By Steve Klamkin WPRO News
Rhode Island’s governor is expressing confidence that students can be safe, as school leaders, teachers and parents all express deep concern about reopening schools this fall.
Despite mounting fears, Gov. Gina Raimondo says she is confident schools can reopen safely this fall.
“This is not going to be easy,” Raimondo told WPRO News in an interview Tuesday.
“I am not in any way diminishing how hard it’s going to be, how much work is going to be required. I understand they’re nervous, you know, I understand that. But we’re going to put our back into it because we owe it to our kids and our teachers in order to be able to get everyone back to school and do it safely.”
She stressed the importance of reopening schools, which she has set for August 31.
“If you talk to pediatricians and mental health experts, kids are really suffering from being out of school. Their mental health is suffering, their physical health is suffering, so we want to get kids back in school.”
“Not in Rhode Island,” said teachers’ union leader Robert Walsh, when asked if a return to schools is likely by the end of August. “In my personal opinion, not in Rhode Island,” repeated Walsh, Executive Director of the National Education Association of Rhode Island, the state’s largest teachers’ union. He expressed concerns about ensuring distancing in classrooms, on school buses and elsewhere.
Raimondo urged parents and others not to dwell on the coronavirus spikes in states in the south and southwest, but to focus on the travel of the virus here.
Raimondo and state Department of Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott said they have done a great deal of work to ensure students’ safety.
“We will do whatever it takes,” said Dr. Alexander-Scott. “We want to make sure parents know that and understand that.”
“We are collecting information internationally, on a national level, what’s going on regionally. We’re partnering with our pediatric provider community that’s here so Rhode Islanders can be confident that they had the best team in place to make sure that their kids are safe,” Alexander-Scott said.
