White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked on Tuesday to make clear President Joe Biden’s plan to reopen K-8 schools within 100 days of his presidency.
A reporter asked Psaki at an afternoon press conference to help ‘us understand the definition of the White House or the president of’ open school ‘.
“Does this mean teachers in classroom teaching students in classrooms or does it just mean children in classrooms with a remote screen? Help us to understand,” he asked.
Psaki said Biden’s goal was to open a “majority of schools” – meaning more than 50% – by day 100 of his presidency, which would be on April 30.
“It means a little bit of teaching in classrooms. So hopefully it’s more than one day a week. And it’s obviously just as much as it’s safe in every school and local district,” Psaki said.
The reporter asked Psaki what she meant by ‘some teaching’, to which Psaki replied: ‘at least one day a week in the majority of schools on day 100 teaching.’
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Biden has repeatedly called for “most schools” to reopen within 100 days of his presidency. In a meeting with thirty governors in December, Biden stressed the reopening of schools as an important first step in his incoming government’s plan to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
“I’m going to ask that at the end of a hundred days we will be able to open schools,” Biden said during the call. “It’s going to take a lot of money, but we know how to do it. If we have the money and the funding, from ventilation to more teachers to smaller class sizes – a whole range of things.”
In a pre-Super Bowl Sunday interview, Biden reiterates his call for children to return to classrooms. He also said that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would release ‘scientific’ guidelines later this week on the requirements for reopening the school – despite the fact that the agency released guidelines in September.
CDC director Rochelle Walensky told reporters last week that “there is increasing evidence to suggest that schools can reopen safely and that safe reopening does not indicate that teachers need to be vaccinated to reopen safely. Vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for the safe reopening of schools. ‘
In an interview with Fox News, dr. Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine, said “there is too much confusion between what the White House says and what the CDC says.”
He added that any update to the guidelines should reflect the changing circumstances of the pandemic.
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“Giving class one day a week … may be enough to introduce you to your teacher, but it’s not enough to overcome the drastic socialization damage we’re seeing as a result of school closures.”
Fox News’ Thomas Barrabi contributed to this report.