By Joséphine Li
Due to repeated violations of Covid guidelines, Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law have withdrawn their children from school.
For the past three years, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s three children have attended a private school in Washington. Recently, school administrators have expressed concern about the couple’s public flouting of Covid-19 guidelines, ultimately resulting in the three grandchildren of President Donald Trump — Arabella, Theodore and Joseph, being withdrawn from the institution by their parents.
According to informed sources, Kushner and Trump repeatedly breached the regulations outlined in the school’s parent handbook for Covid-19 precautionary regulations.
In the wake of the complaints and requests to change their behavior — to do things like wear facial coverings, social-distance and self-quarantine if exposed to someone infected with the virus — Kushner and Trump withdrew their children from the school, the source said.
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The school, which is currently conducting limited in-person learning due to the pandemic, had put in place prevention protocols for staff, parents, students, and family members, in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to safeguard the health and safety of the community.
The source noted that several fellow parents also complained to the school about Kushner and Trump’s flagrant lack of adherence to the parent handbook.
Two sources revealed that it was the school that ultimately decided to confront Kushner and Trump about the violations, and it did so independently of the parent complaints.
White House Spokeswoman Carolina Hurley addressed the situation, saying, “Unnamed sources attacking a family’s decision about what is best for their kids in the middle of a pandemic is shameful.”
“As is true for all families, schooling choices and education are deeply personal decisions and they owe no one, especially idle gossips seeking press attention, an explanation.” Said Hurley, in response to uproar over Kushner and Trump’s controversial behavior.
The source at the school reiterated several times that the concern was led by the school’s leadership and that attempts were made to resolve the issue and keep the family at the school.
In late September, at least 12 white house staff became infected with the Covid-19 after attending the nomination ceremony for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, many of them senior administration staff with regular interaction with the couple. At the school attended by their children, many parents took note of the superspreader event and called the school principals to express concern. The main concern was the environment in which Trump and Kushner worked, where cases of highly contagious viruses were rampant and there was no regulation of wearing face coverings and maintaining social distance.
Parents also complained that 3 days after the Barrett event, Ivanka Trump attended the first presidential debate between her father and now President-elect Joe Biden and, along with the rest of the Trump family members, did not wear a mask. The youngest Kushner child was attending school in person at that time, and the two older children were attending school in person once a week, the same source with knowledge of the events said.
The school principal and other administrators tried to remedy the situation with Kushner and Trump by reminding them of the handbook regulations. The school’s nurse sent a note to the couple reiterating the agreed-upon policy that any parent or child who might have been exposed to coronavirus must be tested and enter a voluntary quarantine for two weeks, out of an abundance of caution.
Trump and Kushner were not quarantined for two weeks after the Barrett event, nor after the post-debate, and they were still not quarantined following the positive Covid diagnoses of the President and first lady Melania Trump in early October.
On October 11, Ivanka Trump returned to the campaign trail, visiting Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin that week.
Behind the scenes, in addition to the nurse’s note, the school attempted to negotiate terms with the family to keep the children at the school while ensuring the protocols were not violated.
Ultimately, the couple decided to pull their children from the school.
