During a global pandemic, threats to withhold funding from schools are unhelpful, says Indiana School Superintendent Jennifer McCormick.

“This week, our governor’s office and our general assembly came out, and there’s a little bit of squabble over reducing funding if we don’t open our doors,” McCormick said on CNN Sunday. “You have a lot of health departments put in the middle of that, and a lot local superintendents put in the middle of that. I was a local superintendent. I would not appreciate the threat of money being held over my head during a pandemic.”

In addition, according to McCormick, parents are feeling increasingly unsafe about sending their children to school.

“In June, when we polled, many of our districts had 20-30% of our families that said they felt unsafe, and were going to opt for the virtual option,” McCormick said. “Now, fast forward, those numbers aren’t looking good and the trends are going up — that percentage is higher.”

McCormick says she believes the biggest struggle for schools is contact tracing, primarily because the process requires a lot of people to help out. As a result, McCormick admits the pandemic has been a struggle, but maintains that she and other health departments are “watching things closely.”

“It is very different in some of our rural areas versus some of our urban, more populated areas,” McCormick said. “We’re watching the positivity rates, we’re watching the trends, we’re watching closely the regional activity.”