The White House has all but given up on the goal of reopening schools. Last month, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, clarified that the president would consider the goal met if more than half of all schools were open for in-person instruction at least one day a week. To say that one-day-a-week in-person instruction is a reopening of schools is to lie.

When President Joe Biden was inaugurated on January 20, he pledged that in-person education would resume for most children within his first 100 days as president. To support school reopening efforts, the president asked Congress to allocate $130 billion in new funding for protective equipment, better ventilation, more space inside classrooms, and whatever else educators need.

Fast forward to today. The White House has all but given up on the goal of reopening schools. Last month, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, clarified that the president would consider the goal met if more than half of all schools were open for in-person instruction at least one day a week. To say that one-day-a-week in-person instruction is a reopening of schools is to lie.

In this, Psaki has followed the lead of various teachers unions across the country who have twisted the idea of “reopening” beyond recognition. To choose one of dozens of examples: In Fairfax County, Virginia, some public high schools are claiming that they have reopened — but the teachers are still at home. To facilitate this elaborate farce, the district hired hundreds of “classroom monitors,” i.e. new employees who chaperone the teenagers as they sit in their desks, stare at their laptops, and receive instruction from a teacher who is still virtual.

Education officials across the country are preparing families to live with this arrangement, not just for the rest of this school year, but for the next one as well. For instance, Mark Levine, a New York City Council member and chair of the council’s health committee, told CNN that it was too soon to commit reopening schools in September.

These are the same people who have insisted that we “trust the science.” So one might assume that there’s some scientific consensus against having teachers back in classrooms. Almost the opposite is true.

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared in January: there is no reason to think that schools are especially dangerous environments during the pandemic. In one major study published by the CDC that month, researchers looked at 17 elementary and secondary schools in Wisconsin and found that the infection rate was actually lower there than it was in the surrounding community.

We have known this for a while. Back in November, a look at the data from Florida showed minimal transmission in schools: Among elementary schools that had any COVID-19 infections at all, the average number of cases was just two. Evidence from other countries—from environments as dissimilar as Iceland and Australia—also casts doubt on the idea that schoolchildren are likely to be superspreaders.

Case in point: Washington D.C.’s Catholic schools have 17,000 students. Since the start of the school year, they have had only 200 known cases of COVID-19 and not a single hospitalization, even though most of the elementary school students are in-person every day (Catholic high school students in the diocese follow a hybrid model).

Most significantly, just 246 people under the age of 19 have died from COVID-19 in the U.S., according to recent data. More than 95% of deaths are among people older than 60. For the under-19 crowd, COVID-19 appears to be even less deadly than the flu.

But instead of trusting The Science (™), teachers unions are acting as if returning to schools is the equivalent of drinking the blood of a Covid-infected bat.

Several Chicago teachers used the art of dance to express their opposition to reopening schools “until it’s safe.” In their video, which was shared by the Chicago Teachers Union, the dancing teachers sway and repeat the word “safety” over and over again. “Not until it’s safe!” chanted New York City teachers as they marched in September. Some carried signs that read “no one is safe until every school is safe.”

Some union officials have made it sound like they believe this level of safety will only be achieved when all students are vaccinated — even though none of the vaccines are currently approved for people under the age of 17.

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