Majority worried about reopening schools: poll

by Marty Johnson - 06/24/20 9:02 AM ET

The majority of Americans surveyed in a new poll said they are concerned about schools reopening in the fall amid surges of new COVID-19 cases in multiple states.

In the Politico-Morning Consult poll, 54 percent of respondents said they are either somewhat uncomfortable or very uncomfortable with K-12 schools reopening this fall, and 58 percent said they’re uncomfortable with day care facilities reopening. Additionally, 48 percent said that they are very or somewhat uncomfortable with colleges reopening, while 43 percent said that they are OK with it.

In May, pollsters asked a similar question: Is it a good or bad idea to open schools? Then, 41 percent of respondents said that opening K-12 schools was a bad idea, and 44 percent said the same thing about opening day cares. When it came to colleges, 38 percent said it was a bad idea.

Even as states around the country experience record daily numbers of COVID-19 cases, governors and local officials are working on plans to have students of all ages return to classrooms in the fall.

Robert Redfield, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a congressional panel on Tuesday that the CDC would soon release further guidance for schools districts and colleges to follow when preparing to reopen.

At the same hearing, Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious diseases expert, said that reopening schools would be a multistep process.

“What you can’t forget is that if you get infected and spread the infection, even though you do not get sick, you are part of the process of the dynamics of an outbreak,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said. “And what you might be propagating — inadvertently, perhaps innocently — is infecting someone, who then infects someone, who then is someone who’s vulnerable.”

The new poll, conducted June 19-21, surveyed nearly 2,000 registered voters. It has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

Tags Anthony Fauci coronavirus pandemic Education K-12 schools poll Robert Redfield US colleges and universities