Reopening Schools
Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, a year ago, schools began to close due to the coronavirus. Teachers quickly scrambled to try to figure out how they were going to teach kids who weren't there. They set up virtual classrooms on the internet. Parents started googling activities to keep their children motivated and active, but they didn't start that a year ago. They started 11 months ago. It didn't take long to figure out that kids at home are different than kids at school. And even before that, many parents had to start accommodating their schedule to try to figure out how they were going to deal with this new and unanticipated schedule.
Congress stepped up. On multiple occasions, we passed emergency legislation to get money to schools to clean classrooms, to buy laptops for students, and to do almost anything else that schools thought they might need at the elementary and secondary level. But what started as what I believe everybody thought was a stopgap--certainly no longer than until the weather got hot in the summertime as we finished up the last school year--has become, in many places, permanent, full time now, where students for a year have not been in school. That is despite a lot of widespread consensus that both scientists and medical experts think that kids can be back in the classroom.
The science on studying and learning is also clear that when schools are closed, students suffer. There have been a lot of studies to show that prolonged remote learning puts kids at higher risk for falling behind, for failing classes, for suffering from mental health problems, and, in many cases, just deciding not to show up. And, you know, the one thing about virtual is it is pretty easy to not virtually be there as well.
The risks on all those areas--the mental health problems, the falling behind, the failing grades--are even greater for students with disabilities or for minorities or people who live in generally underserved areas. A study by McKinsey looked at the toll prolonged remote learning has taken on students. It estimated that when it comes to mathematics, students, on average, are likely to lose 5 to 9 months of learning by the end of this school year. It said that students of color--this is according to McKinsey--could be 6 to 12 months behind at the end of this school year. Think about that. One year of remote learning could leave students 1 year behind where they should be in math if you look at these expert studies.
In addition to the academic damage, remote learning has led to an increase in mental health challenges facing students. A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that mental health problems accounted for a growing proportion of students' visits to hospital emergency rooms. Visits were up 31 percent for kids between ages 12 and 17 and 24 percent for kids between ages 5 and 11, and according to the CDC, many of those visits are based on a mental health challenge rather than some other kind of health challenge.
The risk of keeping kids at home are significant. What is worse, they are unnecessary by the growing number of people who are looking at this. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who is the head of CDC, recently appointed by President Biden--she began her work there on January 21--talked about what we should do earlier this month. She said that there was ``increasing data''--``increasing data that schools can safely reopen.'' That ends the quote, but she went on to say, even if teachers aren't vaccinated for the virus.
Anthony Fauci--Dr. Fauci echoed that point. He said: ``I would back the CDC recommendation because that is really based on data . . . we need to try and get the children back to school.'' That ends Dr. Fauci's quote. He went on a step further by saying that it is not even workable to wait for every teacher to be vaccinated before schools reopen because, when you think about that, if every teacher had their first vaccine today in the double-vaccine world we are still in, it will be the end of March before every teacher had their second vaccine, and you are so far down the line, before you know it, the school might not be able to reopen in that circumstance.
Dr. David Rosen, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Washington University in St. Louis, said:
There is no situation in which schools can't be open unless they have evidence of in-school transmission.
The Biden White House actually immediately said they just didn't agree with the experts on this, even the ones in their own administration. The President's Press Secretary said that Dr. Walensky was speaking in her personal capacity when she said that you can go back to school even if teachers weren't vaccinated, even though she was speaking in an official White House coronavirus briefing. Now, how the head of the CDC speaks in her personal capacity at an official White House coronavirus briefing on this topic, I don't know, but that is what happened
The White House just keeps repeating these points that teachers should be a priority for vaccination. I don't have a problem with that. I think that would be a great thing. It would make teachers more comfortable and might make parents more comfortable. In fact, when we were debating the budget resolution just a couple of weeks ago, I offered an amendment that would have incentivized school districts to get kids back to school after teachers had been vaccinated. That is more stringent than the President himself has said and more stringent than the CDC has said, but my amendment was blocked on a party-line vote. Every single Member of our friends on the other side voted against an amendment that would say we should incentivize, financially, getting kids back to school when teachers have been vaccinated.
Now, a couple of my friends on the other side walked up and said: Well, we just need to work this language a little bit because all of us that have kids know how important it is that we get our kids back to school. Democrats say we need emergency legislation to help the schools. I have been part of five bills that did that, and we provided $67.5 billion for K-12 schools to reopen safely. So far, States have spent just under $7 billion of that $67 billion, so clearly money is not the obstacle to getting back to school.
The new plan would give an additional $128.6 billion for schools, according to the CBO, and, again, only 5 percent of that money would be spent by the end of this fiscal year, only about $6.5 billion. The rest of the money would be available over the next 7 years. Hopefully, that money is not money that is designed to get kids back to school. We don't need to be waiting 7 years to get kids back to school.
If schools need money right now, they, first of all, should spend the money that the Congress has already provided. There is no reason to have over $60 billion still waiting to be spent if that is what it takes to get kids back to school.
This probably isn't about funding. It is really a discussion about whether the schools should reopen and what else we need to do with money that might be available right now because of this coronavirus legislation.
We need to be sure we get back to school. Our goal should not be to keep the schools closed. If it is, why are we providing all this extra money so that schools can reopen, even though it will be a long time before that is spent?
I started out my career, after college, as a high school history teacher and then later I was a university president. I know the challenges educators face every day and the ways well-meaning policy experts sometimes miss the reality of the classroom. I also know that teachers are used to big challenges. They see them every day. They meet them every day. They do their best every day to overcome the challenges in front of them. Teachers want to help kids learn, and they don't know what to do when they can't have the contact they need to have with the kids. They know that kids won't be doing as well as they need to do, in more cases than not, until they are back to school.
In a recent Axios poll, teachers said they would return to school and are ready to do that. It is really time for a commonsense appraisal of what needs to be done to get kids back in school. This should not be something that we wait till next fall to do. It is something that needs to happen right now.
The CDC guidelines are helpful, but they need to be more flexible. We need to constantly look at all the data. As people working hard to get kids back to school, we need to be sure that we understand where that is working, why that is working, how that is working, and we are getting that information out to school districts all over America. It is time to go back to school.
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