OPINION:
A new year typically brings new possibilities and a renewed sense of optimism for Americans. After the hustle and bustle of the holidays, parents are going back to work, and their children are eager to go back to school and see their friends and favorite teachers again. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for far too many American children this year. For that, they have President Biden and Democrats to thank.
Even though it’s a new year, Democrats are still running the same failed playbook for keeping children out of the classroom. Last week more than 2,100 schools nationwide either closed or forced students to endure “remote learning” yet again. Notably, this is happening almost exclusively in Democrat strongholds like Chicago, Baltimore and Washington. While teachers unions in Democrat-dominated cities petulantly threaten to skip out on work if they don’t get their demands, Mr. Biden’s education secretary has said even more school closures could be on the way.
As a father of three young girls, it’s infuriating that Democrats learned nothing over the past two years and are continuing their assault on America’s children. Like they’ve been doing the whole pandemic, Democrats are pushing to keep students out of school by claiming to care about “following the science,” using the omicron variant as a convenient cover. But by now, the science is clear — fortunately, COVID-19 isn’t a serious risk to children. The science is also devastatingly clear that the costs of keeping children out of the classroom are real, and they are heartbreaking.
Over the past 20 months, Democrat-led school closures have taken a terrible toll on children’s mental and emotional health. Kept away from their classmates, young children’s social development has been stunted. Depression, anxiety and drug use among teens have all skyrocketed. It’s gotten so bad that the American Academy of Pediatrics has gone as far as to declare the situation a “national emergency.”
It isn’t only children’s mental health that has suffered. Keeping schools closed has led to losses in learning that will affect children for the rest of their life. One study estimated that school closures will cost the average student up to as much as $61,000 in lost earnings over their lifetime. The same study found K-12 students were on average five months behind in math and four months behind in reading. Everyone knows depriving children of in-person instruction hurts disadvantaged and at-risk children the most. Democrats don’t seem to care. When the history books are written, the long-term harm inflicted by prolonged school closures will go down as one of the worst failures ever at the hands of the far-left.
With all the available evidence, it raises the question of why Democrat politicians are willing to shut down schools again. The answer is as sad as it is predictable — all you have to do is follow the money. All that most Democrats like Mr. Biden care about is appeasing teachers’ union bosses and powerful special interest groups that fund their political campaigns. If children get hurt in the process, that’s a price Democrats are willing to pay.
If Mr. Biden really cared about children, he would use the presidency’s bully pulpit to make it clear schools will stay open as he promised. If he were a strong leader, he would stand up to the radicals in his own party treating children’s education as a political football. But because Mr. Biden isn’t, he won’t.
The bad news for Mr. Biden is that school closures happening on his watch is not only terrible policy, it’s also bad politics. Mr. Biden would do well to remember that his hand-picked candidate in the Virginia governor’s race got trounced in November. It happened primarily because Virginia parents were fed up with Democrats failing to put their children’s education first. The Republican victories we saw at the ballot box in 2021 will be nothing compared to the reckoning Democrats are in for this November.
This is going to be the year of the Red Wave. And it’s the year that parents — not Democrat politicians — are going to take back ownership of their children’s education for good.
• Tommy Hicks Jr. is the co-chair of the Republican National Committee.
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