Skip to main content

1889 Institute's Statement Regarding School Closures


The 1889 Institute, an Oklahoma think tank, has released the following statement regarding Joy Hofmeister’s proposal to keep schools closed for the remainder of the school year.

We at the 1889 Institute consider Joy Hofmeister’s proposal to close Oklahoma’s schools for the rest of the school year a gross overreaction to the coronavirus situation. Even in the best of times and circumstances, suddenly shifting every student in the state from traditional classrooms to online distance learning will have negative educational consequences. This in addition to the economic burden on two-earner families forced to completely reorder their lives with schools closed.

We believe many of our leaders have overreacted to worst-case scenarios presented by well-intended health experts with no training or sense of proportion in weighing the collateral damage of shutting down our economy versus targeting resources to protect the truly vulnerable. We say reopen the schools and stop the madness. Only truly vulnerable students and staff should stay home.

Our position is buttressed by Dr. David L. Katz, a specialist in preventive medicine and public health, president of True Health Initiative and the founding director of Yale University’s Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center. In a recent New York Times editorial, he suggested a more surgical approach given that the current actions shutting down our society and economy are likely worse than the disease. He suggests only those over 75, and other high-risk individuals, shelter in place. Everyone else should take sanitation precautions, practice social distancing, and carry on normally, with those over 60 being especially careful. 

No children less than 10 years old have been documented to have died from Covid-19. Yet, the response on the part of local and national leaders has been as if every individual is at mortal risk and grossly disproportionate to the danger. The same point has been made by Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis, co-director of Stanford’s Meta-Research Innovation Center and professor of medicine, biomedical data science, statistics, and epidemiology and population health of Stanford University. His data analysis indicates that the response to Covid-19 may well be “a fiasco in the making.”

We should follow the advice of Dr. Katz and have truly vulnerable populations shelter themselves while the rest of us carry on our daily lives and provide for the vulnerable, with resources readily available but for hoarding caused by some leaders’ overreactions. This approach would maximize protection for those truly at risk while minimizing losses for the rest of society, including Oklahoma’s children and their parents. 

 Byron Schlomach is Director at the1889 Institute. He can be contacted at bschlomach@1889institute.org.

Popular posts from this blog

Lies We Tell in Government, and Our Debts to Truth

HBO’s mini-series,  Chernobyl ,  is a drama depicting  the disastrous  1986  explosion ,  and  hero ic efforts to control the  resulting  meltdown ,  of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine  (then part of the Soviet Union ).  A flawed man, but true hero,  Valery  Alexeyvich   Legasov , worked tirelessly to ameliorate the disaster’s consequences and  chiefly  investigated its cause. He was  Deputy Director of the  Kurchatov  Institute of Atomic Energ y , a Soviet elite, who  is portrayed at the end of  the  series making a dramatic speech at a trial about how the nuclear reactor exploded, when  such an explosion in that type of reactor  should not have been possible. In the course of the series, the audience  learns  that the reactor had a design flaw that had been covered up by the Soviet State (true).  The audience also learns  that...
Read more

Present Reforms to Keep the Ghost of State Questions Past from Creating Future Headaches

Oklahoma, like many western states, allows its citizens to directly participate in the democratic process through citizen initiatives and referendums. In a referendum, the legislature directs a question to the people — usually to modify the state constitution, since the legislature can change statutes itself. An initiative requires no legislative involvement, but is initiated by the people via signature gathering, and can be used to modify statute or amend the constitution. Collectively, the initiatives and referendums that make it onto the ballot are known as State Questions.   Recently, there have been calls to make it more difficult to amend the constitution. At least two proposals are being discussed. One would diversify the signature requirement by demanding that a proportional amount of signatures come from each region of the state. The other would require a sixty percent majority to adopt a constitutional amendment rather than the fifty percent plus one currently in place. ...
Read more

When It Comes to the Cox Center, “What if I Get to Meet a Movie Star?” Isn’t Good Enough

In a recent   post , 1889 Institute expounded on the fiduciary duty of elected officials “to act in the best interest of the people of the state as a whole,” a “high duty, executed as a public trust … wherein one puts the people’s interest above one’s own.” This fiduciary duty must not stop with elected officials. Once an elected body or an elected official – the legislature, a city council, the governor, or a mayor – has taken final action, the faithful implementation of each enacted law, policy, or program falls to an army of bureaucrats. Thus, a fiduciary duty to execute laws and policies with diligence and integrity, tantamount to that of elected officials, must extend to government employees. Recently, I had a few moments to sit down and watch a show with my children. Unsurprisingly, my son picked a series entitled “The Stinky and Dirty Show.” I was naturally skeptical that the show would yield any real value. However, as I watched, I found myself pleasantly surprised. Each ep...
Read more

Licensing Boards Might Violate Federal Law: Regardless, They Are Terrible Policy

Competition is as American as baseball and apple pie. “May the best man win” is a sentiment so old it doesn’t care about your pronouns. The beneficial effects of competition on economic markets are well documented. So why do we let powerful business interests change the rules of the game when they tire of competing in the free market? Most of the time when an occupational license is enacted, it is the members of the regulated industry who push hardest in favor of the license. Honest competition may be fundamentally American, but thwarting that competition through licensing seems to be fundamentally Oklahoman. Oklahoma doesn’t have the most occupational licenses, but when they do license an occupation, the requirements tend to be more onerous than the same license in other states. But what if, instead of merely breaking the rules of fair play to keep out would-be competition, Oklahoma licensing boards are also breaking the law? Normally a concerted effort to lock out competition would v...
Read more