Missouri Republicans risk lives to score political points with push to reopen schools

Are two of Missouri’s top Republicans willing to risk lives to score political points?

Gov. Mike Parson and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s aggressive push to reopen K-12 schools, deadly pandemic be darned, has struck an increasingly callous note in recent days.

Missouri has not yet managed to slow the spread of the coronavirus, and Parson, who has declined to impose a statewide mask mandate, has shown no interest in taking even simple steps to protect public health.

But Parson and Ashcroft are willing to risk the health of teachers and students by urging them to return to in-person classes even as COVID-19 cases continue to multiply.

“We have to get our students back to high-quality learning,” Parson wrote in a recent Twitter post. “A lack of in-person learning can deprive students, especially our most disadvantaged students, access to important services.”

The message came a week after Parson suggested schoolchildren would contract the coronavirus, and that they would eventually “get over it.”

Ashcroft offered a similarly tone-deaf argument, suggesting that fathers should be willing to risk death to send their children back to school.

“At some point, we need to just put our heads down and say we’re gonna get through it, and we definitely need to send our kids back to school,” he said in a radio interview.

He later backtracked.

But the question remains: Why push a return-to-school agenda amid a pandemic? It is important to get kids back to school, but above all else, it must be done safely. Somehow, that point keeps getting lost in the school-is-worth-dying-for message.

This story was originally published August 9, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Missouri Republicans risk lives to score political points with push to reopen schools."