Donald Trump announced on Thursday that the White House is asking Congress to provide a whopping $105 billion in a bid to ensure schools can reopen amid a still-raging pandemic. Aside from that, the president teased additional CDC (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines for those reopenings that the agency had posted on its official website earlier this week.
The CDC had uploaded revised school reopening guidance on Thursday without providing any sort of explanation of what it changed. During his recently concluded coronavirus briefing at the White House, Trump said they are asking Congress to give $105 billion to schools in the upcoming stimulus bill.
Trump explained that the funds would enable schools to provide students and staff members adequate safety such as masks and other modifications to help with social distancing among students. Republicans in the Senate who postponed the release of their stimulus plan earlier this week, have declined Trump's push to withhold federal aid from schools that refuse to reopen during the pandemic, CNN reported.
The White House is urging that schools that remain close during the pandemic don't receive the new funds, Trump said at the briefing. The White House suggests those funds should go to parents to help them decide whether to send their children to charter or private schools.
Trump went on to explain that if the schools refuse to reopen, the money should still go to the students so that parents and families have control over their decisions. The president noted that it is impossible to stop 50 million children from returning to school for a long time, adding that sending children back to schools would allow parents to go to work and put bread on the table for their families.
Earlier in the briefing, Trump displayed a map with COVID-19 hotspots shown in red and admitted that those areas could opt to postpone in-person learning until the coronavirus cases come down. New guidelines from the CDC on education and child care strongly recommended reopening schools, claiming children aren't as likely to spread the virus as adults and that they suffer from not being in school.
The new guidelines urge local officials to refrain from reopening schools if there is an uncontrollable transmission of coronavirus. CDC director insists that the recently introduced guidance will not change, while officials had been checking a series of additional recommendations informational documents that were slated to be released last week, but the agency delayed.