Teachers unions: "Follow the science".

Grocery shelf-stockers, nurses, cashiers, yes; teachers: run away! (But we’’ll keep our paychecks, thank you very much)

Marco Rubio invites them to do so.

When schools first closed because of the pandemic, the unions pledged to return when it was "safe" to do so. The AFT’s president called on Americans to "summon the will to follow science both in school and out." The National Education Association’s head similarly declared that when "it comes to ensuring safe, in-person instruction, we must rely on public health officials and scientists for what they know best."

President Joe Biden's chief of staff Ron Klain is now saying that virtual learning should drag on longer. Why? As he put it: " I’ll give you a word, money."

Flying in the face of the CDC, he and the unions are demanding more cash. Klain went on to move the goalposts and say there needs to be "a lot more classrooms, a lot more teachers" before schools reopen. That isn’t a formula for a swift and long-overdue return to classrooms.

It does, however, happen to align with long-held goals of the national teachers’ unions.

The head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) said the Biden administration is simply "siding with the science and trying to get this pandemic under control and trying to open schools safely."

When schools first closed because of the pandemic, the unions pledged to return when it was "safe" to do so. The AFT’s president called on Americans to "summon the will to follow science both in school and out." The National Education Association’s head similarly declared that when "it comes to ensuring safe, in-person instruction, we must rely on public health officials and scientists for what they know best."

The CDC has now made clear that we’ve reached that point. Indeed, states like Florida and many private and parochial schools around the country have safely been opened for far longer.

If the national teachers’ unions and their local affiliates in Chicago, New Jersey, California and elsewhere really wanted to follow the science, they would be working with local governments to open our schools right now, not demanding more taxpayer dollars. They would recognize that, with student suicide rates surging around the country, there is in fact a need to hurry back.

Rubio proposes giving school unions a 100-day grace period, counting down from Inauguration Day, to return. Schools that don’t reopen would be denied federal funding, with the money diverted to schools that have. Works for me.

Studies of hundreds of thousands of students have shown that schools are not “a significant source of infection”. Even NPR got around to reporting that in October, but the unions stand fast on their refusal to work. Stuff it.