BERKELEY (KPIX) – Given that many teachers and their unions have opposed the call for the reopening of schools, the issue has reached a political stalemate, and a rally in Berkeley has revealed the passion of both sides.
Parents, students and medical professionals gathered in a park near Berkeley High on Saturday morning to discuss the health effects of not being at school.
“We are seeing rising rates of depression, anxiety, social isolation, with children falling further and further behind academically and socially,” Dr. Dan Drozd, an infectious disease doctor, told the crowd.
Even the CDC now says that with proper masking and social distancing, the risk of infection for teachers and students can be overcome by the damage caused by keeping them at home.
“There is no evidence that opening schools with these precautions increases community outreach and the rate of school outreach is extremely low,” said East Bay Hospital doctor Dr. Shelene Stine. “We need to think about the safety of our teachers and children from both perspectives.”
But not everyone was willing to hear that.
“You don’t love your teachers! … We are tired of these people! ” shouted Berkeley computer science teacher Masha Albrecht, who interrupted the rally, saying she did not feel safe returning to class, no matter what medical professionals said.
“I’m particularly upset with the doctors who say, ‘listen to science’ as if we can’t read science,” she said. “I am a mathematician, I can read statistical studies. No one shared anything to convince me that it was safe to go back to that school with a bunch of kids. ”
This brought a response from Berkeley Senior Noa Teiblum.
“They are experts in infectious diseases!” she said. “I mean, who are you to think you have more to say in deciding what is safe or not than the CDC’s infectious disease experts?” It is frustrating!”
Both sides are frustrated and neither seems to trust what the other is saying. It opens a divide between parents and teachers who could live after the virus is contained.