topic of covid-19 and its impact on schools. we are joined now by evie blad. good morning to you. after the election, president biden said his goal was to get schools reopened within 100 days. how close is he to meeting that goal now that we are 15 days in? guest: if he said he wants to open a majority of k-8 schools,

high schools are obviously a part of the goal of school reopening's, but there are some concerns about older children being more likely to grow severely ill. one of the really complicated parts of this is that we don't know exactly. there is no federal data source right now that tells you how things are operating be it in person or remote. 60% of children in the u.s. have some in-person learning in school. that may be a hybrid approach like your previous caller mentioned where half the students are in the building one day and half are remote the other days. it may be because the district is fully in person. there are also students in districts that are in person that opted to remain remote.

as much as educators are pushing to return to in person learning, there is also concerns they make sure remote offerings are strong. host: having this conversation with evie blad on the day the secretary committee is holding their confirmation for the president prospect to serve as education secretary, miguel cardona. how much of today's hearing do you expect will be focused on school reopening's? guest: it is obviously an issue dominating everyone's conversations right now. kind of a kitchen table issue. it has come up at every single white house briefing. decisions are ultimately left to

states and school districts and the ability of the federal government to mandate reopening's, which is not really there. they can issue guidance and support and bring together best practices, try to bring some credibility to their approach to the public trust that when they say this is safe or this isn't safe, people can trust that. miguel cardona, the nominee, is currently connecticut's education commissioner. he has really emphasized the importance of in person learning in his state but stopped short of mandating it all together or taking actions like some other states have with threatening to remove funding for sanctioned school districts that don't return. host: for folks that don't know anything about miguel cardona, what is his background? guest: he is currently education commissioner of connecticut. before that, assistant superintendent in his hometown.

he is the child of parents that moved to connecticut from puerto rico as children. he came to school as an english-language learner and grew up in housing projects, which is some of that background. that is what people have applauded with him that he can identify with a growing share of the nation's students. he went off to become an elementary school teacher and a principal at age 28, which is pretty young. he was involved in a lot of statewide work to bring together ideas about how to address the achievement gap or to spur performance between student groups. eventually, he became education secretary. he started in august 2019 and his time has really been dominated by this crisis. host: which senators are you interested in watching him to think get the toughest questions from? guest: the income chair of the committee is senator patty

murray of washington. she is a former pre-k teacher herself and has been outspoken about the need for schools to ensure equity as they come out of this crisis, to make sure they know what students have learned, what students might need more help and support. she is expected to push for a swift confirmation for dr. cardona because the schools are in this moment where they believe they need guidance and support and additional resources from congress. we also expect potentially some questions about some intense issues in the national debate related to student civil rights, which is one of the areas we have seen some of the biggest contrast between what president biden has promised and what the previous administration did. turning to a more aggressive approach on federal civil rights, reinstituting potentially guidance on the rights of transgendered students

in school. addressing racial equity and school discipline and concerns like that. host: on resources, how much money has been approved at this point for schools and school reopening's versus how much money has been spent so far for that? guest: it is a little complicated to measure exactly how much is spent. it was a topic of debate for secretary devos in the previous administration because as money goes out, states don't have or are a little unsure about how to spend their existing resources because they don't know how much they will have eventually. also, funds are reimbursed rather than spent outright. the timeline to spend them goes into december. it is a little bit difficult to say this is exactly where we are at in this need for resources. president biden has asked for

130 billion dollars in additional resources for k-12 schools. that will require approval from congress as part of a pretty big package as he knows that some republican senators have already suggested they want something smaller. host: evie blad with us until the bottom of the hour at edwee k.org if you want to check out her work there. kyle is in buffalo, new york. that line we have set aside for educators. good morning, you are on. caller: good morning. how are we doing? host: doing alright. caller: i am an educator and a parent of a child who is

affected by the online learning stuff as well. while i was sitting around listening to all of the calls, i started making a list of concerns for people who have chimed on about different things. i think the difference is, you have a lot of urban schools who have a lot more students than a lot of suburban rural schools. partially, i think the reopening process is a little bit different because of the size of the school district. urban schools statistically have more people in homes, use more public transportation, at least a high school students around here. i think that is a lot of concern because you can't bring back all urban students into the building because you have buildings where there are 2000 kids in a

building, 800. i would say between 800 and 2000 depending on the building. also, you have a lot of older teachers, at least in new york state. those are people more at risk. i get some of the concerns that are out there. host: thanks for bringing them up. maybe you can jump in on some of these concerns and the differences in types of school districts. guest: it is something we hear from educators a lot is that this is not really a yes or no question, in person or remote. there are groups, including the center for education in washington that tried to track a sample of school districts to see how they were operating and found that rural districts are more likely to be operating in person than larger urban districts.

