Biden Betrays Working Families

 

By Siding With Special Interests And Holding Schools Hostage, Biden Leaves Students And Working Moms Out In The Cold

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BIDEN HAS ALREADY WALKED BACK HIS PROMISE TO OPEN SCHOOLS

Candidate Biden promised to reopen schools within his first 100 days in office, but that goal quickly fell by the wayside as Biden caved to special interests holding American students hostage.

This week, Biden continued to waffle on his pledge, saying  his new goal is to have the “majority” of K-8 schools physically reopened five days a week by the end of his first 100 days in office.

Biden contradicted his own press secretary, Jen Psaki, who said last week Biden’s goal involved having more than 50 percent of schools holding at least one day of in-person learning per week over that time frame.

Biden and his aides have “repeatedly loosened their definition of an open school, making it easier to meet his target.”

Biden is feeling “discomfort” over pushing teachers unions to reopen because, according to former Governor Ed Rendell, “challenging an ally is always difficult.”

The Washington Post: “The White House has appeared tied in knots as it attempts to navigate the politics of reopening…”

BIDEN VOWED TO FOLLOW THE SCIENCE, BUT NOW HE IS CAVING TO EDUCATION UNIONS

Biden’s own CDC said this week that “in-person schooling can resume safely with masks, social distancing and other strategies.”

 The CDC specifically said “vaccination of teachers, while important, is not a prerequisite for reopening.”

The CDC has repeatedly said it is safe to reopen schools.

In late January, the CDC published a study saying that it was safe to reopen schools if measures were in place to mitigate transmission of the virus.

Asked about this on CNN, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain dismissed the findings.

The White House ran from comments by CDC director Rochelle Walensky, who said vaccinating teachers is “not a prerequisite for reopening schools.”

Psaki absurdly claimed that “Dr. Walensky spoke to this in her personal capacity.”

BIDEN IS SIDING WITH SPECIAL INTERESTS AT THE EXPENSE OF STUDENTS, MANY OF LOWER INCOMES

With school closures, “many students had no access to computers or the internet and were completely cut off from their teachers” resulting in a significant drop off in enrollment this past fall.

One study estimated that “3 million of the nation’s most vulnerable children — those who are homeless, in foster care, have disabilities or are learning English — could be displaced from school.”

A study co-authored by economists from Yale, Northwestern, UPenn, and the University of Amsterdam found  that pandemic-related school closures are worsening educational inequality by “severely impairing the academic progress of children from low-income neighborhoods.”

Their model predicts that one year of closures will cost 9^th graders in the poorest communities a 25% decrease in their post-educational earning potential, even if it is followed by three years of normal schooling.

For these students, the loss of skills due to remote learning translated into a decline of about a half a point of the standard four-point grade point average.

WOMEN ARE ALSO BEARING THE BURDEN OF BIDEN’S CONTINUED SHUTDOWNS

The consequences of remote learning is falling on working parents, and “moms are feeling it more than dads.”

When the coronavirus pandemic forced school closures “it was women who stepped up at home, often by stepping back at work, either cutting hours or leaving jobs entirely.”

A third of employed parents say that the pandemic has made it more difficult to balance work and family responsibilities, and working moms are over 10% more likely to report hardship.

Working moms are also more likely to say they felt like their work performance suffered, or that they needed to reduce their work hours.

In January, another 275,000 women dropped out of the labor force, accounting for nearly 80% of all workers over the age 20 who left the workforce.

More than 2.4 million women have dropped out of the work force since the pandemic began, pushing women’s labor force participation rate to 57%, the lowest it’s been since 1988.

A report by Lean In and McKinsey & Company found that one in four women are considering downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce due to the impact of Covid-19.

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