affected by the economic downturn. It is focused on the jackson public School System in mississippi. Stephen from greensburg, pennsylvania, a parent. Good morning. How old are your kids. Caller just one. There are two sides to this comment. I think children should go back to school. Andeasy because it is safe it will be safe if theres already a structure in place with the schools. The i was younger, to get polio vaccine was handled at the school. You go in with your parents at night, you get your vaccination, you leave. Now, get the schools to start early, ask the American Public to help out. Put a little bit of effort into it. The children come along with , ifr parents, get tested the test shows up negative, you get to go to school. People associated with the children and parents get tested. Negative, everybody goes to school. A complete negative school. Right around the corner will be a vaccination. They have not talked about how they would get that in place. People have to get on the ball. Start planning how they will distribute the vaccination. I think it should be done through the School System because everything is in place. Host under the system you are talking about, how often would you want the student tested . Under your Plan Everyone tests negative and can come in. What happens a week later, a month later . Caller test them again. Host every month, every week . Caller every week. There is a fast, efficient test. After a week or so, the third or fourth week, you will get a better idea of how often you have to test. I think that is a great way to get it started. You have to get it started somewhere. Everybody thinks it is up to someone else to do it. It is our responsibility as citizens to put some effort into it. Say i cannot make it down to the school to get tested . The hell you cannot if you want your students to get tested. You have names, do it alphabetically, it could be very smooth, very noninvasive, and get started. Host that is stephen in pennsylvania. This is felicia in des moines, iowa. Also a parent. How old are your kids . Caller my kids are grown so im talking about my grandchildren. I have an eightyearold, a nineyearold, and a 13yearold. Host how do distancelearning work for them in the spring . Caller it worked pretty good in their county. The school came out and make sure all of the kids had computers so they could do their lessons. All of themblem was doing their lesson at the same time was driving their mother crazy. I can understand. Think kids i do not are ready to go back to school because five months into this virus, we still do not know a lot about this virus. When it first started they said it only affects the elderly. 40,ou are between 20 and you can go on and go to work and keep our economy going. They became essential workers. Then all of those 20 and 40yearolds, after a couple of months, where are they now. They are all filling up our hospitals. Now they want the next essential people to get the economy going and send the kids back to school. I would like to say to mr. Trump and all of his Republican People , my children and my grandchildren are essential to me. I will not be sending them back to school until they figure out how this virus works. They keep telling us first was only the elderly, that was the 20 to 40yearolds, now they are also in the hospitals. Kids are not in school yet but once they are come it will be our children that start filling up these hospitals. Busy divorce said we still need to send the children to school. What i say is they need to figure out how we can send our children back to school safely. But if you have doubts about sending your child to school, do not send them. Host it is 7 30 on the east coast. Just asking parents and teachers what your biggest concern is about schools reopening. You can keep calling in as we update you on stories we have been tracking this week. Yesterday we talked about campaign 2020 and a shakeup yesterday in President Trumps campaign team. The president announcing last night that he is replacing his Campaign Manager with longtime political aide bill stepien as recent post show him falling behind joe biden. The Washington Post writing, stepien was the field director for the campaign and has worked with the president since the election. He is known for a lowkey style and he was foreman or a former a top aide to governor chris christie. The president losing to joe on two polls released wednesday, the president trailing by 15 point margin in one poll and then an 11 margin behind joe biden in an nbc news wall street journal poll that got a lot of attention yesterday. One other story we mentioned, Health Concerns this week of Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg. This story in the Washington Post with some good news. Justice ginsburg left Johns Hopkins hospital in baltimore yesterday, the day after being admitted for a possible infection. A spokesperson said in a statement that ginsbergs home and doing well and provided no other details about the justices condition. She went to the hospital on tuesday after experiencing chills. She was given a procedure to clean out a stent that was placed in august. She is the oldest member of the nations highest court. Back to your phone calls as we ask your biggest concern when it comes to School Reopening this fall. Wanda in tennessee, a teacher. What grade do you teach . Caller Early Childhood education. They thinking that maybe want to adopt some of the ways they are implementing class in kindergarten where you have four child goeseach color to an area. Four children will go to that area. That is if they decided to open up the schools. Another thing they can adopt from kindergarten is washing your hands regularly, saying please and thank you, if you can hold your arms out, that is your personal space. A lot of things could be adopted from kindergartners. Parent, i am a parent also. If i had to send my children back to school, it would break my heart because i have people who are not just lying to us, but they are lying to our children. I would not want my children under the influence of people who are downright lying to them she, they do not know anything about this disease and then you want to send my child into a place where they me orcome home and infect my mother. Tracking, there is no way you can track this. One person that leaves the school goes to 100 different places and then they come in contact with people who have been to 100 different places. I dont trust the tracking. Host let me ask you, does the distancelearning work for preschool and kindergartners and first graders . We have one parent saying it worked well for his 14yearold, but what about those younger kids . Can they get online in these zoom and chat rooms and have it be an effective learning tool or do they need to be together . Caller no, they do not need to be together. If it was my choice to decide what to do with preschoolers and kindergartners, i would have them doing exercises, playing games, just something to keep your mind occupied as far as education goes. Abcs, the parents can teach the abcs. Just get them involved remotely of a social setting. As far as the educational part, i am thinking that they can get that in the future. As i was saying at first, as a parent, i do believe that what i am looking at is commodity versus humanity. It is more focused on the commodity part than the humanity part. I know it is a strain on people who have worked all their lives trying to direct people around here and they are doing housing and different subjects. Time, i believe we need to start looking at this as i will put it like this, make americans great again. Put America First instead of trying to make money. Host that is wanda in tennessee this morning. Some comments from twitter and social media. Write, some School Districts are better than others and that is why housing cost tend to be higher in better districts. Henry says, when our kids text each other it is within a group of friends. I have witnessed where the entire school work walk out of class. Make it fun, is what henry says. We should not limit our children with our limitations. Fearh writing, my biggest is that this virus is deadlier than we realize. Young will not be able to withstand going through covid three to five times. Smarter to take it easy. Steve is saying, we have officials in South Carolina who are afraid to meet facetoface but are ready to send children back to crowded schools. Go figure. One of the school have to shift to quarantine mode anyway and that can happen early in the school year. Ron is a teacher. Where do you teach . Caller i teach at a university. Mainly, we are coming up with a comprehensive strategy to space students out and to ensure their safety and make sure they are safe. Host ron, are you comfortable . Haveu trust that they will your best interest in mind . Caller i believe so. Family some very caring as we call ourselves. We care about our students. We care about everyone. I am an independent with a conservative leaning. I think we need a conference of strategy, a plan to determine what we are going to do as a nation as far as our schools. Hat should come from d. C i am reading brian kents message this morning. Youre getting mixed messages about what we could do we are getting mixed messages about what we should do. Kempsread governor message this morning about masks not being mandatory, do we apply that to School Systems . I cannot imagine jeopardizing students and staff and faculty for political reasons. I am not saying that is what he is doing. And asying as our leader our leaders should think, they should think positively, what is the best thing for our kids and for this nation. Host thanks for the call. For those not keeping up with the latest on the georgia rules coming out of the governors office, the governor prohibiting municipalities across the state from mandating that masks be warned in public to mitigate the spread of coronavirus. The executive prevents local governments from presenting mandatory face coverings orders that are more restrictive than the current statewide order. The move avoided orders issued by 15 local governments across the state. Rather than imposing a mandatory requirement, the governors order states that residents and visitors are strongly encouraged to wear face coverings as practical when in public except when eating, drinking, and exercising outdoors. A spokesperson doubling down on the governors stance that local orders are unenforceable. That story from the hill newspaper this money. Elizabeth out of virginia, a parent. How old are your kids . Caller grandparent. Host how old are your grandkids . And 10. 15, 13, i am concerned about this whole thing. This is the worst thing that has ever happened to the world. There is no hiding from it. It can be anywhere. A committeeo catch on opening schools last week here on cspan. I think you learned so much from that, i just cant watch it all the time. On and he is fully committed to opening the schools. He was renting how much it would hurt people, everybody ranting. The people of kentucky has elected him for years and years. I am certain they support him. If they start now, they could prepare and open the kentucky schools for children in august and we can see how that works out. Have a couple of callers referred to the hearing in the Senate Health education labor and Pensions Committee on going back to school safely. We covered it on cspan. You can watch it at our website. You can search that committee or search by the date when the hearing took place. It took place pretty much right after this program that day. It was probably in the 10 of 5 a. M. Eastern or 11 00 10 00 a. M. John is a parent. Morning. Caller hello. Host how old are your kids . Ander they are about 16 17. Host has distanced learning worked for them so far . Caller i really cannot say that. What i really wanted to make a comment on was if you look at deaths versus the deaths, it looks to me like we are going through a recovery. It is almost unbelievable. Are runningeaths lower than the deaths expected. It looks to me like we are intong a lot of worry getting this thing under control when it looks like it has been pretty well gotten under control. Host at one point a few months ago we were talking about maybe 60,000 deaths. Now we are well over 130,000 deaths. Everybody dont buy it. If you look at what the cdc put out, you know the expected deaths the actual deaths are much lower than the expected deaths. It looks like we are going through a miraculous recovery. Everything see on these reports sounds so dire. If i am interpreting the graph arehat it says it is, we going through such a great recovery. Is it that everything every time you listen to something, we are going the other way . You what is acceptable to or what is a number that we want to stay under . 