Senate GOP: Brown shuts out school sports

By Oregon Senate Republican Office,

Governor Runs Away From Responsibility, Again
This time, on school sports

SALEM, Ore. – The Governor announced guidelines that high school sports must follow to resume outdoor contact sports. As has become expected, the guidelines offer little help for local school boards for whom the Governor has placed all responsibility for school reopenings, after she decided to shut them down last year. Teacher unions, who have been given all the power to decide whether kids ultimately go back into the classroom, will now have the say if kids can return to the field.

Senate Republican Leader Fred Girod (R-Lyons) released the following statement:

“I am glad a select few of our kids will be able to return to much-needed physical activity and competition. However, the Governor’s consistent pattern of running away from taking responsibility for undoing the damage her school closures have caused is troubling. She first gave teachers unions the power to lock students out of the classroom, despite data suggesting safe reopenings were possible. Now, she is giving them more power that will dictate if kids can play sports.”

Under Governor Brown’s new guidelines, schools in “high risk” and “extreme risk” counties must also have limited in-person instruction if they want to resume outdoor contact sports.

In the Governor’s press release that announced her decision, she said, “To all the parents of student-athletes and coaches who have called and emailed me in the last year asking for school sports to resume, I am challenging you now to devote your energy to making sure in-person academics can resume for your kids, too.”

“If only the Governor took as much responsibility for reopening schools as she asked of parents, we may be out of this mess,” Girod concluded. “Her department is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to assist schools with safely reopening and COVID precautions, but no one knows her plan on how to use it.”