Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Tom Perez encouraged fellow Democrats to blame President Donald Trump if public schools fail when they reopen from the coronavirus in the fall.
A report from Education Week notes that Perez bashed President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos during a virtual conference hosted by the DNC on Wednesday concerning education in Michigan.
Perez said that rather than blaming state or local school officials, Democrats should blame President Trump if schools struggle as they try to reopen.
From Education Week:
When we asked Perez why Trump should shoulder primary responsibility if schools struggle, given that state and local leaders have more direct power over K-12 education, he countered that the impact of the president's failure to properly address the pandemic in January and February was "impossible to overstate." Without a strong testing and tracing system, he said, schools ultimately would not be able to pick up where they left off.
Perez also balked at the idea that "if we are unable to open up our schools again, it's somehow a failure locally when you've had this abject failure of the federal government to lead."
He added, "For this president, the buck stops anywhere but him."
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