200,000, 250,000 . Where would you be comfortable saying that we are in a good place on this . We would like to save everybody. But according to that graph, unless i am mistaken on what it dying thanpeople are we expected to die. Case, this is the virus is not really killing many people. When you include everybody that influenza and all the Different Things and no more people are dying than expected, it looks to me like we are making great strides. Host that was john in mississippi. This is matthew in pennsylvania. What do you teach . Caller i am a High School Math teacher. Host what is your expectation in your School District about going back . Caller the district i work in is small and rural. We dont have the resources we need to go back. I am toward the end of my career so i am an older teacher. Have some comorbidities going back at this point seems counterproductive. Do i believe distance warning lurks . Works . Absolutely not. Our studies indicate that Online Education is traditionally the worst Charter Schools are the worst in the state. We need to get kids back into school, but we need the resources to do it safely. Not just for the students, but the teachers, administrators, bus drivers who all tended to be older folks. In our area, a lot of them have a second job. The chance for spread is outrageous. I hate to disagree with the gentleman from mississippi, but i understand what exponential growth means. A lot of people did not Pay Attention in algebra to understand what that means. You look at the charts and the growth is exponential. Like they say, the deaths are going to lag behind the hospitalizations. In the next two weeks, that chart will also start to grow. We are looking at conservatively 225,000 people by november. That number will be higher. Unless we get a handle on this, it is going to be higher. With getting kids back in the classroom, you will just continue to spread. Until we get the spread number down below one and they get everybody on the same page with masks and handwashing and social distancing, it is not going to work. Host we have had parents call to talk about frustrations their students have had with Distance Learning. Can you talk about it from the other side of the screen from the teachers side . What is frustrating for you and how have you tried to work through that . Honestly, we mandated that all the teachers work a regular day. I was on my computer before the regular school day started and well after it ended trying to find resources to make the Online Learning interesting, so it was notust something you could just mail it in. I was working every day. Less than 20 of my parents were making sure there students were working every day. Less than half of my students logged in at all after march 13 until the middle of june. Without the cooperation of parents, even in a normal situation, you need the parent to be involved. I cannot go home with every student and teach them. I could not do it on a daily basis during the Normal School year. I was frustrated because i was working twice as hard. An older educator, i had to go back and learn a lot of stuff. I had google classroom the whole time. I had two meetings for each class zoom meetings. I had office hours. I had one student who would show up every day and we will talk about something im a it was usually about the something, but it was usually about the coronavirus. We know it does not work. I would not want my students to start kindergarten and Distance Learning through high school. Can we make it work with more cooperation on every side, a little giveandtake and lower expectations for teachers and more expectation from the parents . Listen, i get it. School has become the social backdrop for everything that families do in this country. We provide meals. We make sure students are not being abused. We provide guidance. We provide Mental Health services. We provide all kinds of things. Even as far as dentistry, i teach in a rural district. All of those services are not being provided for students. They have to be there to get that. There is not a teacher positive association in this country that would argue otherwise. We are teachers. We want to be in the classroom. Is it the most lucrative occupation . No, it is not. There has to be Something Else to it. Teachers enjoy. Teachers live for those moments when we get to have kids in front of us. Every teacher will tell you from day one until retirement, the best time of their day is when students is students are sitting in front of them. Thosedid you have any of moments in the Distance Learning environment . Me werewhat impressed some of the kids who i thought would disconnect completely that connected just online, whether they wanted to be facetoface. Those students reached out and asked a question or participated in what i was trying to do. It was not traditional. Did i have those moments . No. Was that a frustration for me . Yes. I told my administrators i was frustrated. I am a handson teacher. I do not like to lecture. I like to teach one on one. A lot of my class time is oneonone instruction. I could not do that online. I am not going to be able to do that going back. They have already told us, you have to have a face shield, have to be within six feet, you have to put a mask on, the student has to put a mask on. All of those things hopefully will mitigate it. Poor. Said, we are very we have multigenerational families. Some of our biggest employers are Nursing Homes. Inpennsylvania, the covid the Nursing Homes is outrageous. You have to be pragmatic about it. Do i want to not be in school . Buti want to be in school, i want to do it correct. I want to be sure that the students get something out of this year. The other alternative is to stop teaching altogether. Pickup one year from now, and i dont want to see that happen either. Host thank you for what you do in pennsylvania. Carrie is next. How old are your kids . Caller no, i am a grandparent. Host how old are they . Toler they range from 21 nine. A college student, elementary, and junior high. My thing is that i am a healthcare worker. I am essential. I also believe that teachers are essential workers just like the Police Department and Fire Department. Onare asked to put our lives the line to take care of people that have covid. What i would like to know is why do teachers, so many of them feel like their union says that they are fearful of coming back. Im fearful every day that i have to go into the hospital. I believe that my god is going to protect me. I have a grandson who is 12 who is autistic. I cannot imagine the damage this has done to children who are abused, children who do not have , children with parents who do not know how to teach their kids. They are not teachers. This is an essential part of our world is the teaching system and our kids being able to go and learn. This is going to hurt the underprivileged kids, the low income kids. It is like the teachers dont care. Some of them do, yes just like some healthcare workers do. But i just dont understand where they think that they are not as essential as a Police Officer or a fireman or healthcare worker. What if my union, which we do not have a union, but a lot of states do, what if they said our healthcare workers fear for their lives so they are not going into the hospitals to take care of the patients that are sick . It makes no sense. The media has blew this up. Ways, this is not more threatening than the flu. I cannot understand. More people die from the flu every year then have died from this in the year. Whysomebody explain to me my life seems not to be worth nothing, but everybody else thinks their life is more important . Host carrie in alabama. This is virginia out of orlando, florida, a parent. How old are your kids . Caller good morning, cspan. Am a great great grandmother it is not safe to send our children back to school. , whenatgrandchildren myy closed the school down, daughter and i helped them with their lessons. Parents, have somebody biting have somebody there with your child and keep them at home until they find a or something for the children to take so that they will not get this virus. This virus is serious. I have never in my life heard of anything like this before. They dont know about this virus. First they said that only the elderly people would get it. Now the children will get it. My grandson has a friend that just got out of the hospital that had just retired from the his two children have the virus. I am telling you, if your childs life is precious to you and you love them, keep your children at home until they come up with a cure and that goes for the teachers too. ,nd to the lady that just spoke that was some field that see that she chose. The teachers that choose to teach in a school where there is a virus that nobody knows about and what to do about it virginia, that was talking about the caller before. One of the issues that caller from before brought up was teacher unions. In the last couple of minutes we have left, a recent interview with the National Education who spoken president about what the federal government should be doing to make sure schools can safely reopen. This is what she had to say. [video clip] we can be creative to a certain point, that at another point, it is going to be costly. To have donald trump say, this costs money, we are not doing that. Rewrite so it is not cost money. No. No business could have done is done this without costing money, why should a school . I have had teachers who started a gofundme agent and asked for masks and disinfected because they are sure that no one is going to give them what they need. If it is going to be done well, people have to see that the resources have to be there. Let me just throw in, Mitch Mcconnell right now on his desk, there is a bill because a bill called the heroes act. It would send 200 billion to School Districts to purchase the things that we need to open schools safely. We need that money or it is going to be virtually impossible for many of our School Districts to even think of opening safely. The nationalnt of Education Association on cbs news recently. Time for one more call in this first segment. Lynn has been waiting in South Carolina, a parent. What is your biggest concern about schools reopening . That i my concern is taught in school for 17 years with kids. I retired and now i am still in the School System helping with the kids. The kids are not going to stay away from each other. They are kids. That is just what they are going to do. My concern is that they are not putting enough information out for us to think that our kids are going to be safe. There is no information being put out as to whether they are going to have hand sanitizing stations, plexiglass, or a space for the teachers, or extra nurses. What happens if an outbreak becomes with teachers or students . Then you have to close that down. You are not going to have substitutes for that facility. It is almost like they are asking us to send our kids to the gas chamber and that is not fair to grandparents. Host we got your point. That is going to do it for our first segment. Stick around, a lot more to talk about. We will continue our conversation about reopening schools with Daarel Burnette. We will also dive into how schools are funded, how the pandemic is impacting budgets. Later, the spike in covid cases around the country with new york city Emergency Room Physician dr. Jake deutsch. We will be right back. Cspan2 has top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Coming up this weekend, sunday editor eastern, magazine Stephen Leavy discusses his book. He is interviewed by an author and Financial Times of Global Business columnist. At 10 00, a former speaker of the house offers his thoughts on why President Trump should be reelected. Watch book tv on cspan2 this weekend. Watch our live coverage of congress, the white house. Our countries are linked by trade and travel. On issues that matter to you. Pres. Trump ou theg with briefings on front virus, Supreme Court decisions and the latest from campaign 2020. Be a part of the conversation everyday with our live program, washington journal. If you missed any of our live coverage, watch anytime on demand on cspan. Org or listen with the free cspan radio app. Mnuchin appears before the House Small Business Committee on oversight of the Small Business administration and department of treasury pandemic program. Live coverage begins friday at 10 00 10 30 eastern on cspan. Later this month, william barr appears before the general oversight hearing. Theh live coverage of hearing friday at 10 30 eastern on cspan. Watch anytime on cspan. Org or listen on the go with the cspan radio app. Washington journal continues. Joins usrel burnette now via zoom for a conversation on schools reopening. The president has made it clear that he wants schools open in the fall and has gone so far as to say last week that he will cut off funding for schools that do not reopen. Can he do that . Guest my understanding of that is no or it would be difficult for them to do that. Mostiggest thing is that federal funding has already been sent out for the school year. The second thing is that congress controls the purse strings. They have created rules around exactly when money gets sent out, how much, and exactly what School Districts need to do to receive that money. The last thing is that if congress decides to provide more bailout money for School Districts, they would have to agree to give the strings to betsy devos to decide when and how to dole out money. One of the things i want to point out is federal money is targeted toward low income schools. What betsy divorce is saying is devos. Y divorce host we talk about what is being proposed in the heroes act that are being pushed right now for future additional aid. Act, theder the cares School District can get 13 billion which is really a drop in the bucket. Was targeted they wanted it to spend it on last years costs when they had to shutdowns close in march, purchasing laptops for kids, wifi, etc. The heroes act which has been proposed in the house, that would provide 60 billion for schools. Again, most education advocates are saying they would need around 200 billion to reopen schools. Alexander whotor runs the Senate Education committee, he is talking about possibly providing 70 billion for schools. That money would be geared toward reopening costs such as ppe, transportation, etc. School districts need to pay their staff. ,he reopening costs might help but really what districts need is enough money to survive the school year. What i should really emphasize federal dollars are only 10 of funding. Majority of districts rely on local and state aid and state aid has plummeted. Host we showed it article last segment we were talking about School Reopening. Report, reopening means an additional 1. 