Good news: New York City began vaccinating teachers against COVID-19 on Monday. This leaves the teachers’ union with no excuse to continue to oppose in-person learning: classrooms at all levels of the classroom need to reopen so that our children can receive the education they are entitled to – but have almost lost. one year.
The head of the United Teachers’ Federation, Michael Mulgrew, announced on Sunday that its members had been given priority in vaccination, along with seniors and public transport and public safety workers, after Governor Andrew Cuomo finally relented. Mayor Bill de Blasio and extended eligibility. And Blas said teachers working in classrooms get the first problems. (Although some of the 20,000 – more than one in four – who received medical exemptions to work remotely have also started enrolling.)
Middle school and high school students have not seen the inside of a classroom since the city closed schools on November 19, although even that was only part-time. Pre-kindergarten and elementary school students resumed “hybrid” learning last month, while children with special needs returned to full-time classrooms. Thanks to de Blasio for doing so much; children in need of special editions are particularly poorly served by distance learning.
But all children must return full time. “Without personal training, schools risk children lagging behind academically and exacerbating educational inequities,” a report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine warned last year. Nathaniel Beers, co-author of the report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, explained that all children suffer from distance learning, even teenagers: You develop your identity, “he said.” It’s hard to do that if you’re always at home with your parents. “
These experts pointed out that children have a low risk of catching or transmitting coronavirus, but UFT does not care about science – or students. He first threatened a lawsuit and then a strike, only returning to work when the mayor offered new concessions, including a dismissal guarantee. And he continued to push for the closure of schools and the avoidance of any reopening, with more radical factions calling for the closure of all schools until the entire city is virtually free of viruses.
However, as Blasio remarked last week, “The safest place to be in New York is, of course, our public schools.” As the city’s positivity rate rises to 9%, schools are well below 1%.
With teachers almost in front of the vaccination line, there is no reason why they cannot return to work instead of teaching remotely, as some of them have done, vacations and even the back seat of a car. New York children have lost almost a year of education; it took him a long time to learn again in a classroom.