In my community, we have lots of children who are raised either partially or totally by their grandparents, whose families have been devastated by the opioid epidemic. This is a pretty common story here in Indiana and in other places across the country. While it’s unlikely that these kids will themselves succumb to complications of the coronavirus, they could risk bringing the virus with them from school to their medically-vulnerable caregivers.

These are kids who have attended their parents’ funerals, who are on supervised visitation status with noncustodial parents, and who have experienced more loss by elementary than some folks experience by adulthood. If we force them to go to school and contract this virus, and it kills their grandparents, that’s more loss they don’t need.

For some, it’ll mean nowhere else in the family to go.

It is beyond appalling that the very person who sold herself to the GOP on the basis of “educational choice”, is choosing for these kids another lifetime of grief, loss, and insecurity.