8 million in cost for the average School District. There are other numbers out there. Can you dive into those numbers . Guest sure. I have talked to several administrators about some of the logistical challenges and financial challenges with reopening. The Superintendents Association s estimate was for the district the size of 15,000 students and 2 million. They are talking about the hardware of schools. Ppe and equipment, they were estimate and that masks cost one dollar each. But because there is a shortage aboutipment, masks cost two dollars or three dollars now. I actually think that they might have underestimated how much it will cost. Costs aree other big trying to reduce class sizes which you would actually have to hire more teachers and professionals to do. If you want to do social distancing three or six feet, you would have to go out with more facilities. You would have to take the kids to a local stadium or take them to the local Convention Center in order to conduct classes and that costs more money. I heard more recent estimates in which these numbers can really climb into the 2 million or 3 million. I spoke to a superintendent and he was saying that for a district with hundred thousand kids on masks alone, you would have to spend 10 million. I think the big fear is that they might purchase that equipment and there will be an outbreak and now this equip it is sitting in a facility somewhere and they cannot use it and it would be a waste of tax dollars. Host Daarel Burnette, School Finance or here. School financier. Phone lines. Parents can call in at 202 7488000. Educators, 202 7488001. All others, 202 7488002. Are talkingtte, you about potentially hiring more teachers and yet this was the headline for the story that you put out is this week, thousands of educators being laid off already due to covid19 and more expected. Guest yeah. This is a thing that nobody is talking about. Districts are really on the cusp of a recession in which more than one quarter of their funding could evaporate. We are already seeing a handful of states, massachusetts, michigan, nevada, their legislature is talking about cutting a quarter of their thisng by 125 Million School year which would lead to mass layoffs. We have not seen this historically. School districts are pushing against the economic headwinds. I have counted more than half of School Districts are heavily reliant on income tax revenue. Now that the economy has shut down in the last couple of weeks and shut down twice in the last six months alone, you are going to see budget cuts at a scale that we have never seen. Once Congress Ends their session next week, we will start seeing legislatures reconvene and cutting budgets and cutting big chunks out of their budgets weeks before the school year starts. We could possibly see midyear layoffs which i think can be very traumatizing for a community. It could be academically destructive for students. Host when you are talking to these districts, what are they telling the teachers . Are they saying that these are temporary or permanent cuts . Guest they are telling them that if Congress Gives them money, they might rehire them. Otherwise, they should find another job. Host Daarel Burnette with education week. Taking your calls. Cameron is first from charlotte, michigan. Good morning. Caller good morning. I am a grandparent. I just wanted to make a comment, listening to this man talk about the billions that the School District may ask for from congress. There is a disparity in that small number and the trillions being given to the corporations that were bailed out in the first week of this situation. Now that we are in the midst of this terrible social experiment, they want to send children back to School Without giving folks enough money to do the job. Just pointing this out as a disparity. Im sure it is striking everybody else as being apparent. Now we are talking billions and they have already thrown out 5 trillion from congress. Host Daarel Burnette, who else is pointing out that disparity . Aest i talked to superintendent last week about potential layoffs and he decided to furlough himself this summer to avoid teacher layoffs. His reasoning was interesting. This was in michigan, a Rural College town in michigan. The School District there is the Third Largest employer. That town has a 30 Unemployment Rate. Once School Districts start laying people off, this will have a compounding effect on the economy. We saw this during the last recession. It could actually spark another recession. This is one of the things that i think a lot of people are not really thinking holistically about the roles that schools have. They are huge employers. They employ around 7 million. Eople, 3. 5 million teachers in some towns, they are the largest employer. Not only teachers working in schools, professionals, custodians, administrators, afterschool care workers. There is a whole workforce around schools. Focus ona lot of corporations and their survival. There is less focus on Public Schools but Public Schools play a very essential role in the economy. A parentnda, michigan,. How old are your kids . Caller they range from oneyearold to 39 years old. Host what is your concern for schools this fall . Caller my concern is kids with asthma and medical conditions going back to school. I know a lot of the schools do not have air conditioning. It is hard in there, for children to breathe with masks on. Teaching the are children right now, the parents do not understand it because they have changed to other countrys ways of math. I think children should stayathome right now until they get everything under control. Host Daarel Burnette . Guest the first time i was on this show, i was talking about school facilities. The infrastructure of Public Schools there is a crisis. It is a longrunning crisis. We vaccinated 1 trillion worth of maintenance costs. One of the things about a recession is schools freeze upgrades to facilities. All of the schools that have water pump issues, mildew in the gets putetc. , all that on the backwater for schools to basically pay salaries instead. One of the things i wanted to thet out as greatgrandmother pointed out, schools have a difficult time School Administrators have a difficult time stopping kids from kissing in the hallways, from fighting in the hallways. When we talk about schools trying to keep kids six feet very all day long, it is difficult. I think this is one of the arguments that a lot of administrators have been making the last couple of weeks as secretary betsy devos and donald trump have taken on this mission to reopen schools. Publicrt of americas School System is local control. Every town has a unique scenario. There are some towns in america some former coworkers in memphis in which the infection rates are 30 . They have people dying on a frequent basis. The fear of the coronavirus is very real, very tangible. There are some committees in america in which they have brandnew schools, they have courtyards in which kids can work. There are some areas in which the climate is cool all day long and they can take the kids outside and have class outside and that is perfectly legit. K12 evidence writers have been arguing that dish inistrators have you been have been arguing that this should be a local decision. 2018, actually not your first time on this program, we had you three years ago almost to the day back in 2017 talking about teacher evaluations. All of his appearances on this program are available on our website. The search bar at the top of the page is your friend and you can find his and all guest appearances. Susan, new york, you are up next. Good morning. Caller grandparent. Is thereuestion, anyway that the local School System can link up with Online Education whereby if you have to make up at least 180 days, is there any way that they can link up . Online is usually ahead of advance. If you were in the six grade, we would get eighth grade education. You could print out the information and send it in online rather than mailing it in. Yeah. School district did do Online Education starting in march of last year. There were some bright spots. There was a lot of frustration amongst teachers and administrators, especially for the younger grades. Really higher ed has figured out Online Education. K12 is lightyears behind higher ed. Everything from not all students have access to wifi, not all students have access to laptop computers. Not all teachers have access to wifi. We found teachers who were sitting outside of schools trying to connect to School Buildings wifi. It is a big logistical hurdle. This summer a lot of schools purchase moreo and improved software and they are really trying to roll out more comprehensive Online Learning. As my colleagues reporting has is not easy. It is very difficult. There is a growing consensus amongst k12 communities that increase in learning, a teacher standing in front of a child, works best. I think it is really interesting that betsy devos six months ago was touting Online Learning. Now she is demonizing it. I think a lot of k12 administrators are saying which one is it. I think, like everything in k12, it is nuanced. There are some bright spots. There are potential areas of growth. Overall, it is nowhere close to as effective as the Person Learning is. She pointed out printing out materials. I was talking to administrators in wisconsin. Last year, their students do not have access to wifi or computers. Millionnt around 1 printing out curriculum. And then they spent another 1 million delivering it to kids because they had to buy all of put laptop and computers and paper in the mail to parents. Another very expensive hurdle. Million in salary of 10 teachers. Host you mentioned Virtual Learning and betsy devoss comments. This was the president last week saying on twitter, now that we have witnessed it on a largescale basis, Virtual Learning has proven to be terrible compared to in school or oncampus learning. It is not even close. Schools must be open in the fall. Why would the federal government give funding . It wont, is what the president promised. You talked at the beginning of this segment, you cannot take away funds from federal schools that have already been appropriated and distributed. Keratin sticks can the president and betsy devos pulpit . Des the bully guest they will have to work with congress. My colleague has talked to several experts about this. I think the department is scrabbling to figure out how to actually do this. It is very complicated once you and the the legalities powers that the executive branch has over School Funding. Passedgo, the Government Law was also that there was a broad consensus under the Obama Administration that the president and secretary of education should not have oversight over americas schools. We have concluded that local control reigns. It is interesting that the president and betsy devos have taken on this role that they want to tell district what they can and cant do. Their tenure has all been about will control to the point that administrators have been crying for leadership. When thes ago coronavirus first began, the askedstrators explicitly donald trump and betsy devos to tell them whether or not they should be open or closed. Betsy devos said it was a local decision, you decide. So, how things change. Host next out of indiana, a teacher. Good morning. Caller good morning. Ask youi would like to a question about teachers hey. I am an instructor. Teachers pay. Im wondering how you see that playing out in higher ed and also those that proliferate through k12 as far as teachers pay. Thank you. Hest it is interesting that called from indiana because teachers pay there is an ongoing crisis with the governor, the legislature, the teachers union. This is one of the things that have colleague and i wrecked our brains about. The political momentum behind teacher pay again, 8 months ago, nine months ago there was a huge movement. Decked inof teachers legislaturestate to increase teacher pay. It was a broad consensus amongst the general public, not only the teachers, the general public that teachers were underpaid. I talked to teachers who were 26,000 to 27,000 per year. These states are dealing with these huge budget crises, the first thing that will go is teacher pay. All of the initiatives to raise teacher pay was thrown out the door. We were tracking which states were and were not going to increase teacher pay. We conclude that this would be the year in which they would hundreds of over millions of dollars to increase teacher pay. Or 6,000. It 5,000 all of those initiatives are gone now. To district that does decide raise teacher pay such as denver and there are districts in florida doing this, all of that money is coming out of a savings account. All of that money will be gone next year. That means that the layoffs will be twice as bad as they would have otherwise been because you raise your teacher pay, teacher pay takes 80 of the budget. You will not be able to afford those costs year. Every year, teachers climb the ladder. Next year they will have to be than 3000 for 4000 more this year. This is gobbling up district deposit