Across the country, in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Florida and Michigan, teachers have united to voice their concerns with reopening plans – and in some cases have filed lawsuits as steps to go on strike.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meanwhile, has issued guidelines explaining how schools could potentially return to person classes this fall if coronavirus case counts are low enough.
And the American Academy of Pediatrics has urged districts to return to classes in person, citing potentially devastating social and emotional losses for children if schools do not reopen.
Teachers across the country are now being forced to make lukewarm choices between doing what they love and earning a salary, or running the risk of being exposed to the virus by students and other school staff.
And so far, their unions have been one of the main voters pushing back against re-election.
Trade unions are pushing back into 3 major school districts
In New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, the nation’s three largest school districts, the influence of teachers was evident.
“We all want to open physical schools and be back with our students, but lives hang in the balance,” UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz said in a statement. “Security must be the priority. We must get this right for our communities.”
Chicago Public Schools had previously announced a plan to open the school year with a hybrid learning model with both person classes and distance instruction.
A day later, Chicago Public Schools announced a change: they would go completely at a distance for all students for at least the first four years of the school year.
Mayor Bill de Blasio disagrees with that plan, but on Thursday the city announced a “Back to School Pledge” outlining all the steps it is taking to keep students, teachers and families safe from coronavirus.
“We will make sure these schools are safe and ready, and if we do not think they are safe and ready, they will not open,” Blasio said.
Gentlemen who are continuing in the case in Florida
Lawyers for the plaintiffs presented their case on Wednesday. James Lis, a biology teacher at Dr. Phillips High School in Orlando, testified about his plan to dismiss instead of risk exposure to Covid-19.
He said he studied for 21 years and he lives at home with his wife and 81-year-old mother-in-law. During training this week, leading up to the opening of school, he was given a face shield, a container of wipes, and a gallon hand guide.
“If there is no change, I will explain class by class to my students that I can not return,” he testified. “I can not put my mother-in-law in danger. I do not feel safe.”
The President of the Florida Education Association, Fedrick Ingram, announced the case against Government Ron DeSantis, Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Giménez, the Florida Department of Education and the Florida State Board of Education.
Corcoran had issued the emergency order in early July, demanding that all “brick and mortar schools” open “at least five days a week for all students.”
Ingram told CNN at the time that Covid-19 was widely distributed among children under 18, claiming that the executive order was reckless, unconscious and unconstitutional.
“Nobody wants to be back in a class and reopen our school as educators,” Ingram added. “But we want to do it safely. And we do not want to endanger people.”
Detroit teachers authorize potential strike
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 from individuals would endanger their health and their students because of the ongoing 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.
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,” Union President Terrence Martin said Wednesday.
Denise Royal, Ryan Prior, Elizabeth Hartfield, Randi Kaye, Nicole Chavez and Pierre Meilhan of CNN contributed to this report.
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