Ayanna Pressley to Betsy DeVos on schools reopening: ‘I wouldn’t trust you to care for a house plant, let alone my child’

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been pushing for all schools to reopen this fall amid the coronavirus pandemic.


By Arianna MacNeill, Boston.com Staff July 12, 2020 | 3:45 PM


In criticizing U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s demand that all schools reopen this fall amid the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley said, “you have no plan.”

“Teachers, kids and parents are fearing for their lives,” she wrote on Twitter Sunday afternoon. “You point to a private sector that has put profits over people and claimed the lives of thousands of essential workers. I wouldn’t trust you to care for a house plant let alone my child.”

Pressley’s comments accompanied a retweet of a CNN Politics video of DeVos being interviewed about kids returning to school.

“What we’re saying is that kids need to be back in school and that school leaders across the country need to be making plans to do just that,” DeVos told CNN. “There’s going to be the exception to the rule, but the rule should be that kids go back to school this fall. And where there are little flare ups or hot spots, that can be dealt with on a school-by-school or a case-by-case basis, and there’s ample opportunity to have kids in school.”