budgets. I have not even talked about pension crisis. By march, pensions had lost about 1 trillion in value because the market plummeted. Pensions have recovered since. But this is one of the areas in which states will try to skip the payment this year. That payment will cost even more next year. The more you raise teacher pay, the more teachers that retire, this has a compounding effect on how much states will have to dole out for School Districts. Host one other factor that you pointed out in a recent story. Policies, some cities are reckoning on spending priorities. Guest im glad you brought that up. This is one of the things i find to be so fascinating about the black lives Matter Movement and the kinds of conversation that is has sparked in several communitys across the country. There are lots of committees who spend more on police and they do on schools. Years, a lot of advocates in majority black School Districts have been asking their mayors, city counselors, county commissioners, why are we or 700 600 million million more on police and schools. Policet of committees, officers paid more. Teachers have masters degrees. Police officers have been through the police academy. We know the detrimental effect of over police committees in which people are being fined every day, being harassed by the police, etc. There are communities in which andhave way too many police too few teachers. There are lots of communities,ochester, new york, memphis indianapolis, denver, seattle, in which they are saying lets take the money we are giving to lease and invest in the schools. One of the concerning things that adam touched on, we came across several districts that are laying off social workers, the counselors. These are the people who are going to be doing the hard work when schools finally do reconvene to basically mitigate all of the crisis that comes along with what communities have been through these past couple months. Thousands of people dying from the coronavirus, high Unemployment Rate which leads to more domestic violence. Social workers are the ones who spot this first, not Police Officers. A lot of communities are having a moment about where priorities are. Host about 20 minutes left with Daarel Burnette. If you want to join the conversation, parents it is 202 7488000. Educators, 202 7488001. All others 202 7488002. Rent, good morning. Caller morning. I am a grandparent. I live in a multigenerational home. I am a custodian. I have been working for about five years. We have major problems getting custodians. Custodians. On top of that, my main point is i work in a brandnew school. The air conditioning and heating system doesnt seem to work properly, ok . Upstairs its really hot, downstairs its really cold. The teachers have to bring in fans. Besides that, im wondering what they are going to do. When the kids go to the bathroom , they will have to have someone outside the bathroom, onduty all the time, in other words, to go in there and clean these bathrooms. I believe its probably one of the worst places for the kids to pick up a disease. Instead of going in three or four times a day during my shift, i think someone will have to be posted outside so that they can go in there maybe every 15 minutes to clean up. My wife is a schoolteacher on top of that, retired. I used to work in heavy industry and i needed things to do and i saw they were having problems getting janitors, so i went to the school and decided to be a janitor, they hired me, but we are shorthanded. I dont understand how they will be able to reopen schools safely. I would like to thank both of e for having this open conversation. Host thank you. Ofst that call, that is one the more unexplored areas of this crisis. Has already been an outbreak in schools. We have already seen it, we dont have to theorize about it. Joplin, missouri, they had a Summer School there and they had, you know, they had kids and teachers in the school, they had an outbreak and had to shut the school down and for two weeks straight they had to wipe down that entire building. A financial, logistical, political hurdle. From a science standpoint, you will have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on bleach. I was talking to a superintendent in california. She bought all of these backpacks. The janitors carry the backpacks full of bleach and they can spray it across the school. Something that she never thought of buying. She got all of this equipment for bleach. You will have to hire more janitors. Most schools, as you already know, have one or two janitors on staff. You will need 4, 5, 6, 7 janitors working overtime. Overtime pay is twice what you would have to pay for regular costs. Thats from a financial standpoint. From a political standpoint, a lot of superintendents have told me that you have to make parents feel safe enough to come back to school. , the schoolsy know put out these surveys about feeling comfortable sending kids back. Most parents say no. You have to get that school shining, you know . Spickandspan. The lockers have to glisten on the floors. You have to spend a lot of money just to make sure that people feel safe enough to come back. Was talking, any outbreak in schools, it means the school is going to have to shut all the way down and do a top to bottom School Districts have never really tried to figure out. The closest is probably lice outbreaks. When i was a reporter in kentucky, they used to have lice outbreaks all the time and the superintendents were talking about the challenges of trying to contain this. Its very, very, very hard. The concern that a lot of administrators have, when you shut schools down because of an outbreak, thats 2, 3, four weeks where you are not in school. You have to shift back to distancelearning, rev up distancelearning. You have all of this ppe equipment not being used. Talking about the efficient use of tax dollars . This is not the way. Host another outside the classroom question, from twitter guest right. A series on transportation. Its the one area in which School Districts say that we have looked at the transportation costs and said no, we are doing it online. Schools have to drop have to double, triple, possibly quadruple the bus route to maintain six feet instance. Any you put about 12 kids on the school bus. Meaning you can only bring so many kids to school every day. We basically came up with a guide as to how to get kids to basically walkto to school because so many districts said that we definitely cant transport all the kids to school, so lets give the kids a lift, walking to school, with volunteers. Its a real logistical hurdle. This is an area that is going to 300,000, 500,000 dollars just for the first six months. In North Carolina they were saying six feet distance on buses and you have to have ,omeone on the bus to screen Temperature Check kids getting on the bus. The districts said we definitely cant do that. Mysteriously a couple of weeks later this guidance just disappeared and they said three feet. This is the concern a lot of administrators have. In the weeks before school starts, i should remind you, a lot of people are talking about schools opening in the fall. Well, school is going to open in the next two weeks to three 5 in some states. In the weeks before schools start, guidance is rolling. The guidance keeps changing. The cdc guidance changes. The scientists came up with guidance. All kinds of people, state, federal, local officials are coming up with guidance and every time it changes, the price changes and the districts already dont have enough money to afford this and they are basically asking which is it . This makes it more difficult, finding more and more districts saying lets just do it online instead. Host the cdc guidance, President Trump tweeting last week about his disagreement with the cdc, saying that he disagrees with the tough and expensive guidelines for opening schools, asking them to do practical things. Impractical things. Will be meeting with them can you talk a little bit about this guidance . This is all in regards to six feet social distancing, three fees social distancing. Temperature checks before school or not . Cdc has stood down on this, but we want to get to the heart of this dilemma for administrators. Administrators dont want blood on their hands. They know their Staff Members and communities. Schools are some of the most tightknit workforces in the country. They have not only emotional connections with the kids, they have emotional connections with their coworkers. They are sitting together for hours on end during the school year. They are friends, thats basically what im trying to say and i think it is heart wrenching for the school in which there was a School District where the principal had professional Development Training and there was an outbreak and the vast majority of the principles in the district got the coronavirus. The superintendent has to go to those principles next week and say please come back to school in feel safe and i have your best interests at heart. And we have to tell the parents that. And of the kids that. Its easy for politicians to say we will just change the guidance to make this more affordable, but if you change the guidance, now all of a sudden youre operating schools in what scientists would call an unsafe manner and now you have complete outbreaks. Parents, grandparents getting the coronavirus because the kids spread it. We have seen cases where the kids have the vices the virus and it isnt pretty. One thing i should point out, a lot of the studies on kids who had coronavirus, those were healthy kids. A lot of kids in america have diabetes, preexisting health conditions, obese, etc. And we are not even talking about middle school or high school kids. Coronavirus will wreck their bodies. I dont think superintendents really want to answer to that. Host just about 10 minutes left with Daarel Burnette, education week. Zachary is in west lafayette, indiana. A parent. How old are your kids, zachary . Caller a fiveyearold, threeyearold, the fiveyearold would have been and can a garden this year. Host whats your question . Safe isfeeling apparent, but really we have to know that its safe for sending children to the school. That we are supposed to be doing differential instruction in schools, i used to work at the school myself, and we are adverse to that right now get much like coronavirus being novel, we have to come up with novel solutions. Everything being offered locally, we are trying to replicate its being done in the last room online as opposed to trying to figure out how to collaborate across districts, incorporating the paned libraries at this time. My question to darrell is, why are we trying what we have always done knowing that we are in a completely unique situation and we have had since april to start planning for this . We havent genuinely engage the students, most importantly, the ones who have to be in the building. The parents, where the local control can start. A lot of them have started in mid to late june talking about these publicly. This publicly why have they not gone out to their communities to get everyone involved, rainstorm, get some ideas out there about how we can go after it in the next school year with a novel approach and as collaboratively as possible . Host thank you for the question. Im glad that you mentioned that. K12 has historically struggled with innovation. A lot of it has to do with the racist past, district lines, governance models that are unique and, frankly, nonsensical. Districts work against each other rather than with each other. There has been a lot of crying out for help from superintendents. I think that one of the things that i think there will be a lot of play in the media but one thing that a lot of administrators have lately is that instead of attacking us about whether or not schools should open or not, secretary devos, provide us some answers, some clues as to how we can do this better. There is a lot of crying out for help from state leaders, from governors, from state departments of education that have been gutted in the last 10, 15, 20 years. Few people could actually come up with these answers. For example, you know, subscription rates has have increased by 200 in the last six months. One of the reasons that is is because quality information right now is golden. We are seeing lots of administrators coming up with some unique, interesting ideas as to how to go about educating kids over the summer. Of k12e that a lot administrators like to use is that they are working in silos. Working independently, with these ideas that no one knows about. I think there is a lot of opportunity in the coming weeks and months, you know, when these budget cuts come knocking at the doors of k12 in the coming years, for districts to start working across district lines, school lines. We are not even talking about Charter Schools, ivan schools. They are also looking for answers right now. There is a lot of opportunity for innovation, scaled innovation, doing this at a bigger scale. So, yeah. Host jane is in olympia, washington. You are next. Caller im a parent, not a grandparent. I have heard transmission rate to adults is very low. I have heard of a similar study from ireland. Since there are contradicting there is contradicting science out there, im curious as to the guest response to that information. Thet yeah, so thats just challenge im a School Finance reporter, not a scientist, but districts are being inundated with a lot of research. Just like im an education reporter, not a scientist, School Administrators are not scientists. They are trying to figure