Joe Biden wanted to do everything better than Donald Trump – especially in the fight against the pandemic. But school closings and teachers’ strikes could cost the American president and his party many votes.
Teachers in Chicago demonstrate on Monday for better corona measures and protection concepts in their schools.
In order to stand out from his predecessor Donald Trump, the American President Joe Biden has always emphasized that he would bring the pandemic to its knees with “the power of science”. But now – one year after taking office – shoot the numbers in the US with over 700,000 infections and 135,000 hospitalizations per day in absolute record highs.
In view of the widespread school closings, many parents feel thrown back into the first year of the pandemic, when face-to-face classes in the public education sector were canceled for twelve months, especially in democratically governed regions of the country. Shortly before Christmas, Biden had emphasized in a speech that it would no longer be March 2020: “Today we are ready.” Thanks to the vaccinations and tests, there is no longer any need for closings: “We can leave our schools open. And that’s exactly what we should be doing. “
Mothers have to quit work
It is not yet a wildfire, and the measures are usually limited to one to two weeks – at least for the time being. In the first week of January, 1 million of a total of 50 million students were affected by the closure of public schools, reports the “New York Times”. However, the measures can have serious consequences for the parents concerned, who were often informed at very short notice. A single mother in New York reported that she had no choice but to quit her job Washington Post. Another mother in Chicago, whose boss showed more understanding, has to take her children back to work like in 2020.
This is an uncomfortable development for President Biden and his Democratic Party. Traditionally, the Democrats see themselves as “the party of the public schools” and maintain close relationships with the teachers’ unions, while the Republicans are leaning towards the private schools. But now it is local union leaders in Chicago, of all places, who are getting the Democratic Party into a mess. Due to increasing corona infections in schools, a lack of tests and protective masks, a large majority of teachers in the third largest school district in the country voted to switch to online lessons a week ago. “If you want to get us back to school faster, give us tests,” said union leader Jesse Sharkey.
The parents of around 300,000 children in Chicago were informed overnight about the closure of schools. There are also protests by the teaching staff in other parts of the country. In Oakland, California, for example, twelve schools had to shut down last week after teachers stopped working as part of a sickout. In a caravan they moved in front of the school board building to demonstrate, among other things, for the supply of KN95 masks. They also called for a clear plan in case too many teachers were absent due to illness.
At least among the student body, the virus is already rampant in Oakland: “Almost a quarter of our students were absent on Monday,” said a primary school teacher who took part in the demonstration, the television station ABC. How tense the situation is was also shown in Boston. Because around 1000 teachers were absent and 47 school buses were without drivers, the school supervisor took over the lessons for a fourth grade. “I’ll clear my agenda and go over to teach”, said Brenda Cassellius.
In Chicago stood out on Tuesday a compromise between the teachers’ union and Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot. The conflicting parties agreed on an expansion of the tests in schools as well as a series of statistical limit values which, when reached, individual schools automatically switch to online lessons. The public schools in Chicago are due to reopen on Wednesday, but the union base has yet to agree to the compromise.
Alternate voters overflow with Republicans
If Biden and the Democrats fail to get a grip on the problem, it could also have repercussions for the fall midterm elections. In the regional election in Virginia in November, post-election surveys showed that the long school closings in the first year of the pandemic under the democratically led regional government caused many swing voters to overflow with the Republicans. The Republicans, who generally speak out against strict Corona measures, reached Virginia with the educational issue a class of voters that was previously less accessible to them: white women between the ages of 20 and 50.
The Republicans used the parents’ dissatisfaction with the public schools to make their voices heard on other criticisms of the state education system, which is dominated by the Democrats. For example, they accuse the Democrats of indoctrinating the children in public schools with socialist ideas and a controversial theory of racism. Instead of simply imparting knowledge to the students, they are raised to become left-wing activists, the conservatives criticize.
In a column for the “New York Times” The headline of the journalist and book author Michelle Goldberg in November was: “The Democrats urgently need to bring the schools back to normal”.