WASHINGTON — Officials from the across the Biden administration gathered virtually on Wednesday to push schools to reopen for in-person instruction, hoping to meet the president’s goal of opening the majority of elementary and middle schools by the end of April.
What was billed as the “National Safe School Reopening Summit” began with first lady Jill Biden, a professor of education, relating her own feelings about remote instruction. “It just isn’t the same,” she said, raising her hands in a show of teacherly frustration.
She then told a story that seemed to not-all-that-subtly capture the Biden administration’s predicament when it comes to the resistance of some districts to reopening classrooms. Meeting