(JTA) — Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump will be sending their three children — the grandchildren of President Donald Trump — back to in-person classes at their Jewish day school this fall.
“This virus impacts different people in different ways. We know a lot more now than we did,” Kushner, a White House senior adviser and son-in-law of the president, said Sunday on the CBS news show “Face the Nation.” “And assuming our school is not opening up five days a week, I wish they were, but we absolutely will be sending our kids back to school and I have no fear in doing so.
“Children have a six times higher chance to die from the flu than from the coronavirus. So, based on the data I’ve seen, I don’t believe that that’s a risk.”
The couple’s children — aged 9, 6 and 5 — attend the Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School, which sent a 17-page document to parents detailing its plan to reopen for this academic year. Under the plan, the Washington, D.C., school will start the 2020-21 academic year with an “Off-Campus & Outdoor model,” combining distance learning for academic instruction, with “regular in-person opportunities for outdoor education and community building.”
Kushner has been involved in the White House response to the pandemic and praised the Trump administration for taking control of the coronavirus. Trump has been pushing for schools to reopen for in-person classes.
“The president has taken a very aggressive approach, not just in the hot spots, but also in what we call the ember cities to push all the different measures that we can take, like wearing a mask, social distancing, using best practice,” he said. “Most importantly, the president really advanced the use of a lot of therapeutics, which is bringing the case fatality rate down better, which has been a good thing and obviously accelerating a vaccine.”
Kushner added: “As the federal government, we’ve been trying to share best practices. We’ve been speaking with a lot of governors and we’ve been making sure that all the different states have all the resources they need in order to take a tailored strategy, given the data that they see on the ground.”
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