Pringle, here to talk about President Bidens plan on education during the pandemic. Nora dunn sense of this tweet. The white house confirmed President Bidens goal of reopening a majority of schools in the first 100 days does not apply to high schools and there is no word of a timeline for reopening secondary schools. Becky pringle, what do you know about the plan . Guest good morning, greta. It is good to be back on washington journal. We have been so encouraged by President Bidens understanding it is absolutely essential our students, educators get back to inperson learning. As a finance teacher for 30 years, there is nothing i know i would rather do than be in front of my students doing science labs. We know and have been saying for 10 months we need the resources. Thats exactly what President Biden plan President Bidens plan starts with. He knows we have to make investments in our schools. Not just that. Is 1. 9 trillion package he sent to Congress Also includes money to states. We have seen state governments cutting education funding. We have almost one million teachers and educators laid off. We are very encouraged he understands it will take resources to reopen safely. Mostly what he said is follow the science. As a Science Teacher that just things for me. I did not ever think i would have to say that. For a president to believe in science and listen to scientists and health care experts, that is what he is doing. The virus is transmitted as much with younger kids. I will tell you this. The president understands even with that, we have to have mitigation strategies to protect our students and our teachers and the other men and women surrounding our students with the care and nurture they need to keep everyone safe. Host Becky Pringle, are you in support of reopening the schools . Which ones or what grade levels with reopen . Guest i will probably say this five more times. Follow the science. The cdc i think you probably know, they put out a report. One thing the president called for is working with the cdc and health and Human Services to come up with guidelines. But it starts with following the science. Even with the cdc guidelines, they believe that the transmission rates within schools are no higher than the transmission rates within the general community. That means if there are communities, areas that are hotspots where the transmission rates are really high, what the guidelines said it was his people is people need to make sure theyre not coming together in large groups. They are masking. They are washing hands. In the case of schools, they have to have good, clean ventilation systems. They have to have the resources. All those things we have been hearing for 10 months are in the president s plan. 130 billion dollars specifically targeted for schools so they have the resources. Host is it realistic to think, Becky Pringle, all those necessities can be put in place this school year . Guest greta, can i just say they have to be. That is the only way schools will reopen safely. And, i need to at this, because the president has talked about this. It is why he has included it in his package. Additional funding. He knows this virus has inequitably impacted our students of color, black and brown communities, indigenous communities. The crisis it has spawned has disproportionately impacted these communities. What we are concerned about his with the vaccine rollout we have to make sure we educate those communities so they trust us, because they have a lot of history that leads them to not trust the government when it comes to vaccines. We have a lot of work to do in educating those communities and making sure we are disturbing them equitably. When we talk about resources we are not just about supplying resources to schools and not thinking about the longstanding inequities in funding and resources for students who have forever been marginalized. Host we want to take viewers questions and comments about education during the pandemic. We have divided the lines. Parents, educators and others. If youre a parent, 202 7488000. Educators, 202 7488001. All others, your line is 202 7488002. We see headlines about teachers in chicago and california and new jersey resisting reopening. What is going on there . Guest those are teachers and bus drivers and school nurses, the educators all across this country are demanding this country finally, finally give them the resources so they can open schools safely and equitably. That is what they are demanding and that is what we have been saying. That is what President Biden s plan is talking about. We need congress to act so we have resources in all schools all across the country. Host what have you been told about vaccinating teachers and making them a priority . Guest unfortunately we have not had that. Now that President Biden is our president , he understands he needs to have a well organized, well communicated, equitable plan to distribute those vaccines and provide guidance. Right now things are all over the board. There are some states doing it right and following the guidelines from the cdc. They are prioritizing high risk populations and those essential frontline workers. In those states they have prioritized educators as well. All the educators, not just the teachers. Everyone in the building working with students. They have prioritized them and they have started the vaccination process. Teachers are getting the vaccine. There are many states that have not done that. It is chaotic. People dont know where to get the vaccine. They have no plan in place from the president and the president is trying to organize that so every state has a plan in place and educators are getting vaccinated. Host Becky Pringle is here with us this morning to take your questions and your comments and concerns about education of americas kids during the pandemic. John first in hallsville, texas. Good morning. Caller good morning. My question is, here in texas i have seen what the cdc