that could be for a variety of reasons and it is difficult to track down exactly why that is happening. some of it may be that a smaller number of students give districts a little bit more ease and separating them and taking on creative solutions. if you only have one high school in your school district, you don't have to worry about consistency and approach across a bunch of high schools like you within a larger school system. concerns about things like ventilation. before this conversation started in earnest in late summer, the government and accountability office released a report exploring how many schools have dated ventilation systems. this was a really common area of concern when schools discuss whether there were ready to reopen. it is questions about whether they have the resources to phase students out, whether they have the guidance they need.

another reason we see such a dramatic difference into how schools are operating is that they have told schools very different things about when it is safe to reopen. some states guidance does not include any health metrics at all leaving the decision entirely to local schools. some states operate under very different metrics. we saw new york city last year face this debate over whether they should fulfill their promise to close schools when the number of tests that came back in their city rose above 3% positivity, which is a pretty low bar compared to or pretty low figure compared to what some other states and schools are doing. there are great inconsistencies and concerns. i think even the folks who have been pushing for schools to be open at least from a public health perspective, have recognized it is complicated and will take a creative solution. host: this is liz out of new

jersey. caller: good morning. i am a retired teacher, but i have been substituting throughout the years i have been retired up until march of 2020 because, at that point, they had to shut down new jersey. but even since they have opened up to schools as much as they have, i don't consider it, at my age, a smart thing to do. to run out and subject myself to a lot of chances for infection. i think a lot of people who are talking about schools, the gentleman before me, he has it right as far as urban education of which i am familiar with. even in suburban areas, often times, the school buildings could be the new infrastructure

bill. instead of dams or highways. if we could fix the ventilation systems, the plumbing systems in schools. they should marry those two objectives, in my opinion because most of the schools are not built to handle this pandemic. host: thanks for bringing up that point. guest: liz brings up a good point which as a substitute teacher, she represents a big part of this debate which is the capability of schools to adequately staff when they are in in person learning. applications for substitute teachers have been down significantly this year. especially because a lot of substitute teachers are retired teachers or older teachers who may be more vulnerable and some just don't want to take the risk. schools are dealing with an unusual situation with absences

among their core staff of teachers which is that under proper health guidelines, teachers have to quarantine sometimes and be out of the classroom. that leads to real concerns about how to supervise students especially when you are trying to keep students in smaller cohorts to limit the possibility of spread. i saw one rural district even ask some parents to come in and supervise classrooms while teachers taught remotely from home because so many were quarantined at once. it is a really huge concern. host: we have been talking a lot this morning about executive orders. they have also been plenty of executive orders when it comes to schools and school reopening's. a few of them asking the department of education to provide evidence and submit a report on the pandemic's impact on educational outcomes to ask

the education assistant secretary of civil rights to report on the pandemic's impact on various students and segments of the population and collecting data on the pandemic's impact on educators as well. what should viewers know or dive deeper into some of this executive orders? guest: the one on guidance is significant because the trump administration did it eventually unveil quite a lot of guidance for schools. the concern was that district leaders said early on that it just was not coming quickly enough. back in the spring, district leaders started saying we can see this is going to be a problem in the fall and we need the summer to know what to do, how to message it to folks. the initial guidance was not very clear and did not commit to very firm guidelines as far as when your community spread is at this level, this is the action you need to take. eventually, more guidance came out, but some of it was faulted

for being somewhat contradictory and not giving schools enough concrete metrics to say, you can rely on this data. this is what the federal government believes is safe and this is what we believe is unsafe and these are specific steps you need to take to address the situation. president biden has directed departments to issue more specific guidance. how quickly that comes out and how helpful it is to schools is one question. we know there are a lot of strategies for maintaining credibility in messaging during a public health crisis. one of them is to be as consistent as you can and one of them is to prepare the public for the idea the situation is going to be fluid and dynamic. there are some people who would suggest we have already missed the boat on that and a lot of folks have their perception of risks pretty well fixed in their head whether they think this is a really risky situation or whether they feel comfortable

with schools opening. in addition to the guidance, local school districts are going to have to come up with plans that satisfy all of the various stakeholders including educators and parents. the other executive order i would flag is important or the other part is the data piece. collecting federal data that shows us how many students are in school, in person versus remote, collecting data on whether certain student groups have been affected more severely by this crisis, we know that dr. cardona has said that this crisis has kind of wrenched open inequities and that students who were struggling to learn before or who were not given the support and resources at school before the pandemic may be having an even bigger problem now. collecting data not only so we can understand the crisis at the moment, but so that in the years to come, as schools continue to

recover and work and give students the support they need, they can understand the contours of the crisis. host: to the line for parents, this is jerry out of minnesota. caller: good morning. they have released all of the studies that show it is safe to be at school as it is to be almost anywhere else in society. also, there has been 176 suicides of kids school-aged 18 or less and two of those total covid deaths and 7000 suicides. 2000 murders. the federal government has come out saying it is safe to reopen. now, we are talking about ventilation systems. , on. my wife was a teacher for many years. we have friends that are teachers. i know some that have come right out and said this is not a bad gig sitting at home and doing this for a couple of hours.

