As Teachers' Unions Push for Remote Schooling Again, Parents Worry. So Do Democrats.

[Celerity]

Chicago teachers have voted to go remote. Other unions are agitating for change. For Democrats, who promised to keep schools open, the tensions are a distinctly unwelcome development.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/08/us/teachers-unions-covid-schools.html

Few American cities have labor politics as fraught as Chicago’s, where the nation’s third-largest school system shut down this week after the teachers’ union members refused to work in person, arguing that classrooms were unsafe amid the Omicron surge. But in a number of other places, the tenuous labor peace that has allowed most schools to operate normally this year is in danger of collapsing.

While not yet threatening to walk off the job, unions are back at negotiating tables, pushing in some cases for a return to remote learning. They frequently cite understaffing because of illness, and shortages of rapid tests and medical-grade masks. Some teachers, in a rear-guard action, have staged sick outs.

In Milwaukee, schools are remote until Jan. 18, because of staffing issues. But the teachers’ union president, Amy Mizialko, doubted that the situation would significantly improve and worried that the school board would resist extending online classes. “I anticipate it’ll be a fight,” Ms. Mizialko said. She credited the district for at least delaying in-person schooling to start the year but criticized Democratic officials for placing unrealistic pressure on teachers and schools.

“I think that Joe Biden and Miguel Cardona and the newly elected mayor of New York City and Lori Lightfoot — they can all declare that schools will be open,” Ms. Mizialko added, referring to the U.S. education secretary and the mayor of Chicago. “But unless they have hundreds of thousands of people to step in for educators who are sick in this uncontrolled surge, they won’t be.”

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[marie999]

1. I don't like remote teaching, BUT, one of our great-grandchildren in high school

is now in his fourth quarantine of the school year because of other students in his classes. Luckily he has not caught it yet.

[3Hotdogs]

2. You and I worry about our grandkids..... Mine? Three school systems and two of three have shut down.

We worry about the grandkids.

Teachers also have to worry about their health.

[Celerity]

3. I do not have any grandchildren, I am 25yo, and barring adoption (I'm a married lesbian) will

not have any, unless they perfect human parthenogenesis or are able to make artificial sperm and eggs via reprogramming human iPS cells into sperm and egg cells or some other work-around. Even then, we likely will not chose, at least as of now, to have children.

As for teachers and safety, the majority of school systems have protocols in place that are workable.

Society simply cannot punish and harm children (by ending in person instruction for long stretches at a time) due to the fact a minority of assholes in the US refuse to get vaxxed and/or mask, etc.

[secondwind]

5. Yes, but we need to keep in mind that Covid leaves lasting effects on the human body...

it's not simply "I'm over it now"...... it leaves lifetime problems ....school kids are more vulnerable than adults.

[Celerity]

6. Protocols to ensure as much safety as is reasonably possible need to be adhered to, but the

US educational system simply cannot and will not (barring some cataclysmic turn of events, far beyond the present situation) go into a long term sporadic cycle of continual impositions of remote learning due to school closures.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. Another consequence of putting all the chips on the vaccine and then failing to nimbly keep up with

reality.

[dsc]

7. There's a lot to unpack here

First, it should be pointed out that there are two reasons that remote learning might become necessary. One is that the teachers may rightly feel unsafe and the second is that teachers may wind up having to quarantine and or become ill in large enough numbers that the school won't have enough employees to safely open. NYC has already stated that even teachers with a positive COVID test and 'mild' symptoms should still work in order to have a better chance of having enough staff. Needless to say that is crazy. Staffing is a major issue in many schools. Sub pools tend to be made up about 80 or more percent of two classes of people, one is people who are trying to break into teaching and are subbing until they can get a job, and retired teachers (at least 55 years old usually into their 60's and beyond) who are supplementing retirement income. Both groups have taken hits in the COVID world. The first group shrank because teaching jobs are more plentiful even in locales where they haven't been and the second group is less willing to sub due to increased risk of COVID. Thus the teachers who are there often have to cover classes. Which causes them to burn out, which leads them to quit, which leads to more shortages, rinse and repeat.

The fact is society's unwillingness to control COVID in an effective way is making schools vastly more difficult to run. Our system has been as aggressive in terms of in person learning as NC would permit. My school has been partially in person (an ABC system) since Aug 2020. We went to an AB system in Jan of 2021, and we went full in person Apr of 2021 (all of these included the ability of parents to choose full remote for those kids which meant we had lower in person class sizes but still had some teachers with no ability to social distance under the full in person option and we were expected to both teach in person and remote. Since Aug 2021 we have been full in person with a very limited ability for parents to opt for remote instruction which means full classrooms, no social distancing, and no teaching remote (except for teachers who applied for and were chosen to teach remotely during their planning periods). Today my school of around 900 had over 230 absent students.

My county's health department can't do COVID tests until further notice as we have no kits. When I returned from Ohio, I had to drive 40 miles to get a COVID test and when I feared I couldn't get those results back to a record keeping screw up I tried to get a test two days later and couldn't find one within 50 miles of me. Our vaccination rate is still under 50%. My school stopped requiring masks in October of this year. We will wind up with staffing shortages if this continues for any length of time. If you don't have staff you can't have school.

If you want schools open and staffed then you need to get vaccinated. You need to wear masks. You need to do your part and not blame teachers.

[jcgoldie]

8. In my southern Illinois HS of 2100 we opened Wednesday but...

It seems we are headed toward some of remote schooling for a couple of weeks whether anyone likes it or not. Every day they publish a quarantine list of students. The highest it got last semester was about 105... as of the end of Friday it was at 211 or 10% of the student population. Remote learning was so ineffective last year, however, that admins have pledged to "power through" regardless of how many students have to periodically miss because they've calculated that more learning is going on in the school even if large percentages of students are missing. The bigger problem is staffing and specifically bus-drivers. Surrounding districts have struggled to find bus drivers even before the recent covid surge. Now if there is a weak link I was informed to keeping the schools open that will be it. They can cover for teachers in the classrooms a lot of times with administrators or support personal or other teachers on prep periods... but with too many bus drivers testing positive and out for 10 calendar days, we will be shutting down soon I expect sometime this coming week.

[Reader Rabbit]

9. This is a classic case of chickens coming home to roost.

For decades, the United States has piled responsibility after responsibility onto public education. Schools are basically the social safety net that the country doesn't provide to its citizens: childcare, counseling & therapy, social work, meals, and maybe—just maybe—a little education thrown in between the tiny cracks of time we have from all our other responsibilities.

And teachers have always been willing to shoulder these responsibilities "for the sake of the kids." Any mental health professional will tell you that a system that runs on emotional blackmail is dysfunctional. It's not at all surprising that teachers are finally crumbling under all those burdens. There's a fine line between martyrdom and suicide, and American society has finally pushed too many teachers across that line.

[XanaDUer2]

10. True

Public librarians, too. Vocational awe is real

[crickets]

11. Well said. nt