CDC Will Relax School Reopening Guidelines, Mike Pence Says
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will weaken guidelines for reopening schools that President Donald Trump said were too stringent, Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday.
“The president said today, we just don’t want the guidance to be too tough,” Pence said during a press briefing at the Department of Education. “That’s the reason why next week, the CDC is going to be issuing a new set of tools, five different documents that will be giving even more clarity on the guidance going forward.”
The CDC is under clear pressure from the White House to amend its current nonbinding guidelines for schools, which say, among other things, that teachers and students should wear cloth masks and that desks should be “at least 6 feet apart when feasible.” Trump tweeted earlier Wednesday that he disagreed with the CDC “on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools” and “will be meeting with them!!!” He also threatened to cut off funding to schools if they did not reopen quickly enough, although schools are mostly funded by state and local governments.
At multiple points in the briefing, CDC Director Robert Redfield downplayed his agency’s recommendations by stressing that they “are not requirements” and are “not meant to be prescriptive.”
Ultimately, it’s not a matter of if schools need to open — it’s a matter of how. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
The president has framed continued closures as a sign of political opposition and has downplayed the ongoing threat of the coronavirus, even as the U.S. hit 3 million cases on Wednesday. There is no vaccine for the virus, and testing remains slow and difficult to access in many parts of the country. Reopening schools without adequate safety measures could mean spreading the virus even further and putting students, teachers, school staff members and their families at risk.
Several school districts announcing their tentative reopening...
