Teachers push back against school reopening plans
Teachers push back against school reopening plans
One looming question affecting the recovery of the economy is whether schools will reopen this fall. For millions of working parents, the demands of child care during the pandemic have been devastating. Now, despite exploding COVID-19 cases in many parts of the country, a growing chorus of voices are demanding that schools reopen. But it’s not only kids that would be returning, but teachers as well, and many are raising questions about the risks.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday the city is moving “full steam ahead” with reopening schools in September, with limits on the number of students in each classroom, masks and hand-washing stations.
“My students’ bathrooms up till the beginning of March had broken sinks had no soap,” said Annie Tan, a special education teacher in Brooklyn. “How can I trust that all these safety protocols will actually be in place when schools reopen?”
Tan worries the city will put the economy ahead of human lives. New York delayed school closings in the early weeks of March, and 75 school employees in the city died of COVID-19.
“In New York City, we have seen the loss of life,” she said. “We know what it cost us.”
Across the country, teachers in places like Florida, Texas and Washington, D.C., are starting to push back against plans to reopen schools.
Harley Litzelman, a high school teacher in Oakland, California, started a national petition calling on teachers to refuse to return to the classroom until their counties reported no new virus cases for 14 days.
“At a certain point, it’s the responsibility of workers to withhold their labor and force the powers that be to do what they should have been doing months ago,” he said.
Teachers have been empowered in recent years by broad public support for strikes from West Virginia to California that demanded better school funding and smaller class sizes, but parents may be less likely to support keeping schools closed.
Lydia Bransten is a single mother in San Francisco who has to leave her 12-year-old daughter to go to work at St. Anthony’s Foundation, a charity that works with homeless and low-income people.
“I rely a lot on my neighbors, but also, you know, I rely a lot on my child. There’s a lot of pressure on her to self-regulate,” she said.
She’ll support teachers if they don’t feel safe, but at the same time, she’s worried for her daughter’s safety and development.
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