Grand Rapids Reporter

A public schools advocacy group's mobile billboard criticizing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and President Donald Trump, which has been winding through Michigan since last summer, will be in the counties of Kent, Ingham and Ottawa this week.

The bright red mobile billboard, paid for by the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Neighbors for Public Schools, will be in Lansing, Grand Rapids and Holland. The billboard, which sharply criticizes DeVos and Trump for their failure to control and handle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, was in Flint and Saginaw last week.

The billboard presents images of DeVos next to Trump and balloon comments from each. DeVos' comment says, "Kids are actually stoppers of the disease," a reference to her comment in July, despite more than 5,000 COVID-19 cases in Michigan schools and colleges.

Next to her, Trump's balloon says, "I wanted to always play it down," a reference to his comment during an interview with journalist Bob Woodward, revealed in September.  

Beneath the images of DeVos and Trump is the sentence, "The only thing they played with was our lives."

Trump and DeVos "have been irresponsible and reckless with their handling of COVID-19 and school re-openings," Dr. Jimmy Womack, a retired physician and former president of the Detroit Board of Education, said about the billboard's message.

"Trump and DeVos spent this past summer trying to force every school to reopen regardless of risk or precautions," Womack said. "They played with our kids' lives and our lives."

Womack and others have for months been critical of DeVos and Trump's handling of the pandemic. In August, Womack criticized the decision not to reopen the school of Trump's son, Barron.

"If the president's son's school is not opening, I don't understand why Betsy DeVos is sending money that should be for COVID protection to private schools that are going to do virtual learning," Womack said in an Aug. 7 news release. "What are they doing with that money?"

In the same news release, Eighth District state Rep. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo (D-Detroit), accused Trump of being DeVos' "puppet master" and said both were "playing games with the lives of people all over the country,"

"You can't market your way into convincing parents that it's safe, or teachers that it's safe," Gay-Dagnogo said. "There should be a rubric or some type of guideline to highlight checkoffs that show that the HVAC systems are up to date. If they're not new, that they are being serviced regularly."

The Neighbors for Public Schools' mobile billboard is planning stops that include Trump's Michigan campaign offices, county GOP offices, Democratic Party offices and public schools.

Other stops are expected to include the Flint Farmers' Market, the Genesee County GOP office, Republican Party-Saginaw County, State Capitol/Washington Square, the office of U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Grand Rapids City Hall.

Neighbors for Public Schools describes itself as "a community of parents, teachers, education experts and community leaders who are dedicated to understanding the challenges facing public schools and the common-sense solutions to improving them."

Neighbors for Public Schools says its mission "is to educate Michigan's communities about the challenges facing K-12 public schools, and to analyze solutions to those challenges."