In Europe, socialists championed reopening schools and keeping them open.

Many European center-left politicians supported reopening schools — as early as spring 2020 — despite significant coronavirus transmission and suboptimal buildings.

A New York Times story published Monday reignited a heated debate among Americans about the political consequences of extended school closures and pandemic mandates. In this piece, I don’t want to dive into that debate, which has sometimes framed demands to reopen schools or lift mask mandates as racist or right-wing, but instead point out that, in many European countries, it was center-left politicians — identifying as social democrats or socialists — who championed reopening schools and a return to normalcy for children.

One of the most prominent European socialists to celebrate reopening schools — and someone who did so in a city with antiquated and crowded school buildings — was Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, a darling of the American Left for her efforts to remove cars from Paris and a recent presidential candidate. On May 14, 2020, the socialist mayor tweeted a thread noting that 92 percent of Paris schools were reopening in an “important first step for our city.”