First, from Paul Bois of the Daily Wire…
Former “Saturday Night Live” actor Rob Schneider seemingly denounced extreme COVID-19 safety protocols in schools as a taxpayer-funded “form of child abuse.”
In a tweet on Saturday, the “Grown Ups” actor shared a video from an elementary school classroom showing rows of desks surrounded by plexiglass.
“This is bad: Forest brook Elementary teacher Teresa Holmes recorded a video of her classroom which has 28 desks now armed with plexiglass shields,” said the Twitter account.
“We are witnessing a new kind of child abuse: bought and paid for with YOUR tax dollars,” responded Schneider. “The collapse of public schools who follow this example will surely follow. History will not look back at this kindly.”
In the video, the teacher lamented how the school board spent up to $5 million on plexiglass and safety measures without seeming to consider the practicality of teaching in such an environment.
“This is my classroom. I have a rather large classroom compared to the other classrooms in our building. But I have 28 desks in here right now, if we go back [to] five days a week, I’ll have 30 or 32 with the kids coming back from virtual,” said the teacher.
“This is the middle seat of the back row of my classroom, this is their view of the board,” she said. “So I’m just wondering, when we ordered this $5 million worth of plexiglass, did we have a classroom of 28 desks set up to where school board members could sit in them and see what this was really going to be like? Because I’m still trying to figure out how, in between my classes, am I supposed to disinfect, how I’m supposed to hear my students when they’re in the back of the room wearing a mask behind all this plexiglass?”
As The Daily Wire reported, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that students can return to school without mass teacher vaccination so long as masks are mandatory.
“I’m a strong advocate of teachers receiving their vaccinations, but we don’t believe it’s a prerequisite for schools to reopen,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told CNN on Sunday.
“We have in the guidance clear language that specifies that teachers that are at higher risk, teachers and students that are higher risk, and their families, should have options for virtual activities, virtual learning, virtual teaching,” she continued.
Walensky also told Fox News Sunday that in-person learning would require universal masking for students.
“We are advocating, with the strict mitigation measures … including universal and mandatory masking as well as six-foot of distancing, that at least our K-5 children should be able to get back to school at least in a hybrid mode,” she said.
Critics of the new CDC guidelines have pointed out that they have set impossible standards for reopening without mass vaccination, leading to speculation that the teacher’s unions had a heavy hand in influencing them.
“I have to say, I feel a little dispirited after this conversation because I had high hopes that schools would be able to resume in-person learning because so many scientists and health officials, including you and Dr. Fauci and others, have been talking about the science supports opening the schools as much as possible,” CNN’s Jake Tapper told Walensky during the interview on Sunday.
“I know that a lot of teachers are very concerned, and I know that teacher’s unions have been pushing back on this, but it sounds to me like you’re asking for one hundred percent mask compliance and a number of measures that we’re never going to be able to achieve, and that makes me feel like, boy, I don’t know if the schools are ever going to open until everybody’s vaccinated,” he continued.
Related: CDC Director: Schools Can Open Without Teacher Vaccines But Require Mandatory Masking
=============
AND now, from Alex Parker of RedState
If liking Rob Schneider is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
But it has nothing to do with his politics.
I enjoy the guy because his movies have a lightness of touch and indulge in the joy of silliness.
And for acting chops, check out his performance in the great 50 First Dates.
But Rob’s got more up his sleeve than comedy: As it turns out, the entertainer’s a proponent of liberty.
For more:
“Rob Schneider Reminds Us Again of the Importance of Liberty – and Why Hollywood Needs More Like Him”
And:
“Rob Schneider is Great — Watch the Comedian Defend the Liberties of America”
As relayed by TDW, the CDC recently said kids can return to school — with masks, and without teachers having been vaccinated en masse.
From Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky to CNN Sunday:
“I’m a strong advocate of teachers receiving their vaccinations, but we don’t believe it’s a prerequisite for schools to reopen. We have in the guidance clear language that specifies that teachers that are at higher risk, teachers and students that are higher risk, and their families, should have options for virtual activities, virtual learning, virtual teaching.”
More on Masks, as she explained to Fox News:
“We are advocating, with the strict mitigation measures…including universal and mandatory masking as well as six-foot of distancing, that at least our K-5 children should be able to get back to school at least in a hybrid mode.”
As you may have heard, teachers unions aren’t big on the go-back.
In fact, some have labeled the effort white supremacy.
Meanwhile, a school system in Las Vegas is reuniting kids after a surge of suicide.
And a recent study indicated minimal transmission in kid-kid/kid-teacher viral transmission.
You know it’s bad when the students want to go back to school, but I suspect that’s strongly the case for the country’s isolated young. At the end of each summer, it was certainly never the case for me.
Then again, I played outside with my friends.
These days, I’m not sure youngsters know there is an outside.
Either way, here’s hoping for a return to normalcy.
If — that is — we can do it while avoiding racism.
Word is, it’s embedded in our math classes.
Good luck, kiddos. And America.