Teachers across the country don't want schools to reopen
Politicians have said schools must reopen this fall. Teachers have countered that actually no, they do not.
One of the main things about school is teachers. If you think back to your own education, you’ll probably remember that there always seemed to be at least one in every classroom. In fact, data suggests they’re second only to students in terms of the most common types of people you can find at a school. Stunning observation, I know. But somehow it hasn’t sunk in with the politicians across the country ignoring teachers’ voices as they go ahead with plans to reopen schools this fall.
The federal government has led the push for reopening. “We have to reopen schools,” President Donald Trump said this month. His Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, has said schools “must fully open and they must be fully operational.” And last week, the Centers for Disease Control released a lengthy update called “The Importance of Reopening America’s Schools This Fall.”
But teachers across the country are not as enthusiastic. That’s because there happens to be a deadly virus going around killing more than one thousand Americans every day. You may have heard about it—it’s called the coronavirus. And it turns out teachers don’t want to die from it.
[Steve Benson, Arizona Mirror]
If schools stay closed, millions of people won’t be able to return to work, with nowhere to send their children during the day. To make sure workers can return, many politicians and school leaders have decided on a bold strategy: mostly pretending that the pandemic is not happening anymore and reopening schools anyway.
But for school systems to pull off effective in-person instruction in fall, schools would probably need to have teachers in them. Which begs the question, do teachers want to show up to reopened schools? No, they do not:
The New York Times reported that “Many Teachers Are Fearful and Angry Over Pressure to Return.”
In Philadelphia, teachers told the Inquirer, “Every teacher I know is flipping out,” “I’m scared to death,” and “This is crazy.”
In South Bend, the teachers union said “people will die as a result” of reopening schools.
Seems bad. But the CDC’s “Importance of Reopening America’s Schools This Fall” memo highlights harms that could befall kids if schools don’t reopen:
“Extended school closure is harmful to children. It can lead to severe learning loss.”
Also bad. Now, some might point out that school reopening can lead to severe life loss, and that being dead has a major impact on learning. But the CDC has good news on that front. They say, “death rates among school-aged children are much lower than among adults.” Yes, children will die—but not as many as would die if they were adults! So that’s pretty good.
But many teachers will have to be in the building with students as well. And a new study in South Korea found that while children age 10-19 are less likely to have symptoms of the coronavirus than adults, they spread the virus just as much. While children may be at less risk, teachers are not, and they know it:
In South Dakota, a teacher said “I see bad things happening, just like in all the states that re-opened too early.”
A San Diego area teacher said, “So, we are told it’s not safe to be indoors around others except your immediate family even with a mask, and yet it’s somehow OK to be in an indoor classroom with AC and poor ventilation and kids with no masks?”
A special education teacher in Brooklyn said, “My students’ bathrooms up till the beginning of March had broken sinks had no soap. How can I trust that all these safety protocols will actually be in place when schools reopen?”
It doesn’t seem like these teachers are pumped for reopening. But the evidence we have looked at so far only comes from individuals. So let’s look at some numbers:
83% of Los Angeles teachers don’t think it’s a good idea to reopen schools.
85% of Chicago teachers don’t think they should go back to school without a detailed safety plan, including daily testing and temperature screening.
52% of Las Vegas teachers don’t think it’s a good idea to go back to school given current policies.
Only 7% of school employees in Arlington, VA, had no reservations about returning to school.
I have entered these numbers into a proprietary computer modeling system that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to “answer” questions posed to it by a human. After plugging in this data, I “asked” the computer if teachers thought reopening right now was a good idea. The advanced computer model said no, they don’t. If you want more high-tech journalism like this that pushes the boundaries of what current computing power can achieve, you can sign up to get Written Up each week:
But the numbers above come from large, dense cities where people may be more likely to catch the virus and die, a big concern among teachers who do not want to die. So do teachers in smaller cities want to go ahead and reopen schools? No:
57% of teachers in Concord, NH don’t think we should reopen schools.
51% of teachers in Santa Fe don’t think we should reopen schools.
In Chapel Hill, NC, less than 15% of teachers felt comfortable returning to school.
But what about a nationwide survey, so we know the data is not cherry picked? It’s still a no:
A national poll from USA Today said about 20% of teachers were so against reopening that they would rather quit than show up if their school was forced to reopen. (It also said that 59% of parents would seek online-only education for their children even if schools reopened.)
A national survey of teacher union members found that only 21% supported returning to completely in-person instruction. 62% of more than 1,000 surveyed were worried that their school would not reopen safely.
As our inquiry has discovered, teachers do not want to reopen schools because they do not want to get sick and die, or to put others at risk. Yesterday, the executive council of the American Federation of Teachers, the union for about 1.7 million teachers and school workers across the country, okayed the possibility of strikes if local teachers are unhappy with their district’s reopening plans, and said the national union will help fight reopening plans in court. It may take that kind of action for districts to pay attention to the demands of their teachers rather than the demands of business interests wanting parents to return to the labor market.
“One thing has been abundantly clear about the plans and decisions to possibly and prematurely reopen schools,” said New York City teacher Jia Lee. “It is not about supporting students—it’s about reopening businesses.”