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The
pressure is on public school districts and teacher unions to reopen
our public schools as quickly as possible. From California to
Michigan to Florida, there is escalating pressure for in-person
education to get our students back on track academically and
emotionally. Few disagree that this method is best for their overall
development as citizens.
Many
people paint teacher unions and school administrators as
money-grubbing villains for being selfish and uncaring and for not
getting on board with this noble agenda. Authorities give them
guidelines and promise funding to ensure the safety of teachers and
students. And most hold the view that in-person schooling will
overcome the failure and mental health challenges of remote learning.
This
perspective has been buttressed by the Center for Disease Control’s
(CDC) recommendation that schools can be reopened with the right
protections and has been reinforced by the nation’s leading
medical authority on infectious diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
But
these advocates for reopening schools omit the fact that low-income
students of color in urban and rural districts have always trailed
their middle class White counterparts academically and that their
return to in-person education, alone, will not magically improve
their educational outcomes. Without strong COVID-19 mitigation, the
rapid return to school will be a dumpster fire.
It
is naïve to assume that a return to the classroom is a cure for
longstanding educational deficits. In addition, provisions for
testing for the coronavirus and the vaccination of teachers have not
been on the front burner of this initiative. Less than half of the 50
states have even labeled teachers as essential workers which would
place them early in the queue for the COVID-19 shot. And teachers’
underlying health conditions have not been adequately considered.
Meanwhile,
poor Latinx, African American, Native American, and Asian and Pacific
Islander students, residing in communities already ravaged by the
disease, are at significant risk for acquiring the coronavirus and
whose parents are at the back of the line for getting vaccinated,
will not necessarily benefit from a physical return to school.
These
students effectively live in bubbles of disproportionality at home
that they carry with them to school in those neighborhoods and
districts populated by low-income majority-minority students. Their
communities continue to experience an Apartheid-type of access to
health care, food security, employment, voting, and the current
rollout of the coronavirus vaccine.
It
is understandable that parents, many of whom are essential workers in
low- to modest-wage jobs with high risk of exposure to the
coronavirus, are pushing for schools to reopen as they need some
place for their children to go during their work hours. The
proponents of the reopening schools initiative have stoked these
parent concerns to their advantage.
Another
tool that is being employed by reopening schools’ backers is
the threat of reducing funding for those districts and recalcitrant
teacher unions that do not comply with this mandate. (Ironically,
these districts have been deprived of sufficient fiscal support for
years.) Legislatures throughout the nation are rushing to pass laws
to realize this aim. In the interim, big-city mayors (e.g., Chicago
Mayor Lori Lightfoot) are in pitched battles with teacher unions to
begin in-person instruction.
Yet,
these city executives cannot guarantee funding for the safe reopening
of schools for teachers or students. This financing has become even
more urgent as the nation faces new mutating COVID-19 strains that
are thought
to be more transmissible than previous ones.
As
the U.S. coronavirus infection and death rates have worsened and
opportunities for rapid spread are exploding, it is imperative that
we take precautions to protect teachers, students, and parents.
For
example, the upscale Nicolet High School District, which includes the
northern Milwaukee, Wisconsin suburbs of Bayside, Fox Point,
Glendale, and River Hills, opened in-person classes on January 25th.
Last Sunday, the principal called a student and advised her that she
needed to quarantine for 14 days because of direct exposure to
another student who tested positive COVID-19. He stated that it was
okay for her brother who lives in the same household to come back to
Nicolet.
Given
that her whole family had been indirectly exposed to the coronavirus
for an entire weekend, it is perplexing that the information was not
provided until the night before school opened. If this can happen in
an upper-income school, we can only imagine what would occur in
under-resourced urban schools.
The
reopening of schools during an unabated pandemic without stringent
safety precautions for students, teachers, and administrators is
foolhardy. Teacher unions are right in their demands that testing,
vaccinations, strict ventilation protocols, personal protective
equipment, social distancing, and regular hand-washing be instituted
and monitored before authorizing a return to the classroom for
students in socially- and economically-distressed environments.
Although
President Biden has promised robust funding for schools serving poor
students, who are overwhelmingly of color, he needs to put the money
on the table and make sure it reaches the schools before his
administration pushes his reopening schools plan any further. A
promissory note of financial aid is insufficient and places the lives
of teachers and students at monumental risk.
We
need to make certain that teachers - our most essential education
workers - and their students receive the resources needed to protect
them, and that must occur right now!
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