WASHINGTON (AP) – President-elect Joe Biden pledged Tuesday to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control to reopen most schools in the United States during the first 100 days of his term, going much further on the issue of what he had gone on previous occasions, even warning that the nation faces a “dark winter.”
Biden said the promise depends on Congress providing enough funding to protect campus students, faculty and staff. The Democrat’s remarks came during an event in Delaware to introduce the team of health experts who will help the incoming government fight a virus that has killed more than 285,000 Americans.
The president-elect added that he plans to distribute at least 100 million vaccines during his first 100 days in the White House and that he will seek to reopen most of the nation’s schools in that same period.
“It should be a national priority to get our children back to school and keep them in school,” Biden said. “If Congress provides the funds, we need to protect students, faculty, and staff members. If states and cities implement strict public health measures that we all comply with, then my team will work so that most of our schools can reopen by the end of my first 100 days ”in office.
Biden provided few details on how he will achieve that goal, except that authorities will prioritize the distribution of vaccines to educators “as soon as possible” after health personnel and people in health care centers have been inoculated. long term. While still a presidential candidate, Biden published a plan in July to resume face-to-face classes during the pandemic in which he promised to send Congress a proposal for an emergency fund package of up to $ 30 billion to help reopen schools.
That plan says final decisions about reopening schools would rest with state and local authorities, but promised that it would ask federal agencies to establish “basic and objective criteria” to do so. Those criteria included that districts obtain the necessary funds to reconfigure classrooms to improve social distancing, as well as purchase protective equipment and devise plans to accommodate teachers and students at risk.
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