this is not about the kids. this is about a union deal. this whole shutdown is a wrong. nobody argues that virtual learning is as good as in person. nobody does. it just bothers me so much that these teachers, some of these teachers, are so lazy and have put the kids at so much at the bottom of the line, that it is a ridiculous statement. host: got your point. guest: it is important to note that there are studies that suggest it could be safe for schools to operate and have said states operate with appropriate precautions and what those precautions are and how schools can carry them out. the concern stressed by the collar about students mental health. their developmental need to be social and to have interactions with peers and teachers is something we have heard a lot of

folks flag. i don't know you can trace this all directly back to unions. we have seen some schools i don't have strong unions. some charter school systems that are also remaining in remote mode. i think it kind of depends on the local context. we do hear from some parents who feel like their big frustration is that they are not clear on exactly what it will take for schools to go in person and they feel, some people feel like the goalposts have moved some. local school districts will say we are going to try this and it doesn't happen. there is just a lot of moving parts. the concerns about students mental health, there are concerns about their ability to learn and engage more directly in person and are not small ones. they are certainly on the minds of many people who are trying to find a solution to this crisis. host: roger is in arkansas.

good morning. caller: my comment is we vote for different people in the organization of school boards and stuff. the main person that the president has put in order to oversee the school boards is appointed by the president. he should be elected by the people so he can be held accountable. whenever reagan made the unions for our government, we should have voted on that instead of giving the lawyers that you cannot fire a state employee. they will move to another office. host: can you explain the education secretary's role and relationship when it comes to local school boards? guest: we know that the education secretary, like every other cabinet official, is appointed. the president has the authority to form his own administration

around his own policy goals. that is part of the choice we make when we are electing a president. the federal role in education is actually quite small compared to some folks in the public's purse -- perception. he is not directing school boards on exactly what to do. one of his biggest jobs is to ensure students civil rights are met and ensure title i funding. i would say even before the pandemic, the role of the federal education secretary became a lot more high-profile and divisive than it has been in the past. secretary devos had an unusually high profile and -- confirmation hearing. i would say had every level of

government, local, state and federal, this part -- crisis has made parents and even members of the public pay a lot more attention to school governance and how it works. down to protesting or building campaigns to try to persuade their local school board. protesting at state capitals or doing electronic campaigns to convince members to issue mask mandates and things like that and right up to the u.s. department of education where folks are pushing for more resources, more support or a stronger voice in one direction or another about how this should work. host: just a few minutes left with evie blad. edweek.org if you want to check on some of her work. caller: good morning. i was just wondering. i know i believe the last

stimulus round, they voted in $65 billion for schools and now, they're asking for $130 billion. how much money do they have to have to get things in order for the schools to open? i live in a small community, but we are just outside of joplin and only 65 miles from springfield. our kids here have been in school, k-12 and high school since august of last year. we have had no cases in our school of covid. whether it be children or wet. i have 12 grandchildren that are grown. 17 great-grandchildren. all of them in high school except for a couple of babies. even the private schools, how do you rectify that in those

schools? nobody getting covid, but yet, the teachers union, wherever they have the unions at, are not allowing their teachers, even if they want to go back to work and are not afraid of getting covid, to not go to work. guest: i think the response to that would be yes, i think some public health officials have said they believe schools are not as risky as some folks initially believed they would be, that there is strong evidence the schools should take creative approaches and work hard to get students back. i think to say that there is no covid cases in a school, the response to that would be that specific states and communities don't have the contact tracing that we have seen in other countries to really determine exactly where cases are coming from. we know children often have a symptom that it cases and there are questions about whether that contributes to greater spread

within a community even if children are not getting sick within their schools. the question of exactly how much money schools need is very complicated. even if we had an exact dollar amount, some schools are arguing that the same time they are trying to come back from this crisis, they are dealing with potential cuts in state and local budgets and not only the need to get their buildings open physically, but to meet the needs of students who cannot or don't believe they can safely return to school for in person learning and provide adequate remote learning. they are also concerned about what is coming up on the horizon , which is to say, we have students in special education programs that may need some compensatory services to ensure our legal obligations to them are met. as the previous caller mentioned, we have a mental health crisis alongside a public health crisis and concerns that this pandemic may be exacerbating that.

things like tutoring and counseling they need if they return. it is an open question and active debate about exactly how much money schools need and exactly when they have adequate resources to take that next step and to get to the point where they can open for our children. host: we will have to end there. edw