Sawsan Morrar and Phillip Reese reported for the Sacramento Bee on Friday that, in California, schools that re-opened sooner rather than later in the middle of the pandemic tended to be in districts where voters supported Donald Trump. The headline is, "Which districts in California are most likely to have open schools? Here’s what the data shows." Here's a provocative excerpt:
REOPENING IN TRUMP COUNTRY
The 10 school districts in the Sacramento region where voters most heavily favored Trump are mostly in rural or exurban areas. They cover much of El Dorado and Placer counties.
Morrar, interviewed me about this, and I'm including just the rural-urban "why" of the article here, though the piece is well worth a read in its entirety:
URBAN-SUBURBAN-RURAL DIVIDES
Dr. Lisa Pruitt, a UC Davis Law professor who is an expert in the urban/rural divide and income inequality, said partisan school reopenings are no surprise when the pandemic became so polarized along party lines to begin with.
“The red and blue camps have chosen to take different risks, and interpret the scientific data consistent with political polarization,” she said.
Republican states like Texas and Florida lifted many of their COVID-19 safety protocols.
“People do decide what risks they are willing to take, based on their political leanings,” she said. “It’s a matter of which risks you choose to live with.”
But those political leanings can stem from cultural and generational attitudes, and don’t respect salient lines between urban, suburban, and rural areas.
Some people from rural communities tend to be less receptive toward government intervention, Pruitt said, leaning in on a proud history of self-sufficiency.
“Rural places are more static and more traditional,” Pruitt said, adding that people outside of cities have a better sense of their vulnerabilities, accepting hardships — informing their attitude towards the coronavirus pandemic. “When something like the pandemic comes along, some people may say: life is tough, people will die, but we are doing the best we can. In urban places, we are more convinced that we can control our destiny.”
It wasn’t too long ago that places like Folsom were considered exurbs, just further out from suburban neighborhoods. Many people who live outside of the city are just one generation removed from farm life.
“They are more likely to have a rural mindset,” she said. “And that plays out in Folsom, Elk Grove, and Placerville.”
In many school districts, voters were relatively divided between Trump and Biden. Of these 10 districts, eight are back to face-to-face learning and two are distance learning only.
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