said that its ok to open schools safely. My daughter has been back in school since last year. All this is is schools trying to get all the funding, all the cash they can from their federal taxpayers. I have seen teachers dancing. They go and the public and grocery shopping. They wear our mask. Thats just an excuse to get more money to find stuff that we dont need. Get these kids back in the classroom and get these teachers back in there. If they dont go back, fire them and find somebody else. That is my comment. Thank you. Host Becky Pringle, your reaction . Guest our teachers what nothing for them to be back in their classrooms. They just want to be safe. We know that the funding is all over the board from state to state, community to community, district to district. We know what we need to be safe, what the cdc has said, what the president has said, is we need to provide resources to keep students safe. That is what we are fighting for and will continue to fight for. Host the caller references the cdc said the proponents of Available Evidence from the fall semester has been reassuring. There is little evidence schools contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission. Becky pringle, our masks not enough are masks not enough . Guest let me talk about the cdc. That was based on a study in wisconsin. What they found is what you said, greta. However, those schools that reopened had a sizable donation from a private foundation to provide the Additional Resources so all students had masks, they had small classes of 10 or 11 so there was socially distant. They had testing available. They had people to do the tracing. And they were working with educators to think about how they could bring students back safely. What the cdc has said and everyone else, scientists and Health Care Professionals is we have to have all those measures in place. All of them. Not one of them. It is not just masks. It is ventilation systems. It is washing hands. It is being able to clean surfaces. It is making sure we have tests available to quickly identify those who are infected with covid19 and isolate them as quickly as possible. Host sheila in oklahoma. What grade you teach . Caller high school. I retired last year but i substitute so i consider myself an educator. We are in oklahoma and we are open. Most of the schools in oklahoma are open. They cut sports. They have masks. They are supposed to wear that masks. When they come into the school room at our school is teachers option if they wear that mask or if they dont. Most students have the mask and everything. I heard the safest place for students to be was probably schools because they are the least susceptible to getting the virus. They do not have it. I hear many people i dont hear of many students having the virus. They dont have any fallout from it. There is hardly any problem. They wash their hands, they have the masks. They are doing fine. I feel like when you say that school that had a person to give a grant is probably one school. They were not doing it for the whole state. I just think open the schools. Im so glad i live in oklahoma we are open and everything, instead of being a state where they have they cant have schools and i think it is just a power thing. Guest sheila, you are right that they focused that money on one school. But they had the money to do it. I will say, greta, it really depends on the School District and whether they were able to find the funding in the budget to ensure all the students at all the educators had access to masks. Whether the schools were modern and the ventilation systems were already functioning at a high level. Whether or not they already have funding to have lower class sizes so they could socially distance. With the president is saying is every school should have the resources that they need to take the steps to keep all the students safe. That is what he has proposed and we are demanding congress act on. Host mark in virginia. How old are your kids . Caller 16, 14 and 10. Host go ahead. Caller one, i would like to say i understand that handicaps are those who dont have the resources and support. I get it. I think looking at being a Public School graduate is that at some point we will have to throw politics aside. Either we will have to make this a stateonly run environment or the government will have to go big and we will have to put all of our schools and physical plants on the same roadmap to ensure optimum safety. I dont think that our educational system as it is currently built is going to be able to ever be competitive worldwide if we continue to go down the path of trying to parse out and dole out money in pieces. You will never have equality for physical plants, resources. We will have to figure it out. If we keep trying to get on the path we are on, we are never going to get better from a health standpoint, they physical instructional standpoint a physical instructional standpoint. We need to figure out how to attach a number to each individual Student Input are blinds on a make sure this dollars are applied to those individual students. Host Becky Pringle, do you have any thoughts . Guest i completely agree. Taking politics out of getting students what they need, absolutely. Taking this opportunity as the light is shining on the inequities that have been built into our education systems, starting with the funding of the education system. Completely agree. It is why we are so encouraged with the president s plan. He understands we have the urgency now to get our students and educators back to inperson learning as soon as it is safe and as soon as we have resources to do that. We actually have to start doing things that will change things a longterm. Change things longterm. The nea pulled together 60 organizations to address the homework divide, the homework app. We already knew there were students who did not have access to the internet. They did not have access to digital tools. They were going home