Reopening Majority-Minority Schools in a Pandemic

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!