Mike Pence Urges In-Person School During Visit To North Carolina

APEX, N.C. — Vice President Mike Pence vowed Wednesday that schools around the country will have the resources they need to reopen for in-person learning as he visited a classroom of masked fourth graders at a North Carolina private school.

Accompanied by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Pence visited a Raleigh-area campus of Thales Academy as part of a push to encourage more K-12 schools to reopen with in-person instruction.

“We’re all gonna make sure schools across America have the support to open up and stay open,” Pence said in the classroom. He added that he was there “to help states be able to have the resources and the guidance they need to reopen schools safely.”

Seated in front of a whiteboard that said “Welcome Vice President Pence,” Pence and DeVos removed their masks while the vice president took several questions from students. The teacher and most of her 11 students had on masks, and desks were placed several feet apart.

Asked, on a scale of 1-10, of how much he likes being Vice President, he said “11.” He told the students, “Study hard, pray harder. Sky’s the limit.”

After visiting the classroom, Pence participated in a roundtable discussion at the campus that welcomed back 300 students in July. The vice president stressed that “online learning is no substitute for in-person learning” and said data indicate that COVID-19 poses a low risk to most children.

“The one thing we know studying the data from around America and around the world is the risk the coronavirus poses to healthy children is very low,” he said.

Health experts have expressed concern that children could spread the virus and infect their parents or other adults who are at higher risk.

The visit comes as President Donald Trump and DeVos have threatened to withhold federal funding from K-12 schools that don’t allow all of their students to return to physical classrooms.

During the roundtable, DeVos said students in North Carolina and around the country need to return to classrooms.

“There’s too many schools in this state and others that are ignoring parents and leaving schools closed,” she said.

Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper announced earlier this month that public schools may offer a mix of both online and in-person instruction, though districts can choose to offer fully remote learning.

“We don’t respond to those kind of threats,” Cooper said in a July 14 news conference of the Trump administration’s consideration of withholding federal funds.

After his visit to Thales Academy, Pence was scheduled to tour NCBiotech, which is conducting Phase 3 clinical trials for a coronavirus vaccine. Pence’s appearance comes two days after Trump visited Morrisville to tout the country’s progress in developing a COVID-19 vaccine under his Operation Warp Speed initiative.