Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked Dr. Osterholm to comment on the debate about reopening schools: “Dr. Osterholm, this debate about reopening schools, let’s go data driven here. What is the best data to follow on these decision makings, whether you’re opening a campus like [Howard University President Dr. Wayne Frederick], or an elementary school?”
Osterholm responded, “Well, I can tell you right now that schools across this country do not have the resources to open this fall with the personnel, the protection such that they need. We have surely sent money to the school districts from the federal government, but it’s far, far too little. It’s inadequate. And it’s not arriving in time. And so I think that we’re going to have some real challenges. There are legitimate concerns in any community right now where you have a hotspot. How can you even begin to think about physically opening schools? Distance learning surely can be something you can consider. Still, we have concerns about the protection of teachers. … We do know that students transmit more than we once thought that they did. And so we have to address that. At the same time, we know that we have to educate our kids. This is really critical, particularly that younger age group, K-8 [kindergarten to 8th grade], distance learning just does not work.”
He recognized that “So I think we have to, first of all, drive down the decision-making to the local school district level. They’re the experts. They know what they can do. Those teachers want to go to work. Those school districts want to have school. And we just have to make sure we get them the resources to do that and know that there isn’t going to be a simple answer. ... The wrong answers are driving it down from the national level, saying, `This is what you must do,’ and not providing the resources that these school districts need. They need it now desperately.”