out trust. Trust, what to all of this research is brandnew. Do you take a risk or not take a risk . Im on zoom right now. Im not in washington journal studios because there is a risk i could transmit the virus to the producers. There at washington journal. Tv studios dont trust transmission rates. Why should School Administrators trust the transmission rates . I guess its one of those things of think we should remember that schools, yes, there are lots of, but there are lots of adults in schools. You know, you are taking a gamble with everything that you do. Host one of the callers in the previous segment and we were talking about schools was concerned about the influence of the teachers unions on this decision. There was a headline today in washington times, biden allies fight School Reopenings, rejecting the call from trump. Can you talk about the role teachers are playing nationwide guest just like every employee in america, they want to go back to work in a safe environment. Year. An election are noto get votes, we making decisions based off of, based off of science, off of logic. What lots of k12 Research Says about what kids need. We are making decisions based off of whether politicians can get votes. Is a matternk this of wanting to go back to stay at work environment. I should point out that the teaching workforce is older women. In many communities, they are older women of color. So, a lot of people who have preexisting conditions, who are afraid of getting the virus, and again, there is already a teacher shortage. We have teachers getting the coronavirus and either dying a lot of teachers have already died of the coronavirus, or they are retiring, creating another crisis for School Districts a year, two years down the line for them. Is a Daarel Burnette School Finance reporter with education week, easy to find online. Always appreciate you stopping by the washington journal. Guest thanks again. Up next we will talk about the spike in covid19 cases across the country with new york city Emergency Room Physician jake deutsch. Well be right back. Watch the live, daily, unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house the countries are linked by trade and travel. Issues that are important to you. Ask its an ongoing effort to focus on the mission of saving lives, meeting the needs of our states and our health care workers. The coronavirus pandemic, Supreme Court oral arguments, and the latest from campaign 2020. Calls and comments, welcome. 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Or listen on the go with the cspan radio app. Sunday night, on q a, the american conservative executive director and acting editor, john anniversary of the magazine. Theres a lot going on and it is unsettling times for americans. Everything having to do with the covid crisis to the lockdown and the killing of george floyd and subsequent protests and riots, along with the president ial election. A lot of people are taking the opportunity to reexamine First Principles and trying to figure out where we stand as a nation. Watch sunday night at 8 p. M. Eastern on q a. Washington journal continues. Joins us jake deutsch now about the surge in covid19 cases and what it means for physicians on the front line. First, can you just talk about what the last four months have been like for you and your staff there in new york . Bread andl, it has butter has always been problems that are episodic, sprained ankle, uti, simple things that didnt require the hospital but were in the intermediate kind of range and we transitioned to whenly into a covid center the pandemic hit new york. It was a lot of learning by fire. Bootst of strapped on our and jumped into helping because that is what was necessary. We have treated over 10,000 patients, i would estimate, in the past couple of months. You know, we went from the real difficult problems in march 2 now the much more common problems and it has been an interesting journey, to say the least. Definitely a highlight of my medical career. We were one of the first practices to be able to provide testing on a widescale level in new york. Were creative, working with independent laboratories, as was advised early on in the pandemic. We had testing available. While many were not able to get tests in new york, we were actually testing people and testing them frequently. That was really a godsend to know that they were sick or were being told that you should be working in the icu, even if you have a fever. People that needed to be healthy, we needed them back on the front lines. Additionally, seeing thousands of others who were ill who otherwise didnt need to go to the hospital or who we did need to send to the hospital, but preventing unnecessary volume in the Critical Care settings. Really, it was just an incredible time for us. Worst of it seems like it has passed. But it has been an evolution. Host you yourself were infected at one point . Yeah, so before we knew about covid in the United States, we were treating people with flulike illnesses that were testing negative for the flu and i can remember patients looking at me and saying do you think that this is that coronavirus . I had to say i cant tell you, i dont know. We werent even directed to wear masks. Even during flu season, we get vaccinated and we treat people with the usual precautions. Wearing ppe was not the standard. To, iably got ill prior had heard about corona, obviously, as some of the news was making the forefront and i thought well, its the flu. I want to get it and just to be done and get back to work and help people. I had no idea the extent of the illness. I was sick for a total of about 16 days. The first week was bad, the second week hit and it was really bad. I checked myself into the er and i had bilateral pneumonia. Im healthy, i have no medical problems and i went from doing everything that i had been used to, working out, working, doing normal things to laying in bed and being really scared because having pneumonia on both sides can lead to complications and certainly all the respiratory symptoms everyone was reporting was very scary. Luckily, did not have to be in the hospital, was able to take care of myself. But i had a father who was sick who came down with covid and ended up in the icu and was intimated on a ventilator. He subsequently recovered, but you can imagine the gamut of things happening with the practice trying to help out in maintaining good standards, my own illness, my families illness. In the heart of the pandemic in march, when new york was getting hit, it was pretty tough times, i would say, personally and professionally. Like i said, learned so much. Theres not a textbook that we could reference or journals to read about. It was really trial, seeing patients, communicating with other doctors through social media or consultations. Just chatting with people. A really unique experience as a professional to be learning by basically being on the front lines and sticking your neck out and learning from personal experience. Is here. Jake deutsch to talk about that unique personal experience and answer your questions about it and what he saw in manhattan at the cure urgent care and talk about the spicy seeing around the country right now. Phone lines are flipped regionally. Eastern or central time zones, 202 7488000. Mountain and pacific, 202 7488001. A special line for those have experience with covid19, either personally or a Family Member, 202 7488002. Jake deutsch is with us until the bottom of the hour this morning. Im going to show viewers this chart from the wall street journal today about the surge in coronavirus cases, tracking how long it took the u. S. To reach its first million cases. It took 95 days to rack up that many in the United States and then 43 days later we hit our second million cases and then the 28 days later we hit third million cases in the United States. What is your biggest worry right now as we watch the spikes around the country . Aret it feels like we losing control to some degree. Having seen new york go through the worst of it, i dont wish that on any other country or city in the country. So thats scary. As the resources become overwhelmed, it gets really, really dangerous. Remember, back in march, we didnt have ppe or ventilators. We didnt have enough hospital staff to take care of it. If we get into those situations in other parts of the country, we really are going to be moving backwards and it is only going to precipitate greater numbers of cases and a spiral that could be quite out of control. Thats the part that really worries me. We have seen that using ppe works. We have seen that social distancing works in new york. The other day we reported zero deaths for the First Time Since the pandemic started. Thats real progress. We have to learn from that information. Ithave to take it and apply to other parts of the country and its scary that it doesnt seem that things are working moving in the right direction. Its been a huge slide of cases. Somebody needs to Pay Attention. We all need to be vigilant. Its an individual problem. If we are not being told on the greater level what we need to do, Everybody Needs to take action individually, thats my belief. Host who is the best person to deliver that message, to try to get the country to learn the lessons of what you went through in march and april . Has this become too political . Do you think that doctors need to be out there more talking about the experience, like you are doing . Guest absolutely. If it doesnt affect you, it just doesnt resonate. Seeing someone who was in new york three months ago has no bearing when you are in anothers eight and you are trying to justify that you need to get act to work or that you want to gather with friends and family. Having a connection that is personal is whats going to make a difference. We need to keep reminding people that this is whats out there and this is whats happening. Of course, our leaders should be the people guiding the ship here. Really believe that using, influencing people who are young and relatable to the people who are getting sick and spreading the virus, thats a key element. If we can get people to connect with the individuals at risk, potentially a symptom medicare he or, this younger demographic, thats a real key tactic that we could use to help prevent the ongoing surge that we are seeing. Its not the elderly people who are staying home and being vigilant. Its the people who may not even really realize they are sick, and they are spreading virus inadvertently. For the majority of the time in new york, we have seen people with asymptomatic infections. It just goes to show you how pervasive the virus is and where it lies dormant. With Antibody Testing we learned that 15 to 31 of the population never had symptoms, eventually that will carry on through the rest of the country and if you see one third of the population without symptoms, we dont to do what we need to do, we will continue to see these surges and that, going back to your question, is what scares me. Think youruch do you fellow doctors want to be spokespeople right now the Politics Around this . Is that what they went into the field for . To help or is it to help people . How much are you encouraging them to step up and dontout more . Guest i think any physician went into medicine to deal with the political side of this pandemic. But when there is a necessity to step in, thats our duty. This or any other health crisis, our job is to protect, to heal, to do no harm. If it means that we have to take a political voice, im all for that. Unfortunately, our voices are so small. There are not a lot of physicians with flat that can communicate in an effective way to get the message out there. And like i was saying, who wants to listen to a doctor when you are in your 20s and you just want to be with your friends. Thats not really connecting area press conferences are not getting the message out there. There are people still suffering and getting sick. We have to be strategic about how we are using this. All the physicians that are now dealing with these issues need to relate the reality of it and give information that will allow to connect. That will get people to wake up. Like i said, unless there is a connection, its difficult to get people to understand how this can be. Lets get to some callers for dr. Jake deutsch. Susan is up first out of massachusetts, on the line for those who have had experience with covid19. Go ahead. Taking myank you for call. Im an lpn and longterm care and i tested positive in mid april. Luckily, i had an o2 sat machine and was able to monitor my own condition. Somewhere in the middle of my infection i o2 sats went down to 82 and i was having pain breathing in. So, i called my doctor, who i never spoke to this whole time. I got a nurse at the Doctors Office and i said my stat is 82 and she said whoa. I set of not calling to impress you, im calling because i need guidance, i think i need to be seen, there is something wrong. She didnt do anything, didnt pass it along, never got a call back. The next day my condition persisted and i thought im not going to just sit back, im going to fight, theres something wrong, i know there is. I still had the pain. She said go to urgent air. I went to urgent care and luckily saw a Nurse Practitioner there who did a d dimer test on me and it came back elevated and i end up being diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism and they started me on anticoagulant. But all this time, the whole time i have been sick or anything, i have never seen an md or my pcp. I have only seen Nurse