The Detroit Federation of Teachers, which represents teachers in the Detroit Public Schools Community District, announced Wednesday that 91 percent of its members voted to authorize union leadership to launch a “security strike” in the future. .
Negotiations between the union and Michigan’s largest school district began after school officials approved a reopening plan in July.
The plan included online learning, “smaller class sizes and daily safety protocols such as thorough cleaning, wearing masks and social distance,” the district says.
After it was approved, teachers claimed that learning in person would endanger their health and their students due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“If we go online now and stay safe, we will be able to safely return to our classes and stay in the building instead of the risk of outbreak, after outbreak, after outbreak,” a teacher said in a video online that details the union worried.
Terrence Martin, the union’s president, said in a virtual news conference on Wednesday that more than 80% of its members only want to teach online classes.
Wednesday’s vote is not “a work stoppage,” the union said in a statement, adding that members had agreed to teach and work remotely.
“The action we took today is not an action we wanted to take, but an action we had to take. It is not an action we take lightly,” Martin said of Wednesday’s vote.
In a
series of tweets on Wednesday, the school district said 75% of its 51,000 students plan to start the school year fully online, while 25% prefer personal classes.
The neighborhood listed in a
separate tweet that “Teachers have options. No teacher is required to teach Face to Face.”
Nikolai Vitti, the superintendent of the school district, and the board of the school district acknowledged the vote of the union in
a joint statement released Wednesday night, saying they were confident the district’s ongoing talks with the union “will result in a safe school opening.”
“Talks with DFT have increased over the past week and we are both negotiating in good faith. The recovery process is very hard, on multiple levels, but we will get this right for our students, families and staff,” Vitti said.
tweeted earlier on Wednesday.
Students will begin the next school year on September 8th.
.
Related
