DeVos softens position on schools reopening in Georgia visit

CUMMING, Ga. (AP) — U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has softened earlier comments that called for schools to reopen for in-person instruction for all, saying during a visit to a Georgia high school Tuesday that what she really wants to see is “100% learning.”

“I think perhaps there’s been a little bit of a misunderstanding that going back to school meant 100% of the students had to be in-person 100% of the time,” DeVos said at Forsyth Central High School in suburban Atlanta. “No, the expectation is that there’s 100% learning in a way that’s going to work for each family and each student, and importantly, in each community and each school.”

DeVos and President Donald Trump have been pressuring school systems to open in person, a position that has prompted demonstrations and shouting matches at school board meetings in some places as school leaders have wrestled with their options. Trump at one point threatened to withhold federal funding for schools that do not bring their students back in the fall.

On July 7, DeVos criticized leaders of the mammoth Fairfax County system in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., for giving parents a choice of hybrid classes in person two days a week or learning remotely all the time.

“A choice of two days per week in the classroom is not a choice at all,” DeVos said in a call with governors, also saying schools must be “fully operational.”

Speaking at a news conference in South Carolina on July 21, DeVos said relief funding should be directed at families, not schools, so students could go elsewhere if their local school is “refusing to open.”

The 56,000-student Forsyth district is the largest school system in Georgia to have resumed full-time in person instruction for any student who wants it, with about 30% of parents instead choosing the...