and being asked to do homework at home and they were not able to do it. That was in february. Ironically we were having this conversation already. On a dime we were all out virtually by the end of march and beginning of april. Over 25 of students did not have access. The nea did a report and they dug into the access for students and families statebystate. I encourage listeners to go to nea. Org digitalequity. We dig into it more. We take a look at race, by economic status, by whether parents own a home or not. All the things contribute to whether or not they are actually having access. We are concerned about students where for some students the Virtual Learning worked out well. My grandson is loaded with me and hes downstairs right now in third grade in my basement, doing Virtual Learning and doing a good job. We know we have to address the social needs of students. We have got to make sure we have the resources to do that. We still have work to do longterm to close the Digital Divide and provide equitable resources for all of our students. Host kimberly in baton rouge, louisiana. Hello . Give us your perspective. Caller i have a highschooler but i also work for a school. She is ninthgrade. I am constantly getting calls stating there is covid in the school. I also work in a Head Start Program for the school system. I am in fear of going to school everyday. I also fear other teachers that i also hear of other teachers living in fear because of having elderly parents in the home. It seems so hidden. They are not really transparent when they say who in the school may have it. The only time i will know that person mustve been there was when they are out for two weeks. We want to know more about whats going on. I would like the high school to go back. I dont want her to feel unsafe like i do. What can we do to promote more safety for the children . If adults are scared, the kids are scared. Host your thoughts . Guest that is absolutely true. The nea partnered with the pta to do a survey of parents. What the last caller said is exactly how parents felt primarily all over the country. If the students dont feel safe, if you adults dont feel safe, the students dont feel safe. They want the resources so they dont have the chaos she just described. That is happening all over this country with parents and teachers getting calls that i before saying we had a covid outbreak. We will shut down and go to virtual. That chaos for our students actually absolutely disrupts learning. It is not just that. We are so concerned about the trauma students are going through, the loss, the real loss in our black and brown and indigenous communities who are suffering loss at a greater degree. We are also concerned about the loss they had for those who did not have opportunity to have inperson graduation or sendoff to college for just to be with her friends. We have the chaos has had a huge impact on them. This new we provide the resources for our schools, the more likely it is we are going to be first of all being postpandemic and we can address the disrupting disruption in the Educational Opportunities for students and the opportunities to continue their growth, social and emotional growth. We completely agree. Those resources must be available for all schools. Host earlier on monday we had a conversation about the rise in suicides in youth due to some parents saying the isolation they are feeling, of not getting to go to school. Some schools in las vegas are reopening because of the impact of these kids being at home on their Mental Health. What resources are available for schools to help those kids . Guest retta, we also greta, we did a survey last month. The students also talk about wanting to be safer. They do miss being with their classmates. They do miss the routine of school. They are suffering from the chaos we talked about. What we are doing is working with educators. Kids are going through trauma as well. We are working with them. In trainings we had a partnership with Yale University to provide educators with courses so they could learn how to first take care of themselves and then take care of their students. Yale is offering that for free for teachers all over the country. We invite listeners to go to nea. Org to find out more about that. We are partnering with Healthcare Professionals to provide additional services, Mental Health services for students. It is one of the reasons we are so concerned that we had so educators who were laid off. More will be laid off if the state and local governments dont get the funding they need. Its included in the 1. 9 trillion packet the president s of the congress. We need more Mental Health professionals. We need more counselors because we have more students who are falling in the gaps. They need the additional assistance. We have been partnering with Health Care Professionals in the community. I want to say one more thing. In those areas where they have community schools, where they have those, its a hub of the community and they have partnerships built, they are faring better in every way. They have the partnership with the Mental Health professionals, the hospitals, the boys and girls club. They are surviving can families and families. They are nearest and Mental Health services they so deserve and need in this moment. Guest shreveport, louisiana. Lisa, with the teach . What did you teach . Caller biology. What i would like to tell this lady is that this is nothing more than a political stunt. This is also not between republicans or democrats. This is a socialist agenda. Go look up del gates. Look up the rothschilds. You are lying to the american people. It will come out so you can keep on pushing your crap. Host what is the lie . Caller number one, if you are trying to suppress. You are trying to control. You are trying to put fear the people. You should be ashamed of yourself. Host over what . Caller dr. Fauci is a fraud. Hes a power grabber. Host elizabeth in lexington, kent