Despite expectations Gov. Doug Ducey would announce rules this week for schools reopening, Ducey instead pushed the deadline for health guidance back to Aug. 7, giving school districts only ten days to reopen once the guidance is published. | Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels
Despite expectations Gov. Doug Ducey would announce rules this week for schools reopening, Ducey instead pushed the deadline for health guidance back to Aug. 7, giving school districts only ten days to reopen once the guidance is published. | Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels
David Peelman, who is running to represent Apache County and the Seventh District in the Arizona House of Representatives, said he wants Gov. Doug Ducey to rescind actions he has taken that Peelman says are deeply harmful to schools, businesses and residents of District 7.
“Living in Apache County, the poorest, least livable county in the United States, the governor’s [executive order] has crippled the few small businesses in our community,” Peelman recently told East Arizona News. “We do not enjoy the benefits or employment opportunities the big box stores or industry offer.”
And those problems unique to low-population areas of the state translate into the challenges for education as well.
“We have one K-12 school, where administrators, teachers, parents or students don’t have a clue as to what will take place in the coming months,” Peelman told East Arizona News. “The community has lost faith in a feckless governor run amok without legislative control. More and more families are turning – justly so – to home schooling and other alternatives for their children’s education.”
On Thursday, Ducey appeared in a joint press conference with Arizona Department of Education Superintendent Kathy Hoffman.
Ducey had been expected to make a decision about reopening schools this week, according to reporting by 12News.
However, Arizona Central reported that the Thursday press conference only resulted in promises to pressure health officials for more guidelines. Ducey said during the press conference that he had given public health officials until Friday, Aug. 7 to choose date for schools to rely on when making the decision whether to reopen.
Though Ducey said more data is needed for reopening decisions, he also said that any reopening of schools would include a mask mandate with room for individual exceptions.
Under Ducey’s most recent executive order, school districts would then only have 10 days to reopen in order to be eligible for the additional $370 million in CARES Act funds being offered to schools by the governor’s office.
Yet, Peelman said that in all the details, it’s important not to lose sight of how much more there is in the world and the country than just a single virus in light of how many viruses humanity has survived.
“This is the first time the U.S., through its different governors, have set about to not only shut down and infringe upon Constitutionally protected God-given rights, specifically the First and Fifth Amendments, and disembowel small business owners, disenfranchise and subjugate through government payments employees of small business, curtail and delay tax payer funded education for children,” Peelman told East Arizona News.
He said the current executive orders of Ducey, and that of about 35 other governors, have not empirically proven to be effective at stopping or mitigating any virus – only harming the citizenry.
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