Practitioners. Im so grateful to the one at urgent care who thought to give me a d dimer test. This was a silent thing. I could have been one of the statistics and it makes me angry. Right now primary care is not working for the patients. My doctor was actually working at another urgent care intermittently, so i never got to see her and even when i go back my followup, it wont include a cat scan to see if the clot is gone. It wont include seeing my md. I just feel like im being seen by Nurse Practitioners and thats great, i know there are a lot of great ones out there, but should i be upset that i havent seen a doctor or a pulmonologist or anything . I dont want to be a jerk about it guest i think you make, yeah, a great point about advocating for yourself. During the pandemic, unfortunately, standards of care have deviated from what we would like to have happened in terms of availability, followup, and just what we would normally practice. Your intuition was 100 correct. When things dont seem right, you have to react on it. Just because someone tells you not to worry, that is where our responsibility and taking whatns to continue, thats i advocate for for patients and it is what i tell doctors, too. If thats if something doesnt add up, dont dismiss it as something simply unusual, continue to follow the symptoms. As far as seeing a physician versus midlevel Nurse Practitioners, im a big advocate or nurse were midlevel. Many are very excellent. Patients that come into the practice and sometimes they say they want to see a doctor and they say by july, you may see someone who just graduated versus a midlevel who has 10 years of er experience. There are nuances to understanding what it means, but i think it is about advocating for yourself if it is working out, to see your doctor. Congratulations for taking the effort to do what you knew was right. That is such an important message. During covid we have seen people staying home because they are afraid of the hospital and other illnesses are still happening at a normal rate. Appendicitis, strokes, general illnesses like your thyroid being out of whack. That is where it is important to understand that still need to be maintaining our good health and following the clues that there may be something greater going on. Certainly with respiratory problems, when things are not normal, you have to react. Im glad that you got the care that you needed, definitely pulmonologist. A having started anticoagulants in the face of covid requires that you see someone who is expert in dealing with lungs and lung functions. Host most are comfortable taking their own temperatures. As a society, do you think we comfortable become with monitoring our own oxygen saturation levels . Guest it seems like the inevitable next step, i have seen devices that measure respiratory rates. I went out to dinner in new york yesterday and they check our temperature before going in. Thats the standard in the parts of the world that are ahead of us. Yes, i think that these devices are going to become our mainstay. Going to bes is what we do for a long time. Everybody should have a thermometer in their household. I still talk to people who said they havent had a chance to get one. Time to make sure. If you have the ability to get a pox a pulse oximeter. They are inexpensive, some of them you can buy online, 30 to 50. Not necessarily the most sensitive ones, but at least an idea to Say Something is not right here. I applaud the patient to notice that there pulse oximeter went from 90 to 80 and saw a big change and recognized they needed to take action. Michael is in madison, wisconsin, good, you are on with dr. Deutsch. Caller i would like you to comment on the following, talking about pulse oximeters, covid is a disease of the blood that attacks the hemoglobin, separates excuse me, it ionizes the iron and separates and thatemoglobin causes the hypoxia, because when the blood gets to the lungs in those damaged cells, it cannot accept oxygen. Its the reason hydroxychloroquine works and the same reason it works for malaria is because malaria also attacks hemoglobin and the hydroxychloroquine gets into the cell and prevents it from happening. That is why you have sometimes dramatic overnight success because after a few hours of taking hydroxychloroquine, some patients, their iron is restored and they can breathe right away. Host i will let dr. Deutsch a jump in on that. Guest you touch on the hot topic of using hydroxychloroquine as a therapy for covid. Early on there were studies that suggest it was effective. Subsequent further studies didnt show it to be as effective as we had thought. When i wasecause sick, that is what was being recommended in the medical literature. Theres a cascade of information that happens cascade of inflammation that happens in the lung tissue. Not being able to get oxygen to go through the lung tissue is what causes the lack of oxygen in the blood. Whether there is a cascade of other inflammatory processes that affects vascular constriction, affecting other cardiovascular output, is to be determined. And im certainly not a physiologist. But we did think that hydroxychloroquine was going to be a panacea and it doesnt appear to be that way. Unfortunately, nothing has proven to be an absolute treatment we can rely on and that is where we are really stuck, not having any great leaps forward in how to treat this. I appreciate your inquiry. I think that there is a lot of complexity to the situation. Host wild and wonderful on twitter asks guest well, you know, med school has been competitive for years. A lot of the crisis, financial, medical like covid, have proven that doctors are invaluable. Matteris paramount no what is happening. We can always use more providers. Not just physicians, but physician assistants, Nurse Practitioners, nurses, all the other skilled professionals who are a part of the process. Respiratory therapists, medical assistance. Even the people who are administrators in the hospital are critical. If we can continue to allow andle to get into medicine make it a more successful option for people, for their career choices, thats fantastic. Last year at nyu we saw them eliminate tuition practically to make it easier for doctors to get to their university. I think that there is going to be a great change in education and our focus on how to get people, to provide health care, certainly to make them, i think that is one of the things we will see in the future but we need health care now. We cannot overwhelm the system now. Thinking about what could happen in five years as people train, thats fantastic, but we need to make sure the resources that we have now are not being overwhelmed as we continue to fight this disease and make sure that the number of cases dont increase at an exponential rate. Host about 15 minutes left with clinicaldeutsch, director and founder of urgent care in new york city. 202 7488000 eastern and central, 202 7488001 202 7488002 mountain 202 7488001 mountain and pacific time zones. If you have had covid had or had with it, experience with it, 202 7488002. Thomas, good morning. Caller i was wondering, has with, tested mouthwash you know, stopping the spread . Cough, sneeze, they spread the virus. Would the mouthwash kill the germs in the mouth . Well, mouthwash is not antiviral. Certainly you will reduce some of the bacteria by using god good hygiene like mouthwash. But that is a fix i would not put my energy in. I would work on masks. We have seen that using masks works. I can speak to my own practice. We see about 4500 patients a mask a month and since we started using ppe measures like masks and washing hands more thoroughly, isolation with distancing amongst patients, we have not seen one Employee Work in the practice get sick, provider, medical assistant, or support staff. Thats what works. Thats why we are seeing success in the parts of the country that are using masks in a widespread level. Interesting thought, but nothing i know that has been proven to work. Lets focus on what we do know works, Wearing Masks can make the difference. We all have to be a part of the process. Its not a violation of your civil rights. Its about a healthcare initiative. We want to make sure that your family is healthy and that we will not overwhelm the medical system, that we get this under control. The simple process of wearing a mask is effective towards that. Host when a patient comes any comes in with a severe case of covid, whats the treatment at your facility that is standard . Guest in general or in terms of keeping everyone protected around them . Host how do you treat them in general . Guest we basically assess the patient by looking at vital signs, taking a history, just like any other intake problem. But for covid we are trying to understand if the patient is able to take care of themselves or if there is a need for a higher level of care. Oxygenation is one of those key factors. Other comorbid problems, are they ill with lung problems, diabetes, kidney problems . What does that look like if we send them home with complications . Certainly, just understanding how they are functioning. If people are able to do their normal activities like eating and drinking with normal factors checking out, then we are able togenerally direct them homecare. In the evaluation process we are obviously testing them and doing xrays whenever necessary. Homehen the position going of going home, we had in whether or not they need additional support, asthma medication to help breathe. But i have to tell you, this is really encouraging, in new york city, where we have seen a great decline in a number of cases, we are not seeing people as ill as they were in march. In march we saw a high number of people that work very ill with pneumonia, who we were sending home because there wasnt capacity in the Critical Care environment. Now we have a high number of people who are mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic. There has been a shift as we got things under control of less severe illness. Another highlight that we should be thinking about in other parts of the country is getting this under control so that we can see a similar shift. I would expect that to be the case. But if we let things go wildly and arent doing what we know is effective, theres a potential that we will see high numbers of very sick patients in other parts of the country. Virginia, riverside, california, good morning. Caller i will try to make this brief. My grandson was an emergency, got ella month and a half ago. Did diagnosed with corona. They did send him home and i had to keep him isolated for a minimum of 14 days. My question is, when he was released to the instructions stated that after the 14 days within 24 hours he had to have two tests showing negative. Himdoctor, when we spoke to , said that that was absolutely not even necessary now. Im 76 and i was concerned about my welfare as well and was speaking to his doctor. 22 years old, he has hsp, its a kidney disease. He has had the pneumonia. Hospitalized when he was younger. Myself, as well. I was asking what your opinion is on this. Guest it sounds like they are trying to be overly cautious, which is never a bad thing. Trying to figure out if it has turned negative after what we consider an adequate amount of time of isolation. Thats where thats coming from, get a negative test, make sure there is no longer virus in the body. The difficult part is that sometimes the test can pick up virus for up to four weeks. We have seen cases where people test positive over a long time, even though we believe that you are no longer infectious after two weeks, which is why we recommend the two week quarantine, but the test is very sensitive and just reproduces small pieces of virus and it may be an inactive piece of virus that was nicked up and at four weeks may still be tested positive. I agree with being cautious, we should all be more cautious than not. Certainly with your situation in your history, being more cautious is more favorable than being less careful. Getting another test that tested negative will give you a Greater Peace of mind that the virus is no longer in his body, but it may take longer than two weeks and maybe your doctor says it is not necessary because of that beay, but you still want to cautious about what this means to you. Its not just your friends. Everyone around you, heading to the grocery store, touching something, touching the mask, taking it off to have something to drink in public, someone nearby is coughing. There are so many fact is where we need to continue to be vigilant and getting tested is the. Of the key. Is the key. We need testing on a wide scale. Test toto continue to find these infections because the high number of asymptomatic people make it very difficult to continue to contain where the itsreak is spreading at greatest numbers and testing is not painful. I have demonstrated on my videos and social media that testing is simple if done correctly but i see a number of people afraid to get tested because they are afraid that it is painful. That is so unfortunate, considering the circumstances of virus spreading. Getdvice, have them retested in two weeks and if it is still testing positive, peter in repeat it in another 10 to teen days. 10 to 14 days. You dont want to rush because your Family Member may test positive. Host where can people find those videos . Guest go to my instagram, look for dr. Jake deutsch. Sometimes they get buried in the other stuff. Social media is a great for people to understand, you know, what to expect when it comes to pandemic treatment. I have always tried to