His View: COVID-19 and the political grandstanding of ed unions

As I previously wrote (Schools Need to Remain Open, Daily News Aug. 5), the probability of a child dying from the coronavirus is infinitesimally small. A child has a better chance of being struck by lightning than dying of coronavirus. It is essential for the health, education, and lives of our children that in-person classes remain open.

Stopping in-person classes has significant ramifications on the mental health of children. The CDC director recently indicated increased deaths from suicide and drug overdoses due to isolation and desperation are greater than COVID-19 deaths among high schoolers. According to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of Aug. 14, more than 25 percent of Americans age 18-24 have seriously considered killing themselves in the past 30 days.

The report opens with these words: “The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been associated with mental health challenges related to the morbidity and mortality caused by the disease and to mitigation activities, including the impact of physical distancing and stay-at-home orders. Symptoms of anxiety disorder and depressive disorder increased considerably in the United States during April-June of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019.”

The CDC provides warns of severe consequences to children if schools do not reopen for in-person classes in the fall: “The best available evidence from countries that have opened schools indicates that COVID-19 poses low risks to school-aged children, at least in areas with low community transmission, and suggests that children are unlikely to be major drivers of the spread of the virus. Reopening schools creates opportunity to invest in the education, well-being, and future of one of America’s greatest assets — our children — while taking every precaution to protect students, teachers, staff and all their families.”

The CDC’s guidance aligns with recommendations made by the American Academy of Pediatrics: “The AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.”

Each organization acknowledges the potential harm done to children in shutting down in-person classes. Ironically, it’s some teachers’ unions that are doing the most damage to children’s education by their political grandstanding and general fear-mongering.

This week, Phoenix area teachers organized a sickout, abandoning the children and forcing the cancellation of the first day of in-person classes.

The 35,000-member strong United Teachers Los Angeles union, presenting ideas for how to raise the funds to make sure schools can open in-person this fall, included suggestions that charter schools be shut down, police be defunded, Medicare-for-All be established, a wealth tax be established, and a federal bailout given to their school district.

The Durham Association of Educators in North Carolina indicated that in other countries, the implementation of universal health care, moratoriums on rent and mortgage, and welfare benefits for illegal immigrants have helped flatten the curve and allowed the return to public school life.

These unions are leveraging the coronavirus crisis to implement far-left policies at the expense of children’s education and mental health.

Fortunately, parents have their children’s best interests at heart. In a recent national poll by The American Federation for Children, 41 percent of parents say they were now more likely to enroll their child in “a home school, a neighborhood home-school co-op, or a virtual school” once the lockdowns ended.

Why? The parent-supervised learning that took place this year has opened the eyes of many parents to just how far the public schools fall short with their children’s education. Critically, they have discovered that they can do a better job at educating their children themselves than the government can. And if not homeschooling, there are other in-person options available: charter schools, co-ops, Vo-Tech, private, and parochial schools. Many of these are “open for business” for in-person learning.

There is also the cost factor. “Free” public schools cost taxpayers $13,847 per student per year even when done remotely, whereas a live, in-person, flagship private education might cost $5,000 per student, per year. If Americans had school vouchers worth just 50 percent of what the government spends, taxpayers could pocket that difference, and parents could give their children a superior, live, in-person education while the government schools were shut down.

I hope that the newly enlightened taxpayers will demand that their $13,875 per year be put to more beneficial use toward their children’s education, rather than letting it be used to finance the political grandstanding of some unions, which can only serve to erode our children’s futures.

Dale Courtney served 20 years in nuclear engineering aboard submarines and 15 years as a graduate school instructor. He spends his spare time chasing his six grandchildren around the Palouse.