July 12, 2020

Betsy DeVos Went on CNN and Was Asked About Reopening Schools. It Was a Disaster.

Yuri Gripas-POOL/CNP via ZUMA Wire

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President Donald Trump spent a lot of the last week talking about re-opening public schools in the fall. As the Daily Beast reported, his campaign has done polling on the issue and found that it could be a winning electoral issue for him. The catch is that it’s only a winning electoral issue if people actually trust that you will be able to responsibly reopen schools. For that reason, Trump’s PR push is sort of self-defeating—if you were actually the person who was going to responsibly open public schools, you wouldn’t have just started thinking about it in July.

And, perhaps, you wouldn’t make the point person for all of this Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, DeVos was asked by host Dana Bash to clarify what public-health experts were telling her about “the appropriate level of transmission for a school before it has to shut down.” It’s gets at the big question at the heart of all of this—what’s the plan? Everyone wants schools to reopen. It comes down to whether the conditions on the ground will allow it. Schools aren’t little epidemiology labs; they need guidance.

DeVos, though, acted as if she’d just strolled into home room and found out there was a test that day:

“Every school should have plans for that situation to be able to pivot and ensure that kids can continue learning, at a distance if they have to for a short period of time,” she said. What’s the plan? The plan is to have plans. It’s a plan plan.

Bash followed up: “Why do you not have guidance…just weeks before you want those schools to reopen,” she wondered, “and what happens if there’s an outbreak?”

“You know, there’s really good examples that have been utilized in the private sector and elsewhere, also with front line workers and hospitals, and all of that data and all of those examples can be referenced by school leaders,” DeVos said.

Again, Bash asked if DeVos—the Secretary of Education—for specifics. And Again, DeVos stopped short of offering any: “Schools should do what’s right on the ground at that time for their students and for their situation.”

What should they base those plans off of? Maybe some day we’ll find out.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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