advocate that this is something that we need to be a part of and using tools like social media can be very helpful. People should understand what to expect, where can i go to get it, how long will the result take . We are seeing a lot of parts of the country suffering from long delays and for testing and that can be a critical factor, to. Being a informed consumer, whether it is ox gin levels getting low or knowing what the test is like and where to go, i would advocate for that for everyone with individual health care. Host time for a couple more phone calls. Gary, east on zwick. Caller you made my day East Brunswick. Caller you made my day. Im 82 and im a professional and Clinical Researcher, not a physician. The reason you made my day, i want to give a compliment to the leadership of the Mount Sinai Medical Center under dr. Ken dennis chauncey, as well as dr. David mueller for what they have done with this virus and the medical care they have provided to me. I also want to give thanks to ken langone for what they are doing. Finally, i dont have the virus but i went to my Urgent Care Center in East Brunswick and the doctors there did the nasal test and guess what . Hey did the antibody im not a physician. I got a couple of graduate degrees. I spent 40 years in Clinical Research. Im the editor of a text book on Clinical Research in the farmers on in the pharmaceutical industry and amazon has trip it triple the price of the book. I was a founder in 1984 of the journal Clinical Research practices. , thereading the book now great influenza of 1918 by john berry. You are doing great work. Guest thank you. Caller the problem is the Political Leadership of this country. Thats the problem. Caller you are the voice of america that Everybody Needs to hear. We are not done with this and everybody that is a part of this process and is fighting needs to be recognized. I think we have lost that focus. You know, great kudos to all the physicians in new york. I serve at mount sinai, have villages there, i work with the doctors at nyu. Every level of health care involved here, people putting their lives on the line, people care more about the better because then politics. The rest of the country needs to understand that dont want this to get worse. We want to continue to have this improvement and Everyone Needs to continue to do their part. You bring a tear to my eye because we have lost perspective on what some in this pandemic. It has become political, about peoples choices not to protect themselves and we all need to be on the same page to get to the solution and make progress. For dr. Jakell deutsch, this is brandy. Go ahead. Hader my experience was i to basically i had to take care of myself at home. But one of the things i felt really helped me was eating a lot of antiviral food. I ate a lot of garlic, i had my zinc with a zinc supplement. Drinking a lot of tea and lemon balm. My symptoms lasted for about a week. I want to encourage people to actually eat more food that is and stopped eating foods that feed viruses, like eggs and dairy. I want to encourage people to do that. I really feel like it helped me to come back combat the virus. Are absolutely right, our digestive system plays a great park in immunity and some of the things that you mentioned, particularly zinc, are believed to have a Critical Role in the process, subduing what we can to improve our immunity with Natural Resources is something im a great advocate for. Absolutely, people need to be taking care of themselves yonder just taking something for the fever. Good diet, vitamins and supplements that are immune supportive, i absolutely agree with. Certainly, listening to your symptoms. Im glad that that worked out for you and im a great advocate for Something Like that that is easy for our health. Host dr. Jake deutsch, founder of cure urgent care in manhattan. Please talk to us again. Guest my pleasure, everyone, please make sure you are responsible, wear your masks, and to your part. Host thank you. We want to show this headline from the front page of the wall hackedjournal, twitter titans of business and politics. To that is what we will be talking about or the last 30 minutes, asking you to call in. How concerned are you about that twitter hacked . Phone lines are split up regionally. If you are in the eastern time zones, 202 7488000. Mountain and pacific, 202 7488001. Go nonfictionhas a top books and authors every weekend. Coming up this weekend sunday at 9 00 p. M. , Stephen Leavy discusses his book. He is interviewed by an author and Financial Times globalist. And then a former speaker of the house offers his thoughts on why President Trump should be reelected with his book. Watch book two on cspan2 this weekend. Sunday night, the american conservative executive director thiscting editor on special edition of the magazine. There is a lot going on in our country right now and it is unsettling times for a number of americans. Everything having to do with the covid crisis to the lockdown to the killing of george floyd and the protests and the president ial election. A lot of people are taking the opportunity to reexamine First Principles and trying to figure out where we stand as a nation. Onwatched sunday night cspans q a. Continues. Journal getting your thoughts on that very highprofile pack of twitter that occurred yesterday, asking you how concerned you are about it. 202 7488000. Is the number. If you live in mountain or pacific time zones. The twitter hack is drawing questions about the platforms security and resilience in the runup to the u. S. President ial election. Twitter said that hackers have contained obtain control of those of president ial critic candidate joe biden. Musk ashian and elon the story goes on to say that twitters role of the Critical Communications platform for political candidates and Public Officials including donald trump has led to fears that have hackers could wreak havoc during the election or otherwise compromised national security. Adam konner, a liberal think tank said on twitter, this is instantly d be infinitely worst infinitely worse on november 3. Here is how it went down on the twitter support tag which tweets yesterday, we are aware of the security incident impacting accounts on twitter. We are taking steps to fix it and will update everyone shortly. That was at 5 45 yesterday. 10 48 p. M. , twitter support saying, our investigation is still ongoing. We detected what we believe to be a coordinate engineering attack by people who have successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools. We know they used this access to take control of highly visible including verified accounts and tweet on their behalf. We are looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it. Once we became aware of this incident, he immediately locks down the affected accounts and removed tweets posted by the hackers. Functionalityd for even those with no evidence being compromised wildly while we continue to investigate. Twitter said, it was an important step to reduce disappeared both flex nelly has been restored but we will take further action and update you when we do. That was twitter support. There last week saying, we have locked accounts and will restore access to the account only when we are certain that we can do so securely and they have restored most of those. Causing a lot of concern including among politicians and they weighed in on twitter as this was happening. Senator brian schatz of hawaii saying they should be given some space to conduct an investigation but given the extent to which Public Officials communicate through twitter, this could be tried dangerous quite dangerous. Generalscommanding tara copp being hacked. Hacked. Er account being i do have great concerns about what the hack of twitter means for the safety of our elections and other critical infrastructure. We have toan ever, strengthen our nations cybersecurity. Congressman holly rudolph, this hack is a reminder that we must do more. Today it is bitcoin, tomorrow it could be a fake declaration of war. One other member that weighed in yesterday was senator josh hawley of missouri, the republican senator yesterday amid this hack sending a letter to jack dorsey, the ceo of twitter about the attack asking for cooperation with federal law enforcement. Here is a little bit of the letter that he sent jack dorsey. Twitter seems to be excusing a cyberattack illustrated by a number of posts allowing users to sponsor bitcoin. The account targeted includes those for apple, uber, jeff bezos, barack obama, and joe biden. This list of affected accounts is growing by the minute. Some accounts have been protected by twitters two factor authentication. Include, did this event or was it a breach of users own account security or of twitters systems. Were accounts protected by two factor authentication successfully targeted and if so, how is this possible . Did this breach, mice security whose accounts were not used to share fraudulent tweets, if so were other accounts affected . How many users may have faced data theft as a consul because of this breach and so on. That was the letter that senator josh hawley sent amid that attack that was happening. We are asking you this morning in this last segment of the washington journal to call in and let us know if you are concerned about what happened on twitter yesterday. Is the number if you are in the eastern or central time zones. Number if8001 is the you are in the and and or pacific time zones. You can go ahead and start calling in. Frommore reaction, this some News Reporters and congressional reporters who follow this. They were tweeting yesterday as this was happening. One newspaper saying, to some extent i wonder why twitter is doing the investigating here. Isnt it the territory of the secret service . And one more from Walter Shapiro who is a columnist saying, the only good news for biden is that the twitter hack was in july and october and it was work going rather than promoting diabolical rumors. A little bit more from that story about the one connection and what the hackers were trying to get. This from their story that we started off on this hack, posing a celebritys and wealthy, the hackers asked followers to send their Digital Currency to a series of addresses. 400 bitcoin transfers were made worth a combined 120,000. Half of the victims have funds in bitcoin it changes, one quarter in europe and one quarter in asia. Those transfers live history that can help and identify the perpetrators to find the financial damage may be limited because multiple exchanges other payments after their own twitter accounts blocked other payments. The damage may be more serious. Most troubling to some was how long the company took to stop the bad tweets. Asking you to weigh in on this topic. If youre in the eastern or central time zones. 202 7488001 if you were in the mountain or pacific time zones. Those tweets deleted but the , thistreet journal today was their lead story but they also posted some images of what that hack looks like showing the tweet that came from the verified twitter account of joe biden and the former president. The tweet said, i am giving back to the community, all bitcoin sent to this address will be sent back double if you send 1000, i will send back 2000 and then the tweet saying, only doing this for 30 minutes. Very similar messages on other celebrity pages and members of congress. We want to hear what you think is your if you are concerned about this especially in light of the lead up to the 2020 election and how Public Officials, how the president uses their twitter account to communicate with the public. Catherine is up first out of missouri. Good morning. Caller michigan. St. Joseph, michigan. Sorry about that. I apologize. Caller i think people need to stop using all of these communication. Of we know that china and other to hacks are trying into things in our country. I think maybe we should shut a lot of them down. Why do we need to communicate like that . I know the president does it to get information out because our newspapers a lot of it is not true what they are putting out there. There are other medias. There is cspan here that we can call in and view our opinion and get some truth. I think we need to shut some of that stuff down because it is going to get getting going to keep getting hacked. Host you want twitter shut down. What about a book or instagram . Politicians using those sites as well. Caller i think they are all going to be a threat right now. They are going to be hacking everything and it is all going to be a threat. We know this, we know what they are doing, so why do we let it happen . Host thanks for the call from michigan this morning. Dennis in florida, you are next. Good morning. Caller good morning. Until they start taking bitcoin at our local grocery chain, it does not mean anything to me. What is next . Something, come on. Is whate concern here if somebody were to hack the president s twitter account and tweet a message that i am declaring war on something and the lifetime of finding out about that and fixing that lag time. It could cause a very big problem. Caller it potentially could. But if we are relying on twitter for breaking news, then we have a problem. We need to triple check everything coming out of twitter and coming out of the white house. Host that is dennis in florida. Peggy is in washington this morning. You are next. Caller yeah, i think whoever did this was just trying to damage twitters reputation for cutting a whole lot of people off. That is my personal opinion. Thank you. Host peggy, explain. A lot of