“If my students were there, it’s absolutely worth the risk, as long as my school follows all the guidelines to make it a safe building,” Nerlino said in a telephone interview Saturday. “For me to go in and expose myself to another 100 people … because not a lot of pay makes a lot of sense to me.”
Jeffrey Riley, the department’s commissioner, said in Friday’s published guidance that it is the department’s expectation that in remote districts open readers and critical support staff will report to schools daily and work from classes and educational spaces.
“Having teachers and critically supported staff in the school will be beneficial to students, teachers, staff and administrators for a variety of reasons,” he said in the guidance.
In a highly-acclaimed statement, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, Merrie Najimy, said the state’s new guidance was “clearly designed” to force local educators’ unions to engage in personal learning, despite the state of school buildings, air quality of inside, test functions, as area COVID-19 transmission rates.
Najimy said the new guidelines prove Riley’s fundamental lack of confidence of educators’, most of whom are women.
“It is paternalistic and punitive and has no bearing on the quality of education that the real experts – the educators – provide so masterfully,” she said in the statement.
The MTA and the American Federation of Massachusetts Teachers called on both districts to reopen in the fall with distance learning.
Najimy said because the guidance is not required, it should be negotiated with local teachers’ unions. The MTA is “100 percent behind” any union that rejects the recommendation, she said in the MTA statement.
The guidance issued by Friday was the expectation of the department for school districts and not a mandate, said Colleen Quinn, a spokeswoman for the agency.
“The department has consulted with school superintendents, school boards, and faculty throughout the process of developing school re-guidance,” Quinn said in an email.
On Friday, Riley said the guidelines allow students to maintain a familiarity with a classroom environment that will help them transition back to classroom lessons. It also provides more consistency for students and gives teachers access to a wider range of instructional materials, he said.
Other benefits included internet access at school, easier collaboration between teachers and colleagues, and the ability for administrators to oversee the level and amount of instruction students receive throughout the day, according to the guidance, he said.
The state’s new guidance also advised districts that import distance learning allow teachers to bring in their own children so they don’t have problems with child care.
Friday’s state briefing came on the same day as an announcement from the city of Boston and education officials that the city’s schools would resume September 21 with distance classes and bring students back to classes in phases.
Jessica Tang, president of the Boston Teachers Union, said Saturday that supervising state exposure risked thousands of educators across the state unnecessarily and contradicted Baker’s request that people should work from home if they could.
“Instead of concentrating time and energy on the logistics of that – as so many of our buildings have rooms without windows or air ventilation – we need to focus on time, energy and limited resources spent on how we can provide personalized services for us. students have the most needs, ”Tang said in the statement.
In Wrentham, Nerlino, 29, is entering her eight-year lesson at the regional school, which plans to reopen completely this fall. But her worries about returning to teaching in an empty classroom led her to post an open letter to Riley about the problem.
In an interview, she criticized Riley’s guidance: “It sends the message that local districts – teachers and administrators – cannot be left to decide or negotiate based on the complexity of their own student demographics,” Nerlino said.
About 30 percent of Massachusetts’ school districts will reopen externally this fall. But the new guidelines could make life harder for officials in some of those communities, including Framingham.
Adam Freudberg, chairman of the city’s School Board, said officials and the city’s teachers’ union were negotiating an agreement that would work from home as in school buildings when Riley’s new recommendations were passed. released.
The new report was like “throwing a big crooked ball” during those negotiations, Freudberg said, and he proposed to Riley to clarify whether the state mandated the recommendations.
“We need certainty, and this does not help us to give our community certainty,” he said.
Stephanie Sweet, an Andover mother of a 6-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 1-year-old, Friday criticized the state directive Friday for recommending that districts that use a remote model provide child care for teachers working in classrooms .
She said she sympathizes with teachers, but it is not fair to give teachers access to childcare, while other working parents have to finance it themselves.
“I understand the need for teachers for childcare solutions, but we also have day care in the state that is fully operational, and they can benefit from those like the rest of us,” Sweet said.
The state legislature has been heavily criticized in statements issued by unions representing workers in districts that will open remotely this fall.
In Lawrence, Kimberly Barry, president of the Lawrence Teachers Union, said it “fights common sense” to require teachers living in low-COVID-19 communities to work in a school in an area. where more cases of the disease have been reported.
“It increases the chances that we will have another foundation and, honestly, zero impact on teaching and learning,” Barry said.
Gina Garro, president of the Revere Teachers Association, notes that her city has one of the state’s highest COVID-19 positive rates and said the city had launched an enforcement team to combat the spread of the disease.
After Revere took such steps and closed parts of the city to gain control over the disease, why would it reopen school buildings, she said.
“We need to get this right,” Garro said.
James Vaznis of Globe staff and Globe correspondent Jeremy C. Fox contributed to this report.
John Hilliard can be reached at [email protected].
