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Limbaugh Suggests Covid Response Should Mimic the Donner Party

Adapt and move forward. Rush Limbaugh is suggesting that, in the spirit of the famed, tragic pioneers who turned to cannibalism to survive harsh winter conditions, Americans today should just adapt and forge ahead without safety protocols to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. "COVID-19 is too convenient an excuse for a generation of people to just punt. We don't do this, we are Americans," he said arguing against school and business closures and efforts to protect the public from the effects of Covid. Suggesting the United States should take a "survival of the fittest" attitude rather than protect the American people from the pandemic is distasteful at best.


Yet, the President's insistence that schools open and his threat to withhold federal funding from schools that don't hold in-person classes shows just who this administration considers to be acceptable casualties of the pandemic. Forcing schools to open or lose federal funding with have the greatest effect on the poorest schools with the most vulnerable students, often students of color.


Federal education funding is distributed for specific programming primarily to support low-income and special populations of students in need. Since poor schools get more support, wealthier schools would be less affected. For example, two school districts in Allentown, PA receive funding from vastly different sources. The Parkland School District has 27% low income students and 36% students of color; and the Allentown School District enrolls 77% low-income students and 91% students of color (2018-19). The graphics below show revenue sources for the two districts.


The Parkland School District receives 1% or $1.8million from Federal sources; while the Allentown School District receives 7% of its funding or $25.4million from Federal sources. The difference in the amount of local funding is not a function of tax rate effort, rather it shows the unequal abilities of districts to raise local funds due to differences in corporate and personal wealth. So, while losing about $2million would be difficult for Parkland, it could choose to replace those funds through local taxes; whereas Allentown could not tax high enough to generate enough to replace the $25.4million dollars it would lose.

School districts that lack the ability to raise substantial funds through local taxation are less able to pay for new items. In order to open during the pandemic, schools face many new expenses: hand sanitizer, masks and face shields, plexiglass barriers, cleaning materials and possibly additional cleaning staff. To understand how hard this will be, consider that facilities staff in an Allentown School District middle school with 850 students cleaned every locker in the building with just one sponge due to budget constraints (summer 2016).


Limited facilities budgets in some schools force officials to risk losing federal funding or opening with insufficient cleaning products and staff to open safely.



Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash


Low-Income and Students of Color are Most At-Risk from Schools Re-Opening


If schools re-open, the risks to students and teachers will be greater for those in poor schools, because these schools have less ability to create safe environments. Students in poor schools experience larger class sizes making it more difficult to rearrange furniture to accommodate the six-foot social distancing guideline. Students in poor communities often lack laptop computers or internet access at home, relying on in-person instruction or using cell phones to connect with online learning if they can connect at all. Low-income students are more likely to have parents with essential jobs that cannot be performed from home, making them less likely to have a parent in the home to assist students with remote instruction during typical school hours. Student populations in poor schools are often from African-American and Latinx families, those who have been hit the hardest by Covid-19 infections. Schools that serve high numbers of students who depend on the school breakfast and lunch program will need safe spaces and personnel to distribute the meals.


The threat to withhold essential federal funding from schools that don't open for face-to-face instruction puts school leaders in the difficult position of deciding between providing the best education they can or providing the safest environment in which to do so. If schools reopen without appropriate safety supplies and procedures, they put an already vulnerable student population, their families and school communities at greater risk.


The vulnerable population is the poorest students, many of whom are students of color. This example shows the Trump Administration's threat is a real-time example of how public policy creates and sustains systemic discrimination, systemic racism and classism.


Americans do not adapt and move forward by sacrificing one another based on race and class - THAT is NOT American!



References:


COVID-19 in Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups


PA Public School Enrollment, Percent Low-Income Students 2018-19: https://www.education.pa.gov/DataAndReporting/LoanCanLowIncome/Pages/PublicSchools.aspx


Pres. Donald Trump threatens to cut federal funding for schools that don't reopen in the fall


Rush Limbaugh: Americans should “adapt” to coronavirus, like famous pioneers who “had to turn to cannibalism”: https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/rush-limbaugh-americans-should-adapt-coronavirus-famous-pioneers-who-had-turn

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