people, including donald trump were punished on twitter for some things that he was not supposed to be saying. I think that whoever did this was trying to punish twitter for punishing other people. It is retaliatory, i think. Host that is peggy in washington. Some of your comments on twitter to this twitter story. One writing, the fbi is not likely to find out who did this. Another saying, i dont have any tweets that anybody would hack. Another saying, the news makes me happy. If hacked, i dont have anything, especially bitcoin. Hackers are going to hack just like haters are going to hate. Rebecca saying, twitter is not doing harm to the country. It is the unbridled hate spewed by a few that is worsening the conversation in this country. Rick is next out of boston, massachusetts. How concerned are you about this twitter hack . Caller i think they should shut all of that stuff down. Look at trump, he has got a lot of stuff from the beginning. The wikileaks and all that stuff and he is the one complaining about mail fraud. They should shut all of that stuff down right before election and put it back on the next day after the election. Thats all i have to say. Host how far out from elections do you think social media should be shut down if that is a step that this country took . Caller i think they should shut it down one day before the election and when the election comes that day, you dont have to worry about anything hacking. Host that 24 hour period . Caller i think thats what they should do. They keep saying all of these ngs about the treasure and president is not going to leave office if the election is closed or if it is not close, it does not make any sense. This is the first president was ever done anything as dumb as that. You cannot handle the virus and he wants to be the leader of something. You should come back and deal with all of that twitter talking about, he cannot talk to congress about anything but he can get on twitter and wash tv for three hours and then talk about playing golf. Host that is rick in massachusetts. This is linda in new jersey. Morning. Caller good morning. That thented to say hack was only done on people of significance. Gates i believe. If they did not have control, it is because he is not if they did not hack trump, it is because he is not significant. 83. 5 the president has million twitter followers. You dont think someone wants to get into his account . Caller i dont think the followers he has our supporters. I believe they are curious. That is all. , then whyot behind it wasnt he hacked . He is just not significant. Host that is linda in new jersey. The president has not tweeted yet today. His latest tweet from 10 hours ago, just before midnight talking about the endorsement from the National Association of police organizations. The president offering his thanks for their endorsement. Members for at full and complete endorsement. The president wrote, i will always back the men and women in blue and never let you down. Law and order will prevail, is what the president promised in his tweet. Clint in indiana. How concerned are you about this twitter hack . Twitter is used by complete cowards as we found out when we served in desert storm. Toards were using morse code convey messages that they would not say on the radio nor would they say to their commander, but they would use morse code. Complete cowards and i am finding this time and time again, especially coming from the top office in our precious United States of america. Host do you ever get on social media . I observed my classmates and friends. But i do not partake of it. Temptation to be a coward is too great. When you have served your country, you know what it is to be a coward and complete cowards are using twitter. That is what i have to say. Theirasking viewers for thoughts on this twitter had twitter hack. It is certainly not the first ever hacking of twitter. The wall street journal story going to some of the recent highprofile hacks. Twitter has faced several highprofile hacks including in 2019 when jack dorseys account was compromised and used to send racist tweets. In 2017, i number of accounts were hacked and used to convey turkish masses. The leader has been under increasing pressure to boost revenue for investors such as elliot management corporation. What this means for twitter, we have yet to find out. As we noted, members of Congress Asking questions. They were asking questions last night as that hack was happening. This is jeffrey in washington, how concerned are you . Caller very concerned. I think public statements have gotten outrageous. Useink politicians should their publicist to handle these statements that are made because it creates confusion. Jeffrey, politicians say often when they are tweeting through these accounts, it allows them to directly talk to the public. When you say it could cause confusion, the counterargument from them is my message gets confused if it goes through the media or even a publicist. They can use their own voices when they are using these accounts. And their voices have a lot of responsibility and obligation to them. Likems that they use twitter or anything else, when they have these known problems, this is not the first time, should really be looked at differently. Someone has to take responsibility. I think twitter is responsible for these messages and the handling of money going around on social media. We have not really got a hold of that yet. Who is really responsible and who was protecting who. Like you said, for war, who would be protecting us if Something Like that happened . A largeoing to say statement could not trigger other responses before we could take action . We just dont know. Host here is what mylan on twitter has to say. If trumps twitter account was hacked and included that he was launching nukes on north korea, i would low it off like i do all his tweets. They are all empty talk. Darrell is in albuquerque, new mexico. Good morning. Caller good morning. I find it hilarious. So many of your callers immediately start pointing to our Current Administration like they have something to do with personallyhad something involved. I am wondering how many of your callers would actually think the same thing if they had hacked the president s account and said something derogatory using the president s account. I think they would find it funny. What really needs to happen is these Companies Need to be held responsible for the security of their platforms instead of trying to always make this a political issue as several of your callers have done. Host senator josh hawley of missouri, the republican senator who sent that letter yesterday to jack dorsey. He says, im concerned that this event present not only a coordinator the event of hacking incident at a successful attack on the security of twitter itself. Millions of users rely on your service to tweet publicly and to communicate privately through your direct message service. A successful attack on your servers represents a threat to , privacy, anders data security. Asking to reach out to take any measures to secure the site before the again pands. Delight again we want to hear your thoughts. How concerned you are about it. About 10 minutes to go in our program. 202 7488000 if you are in the eastern or central time zones. 202 7488001 if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones. Lornas next from knoxville, maryland. Did i get that right . Caller yes. I agree with the last caller. I do think the Companies Need to be responsible for their platform. It is important to do everything we can to throw all of the resources identifying these hackers and we need to upgrade our International Laws to once these hackers are identified, bring them to justice and make the punishment so bad that maybe they would stop doing this because, i think i read where they actually got a few people that were sucked in by the twitter and gave them some bitcoin. Hackers do this to make money. Lets upgrade our laws to punish these people. Of the numbers out there is that 400 bitcoin transfers were made as a result of these fake messages from some 120,000 given from the account that these hackers provided in the series of tweets joe biden,acked barack obama, Kim Kardashian and others. Judy from fairmont, west virginia. Good morning. Caller good morning. My opinion about social media, i dont participate in any of it. I think it is gossip. It is highspeed internet gossip. Youre going to get liars and fakers and scammers. A lot of people believe the stuff they read. A lot of it is not true. It is hard to find independent sources for information. I dont know if it is possible ,o find an independent source it will go the same way. I dont know the answer to the dilemma. But it is going to keep going on. People i have met, they believe what they read. They do not dig deeper and that affects our elections. That is why i think everything is such a mess. That is my comment. Host a few more comments from areal media as viewers having this conversation online. If you want to follow along with the conversation every morning, cspanwj. It appears that democrats are the subject for this attack. Is this a precursor . Another saying, you get what you pay for and twitter is free. Another saying, it sounds like hackers liberals were gullible enough to fall for it. One more headline yesterday, this from the verge. The twitter hacked could be a Global Security crisis. Bitcoin scammers will not be the last people to take over accounts and we should be very worried about who else will. If you want to read that story, it is on theverge. Com. Scott from new york, good morning, you are next. Caller thank you for taking my call. I worked in computers for over 30 years. I am retired military in computers. Funny t is host i am listening through the phone, you can ignore your tv. Caller the letter you read from the congressional members about the security of twitter, they should not be using commercial software for anything that is personal. Like i said, i have been in the military. Host scott, you have to listen for your phone. I think we got your point. Just a reminder, when you are waiting, turned on your television. It makes the conversation easier if youre listening to the show and you will be able to hear the entire show and you will be able to chat with the person who was here at the desk when you do that. Timothy is in carolina. Good morning. North carolina. Caller good morning. Host go ahead, timothy. Caller i think they should shut it down. You dont think it is a mess everythingty or when and we have the president tweeting and he is calling out for hackers to hack us. Come on, everything is not fake ne has claimed. It is crazy. Host when you say shut it down, do you mean for everyone . Who should be allowed to tweet . Toler we should be allowed tweet, but when it comes to the elections, we know we are going to get attacked. Somehow we have to block that. You mean to tell me that you have people that can go on internet andn the can build a bomb. I still dont understand this until today. We know we are getting hacked. Host timothy in North Carolina. This is natasha in illinois. Good morning. Caller good morning. I just wanted to say that i do see where the earlier caller comes from when she says that she feels that they wanted to make twitter look bad in retaliation from twitter recently flagging the president posits weeds for violating twitters terms of service s tweets. Ent it is something that made twitter look like they are easily breached and as far as shutting down platforms of someonesia, if business is easily shut down because of Something Like this, a lot of businesses would be shut down because they are not safe, that is not make sense. They should be given a chance to respond to the letter that you read on air. That makes more sense. Host you want twitter to work with several authorities in this investigation to not just keep it within the company itself, twitters investigation . Caller correct. I think twitter should respond andhe governments letter questions they are asking, how many people were breached, dmsady are the protected. Maybe they will step up to protect the platform or if they will be questioned by the government. Host that is natasha in illinois. We will be back here tomorrow morning. It is 7 00 a. M. Eastern and 4 00 pacific. In the meantime, have a great day. This morning the house Homeland Panel will be investigating domestic extremist groups. That hearing is coming up. Live coverage here on cspan. A very good thursday morning to you. You can go ahead and start calling in now as we show you b devos reiterating what she feels is a need for students to be back in the classroom this fall. Know for kids from vulnerable situations, low incomes, backgrounds, those who do not have a lot of resources, you know that those are the ones that are the most negatively impacted by not having that School Routine and that focus on continuing to move ahead and learn. About what some of my observations work. I think it is absolutely the have aat today parents much clearer understanding of what their children positive experience was the spring. Perspectivebetter on how their particular school did with continuing to provide Education Opportunities and they are looking now for that leadership on the part of education leaders to ensure that go back to an Forward Movement and learning new material with the expectation that when we go back that there is going to be fulltime learning, fulltime operation acknowledging that if there is an area where there is flareup, there may need to be a pitted for a period of time into a