CONCORD, NH (AP) – Increasing pressure on US school systems to reopen classrooms for students who have been studying online for nearly a year, putting politicians in front of teachers who have not yet been vaccinated against COVID-19.
In Chicago, the love is so great that teachers are about to hit. In California, a frustrated governor Gavin Newsom begged schools to find a way to reopen. In Cincinnati, some students returned to classrooms on Tuesday after a judge sent a teachers’ union trial for safety reasons.
While some communities argue that online courses remain the safest option for everyone, some parents, with the support of politicians and administrators, have complained that their children’s education suffers from sitting at home in front of their computers and that isolation hurts them emotionally. .
In Nashua, New Hampshire, the school board has vowed to stay with distance learning for most students until the city meets certain targets for coronavirus-positive infections, hospitalizations and tests.
Alicia Houston, whose sons are in 6th and 10th grade, said her biggest frustration was “not being able to help my children effectively,” even though she quit her job. to try exactly that.
“Seeing them get a little darker,” she said last week. “It simply came to our notice then. The piece of emotional and mental health is one of the most important pieces. Such a trauma is not something that they will necessarily recover immediately “.
Some families and their supporters have also argued that reopening schools would allow parents to return to work instead of staying home to oversee their children’s education.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a recent study that there is little evidence of the virus spreading in schools when precautions are taken, such as masks, spacing and adequate ventilation.
But many teachers were opposed to returning without being vaccinated first against the scourge that killed more than 440,000 Americans.
Kathryn Person, a high school teacher in Chicago, wants to continue teaching at a distance so as not to risk the health of her 91-year-old grandmother and aunt who is battling lung cancer. He said he was confident the union would fight school officials if it tried to punish teachers who did not return.
“If they try to fight back, when that happens we will go on strike,” she said.
In California, with 6 million public school students, teachers’ unions say they will not send their members into an insecure situation.
Newsom, a Democrat, said he would not force schools to reopen, but instead wanted to provide them with an incentive, and proposed a $ 2 billion plan that met with criticism from superintendents, unions and lawmakers. It would provide schools with additional funding for testing COVID-19 and other safety measures if they resumed in-person courses. Schools that reopen earlier would receive more money.
Newsom told educators that he was willing to negotiate, but that certain demands, including the unions’ request to vaccinate all teachers before school started, were unrealistic, given the lack of photos.
“If everyone needs to be vaccinated, we might as well tell people the truth: there will be no in-person instruction in the state of California,” he said.
The largest districts, including Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, say the plan sets unrealistic rules and timelines.
“The virus is responsible now and has no timetable,” the 300,000-member California Teachers’ Association warned in a letter. “We can’t just choose an artificial calendar date and expect to change the reopening of each school for personal training.”
The administration of President Joe Biden and Republican senators have dueling proposals for incentive packages that would distribute billions of dollars to help schools bring children back to classrooms.
About 10,000 teachers and staff in Chicago and 62,000 students in kindergarten through 8th grade had to return to school on Monday for the first time since March last year. But the Chicago school system extended distance learning for another two days and called for a cooling-off period in negotiations with the teachers’ union.
District-level efforts to vaccinate teachers in Chicago will not begin until mid-February.
In several states, lawmakers are pushing for legislation to call for more in-person learning.
An Iowa law, signed Friday by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, requires districts to provide full-time instructions to parents who request it. Despite concerns that teachers have not yet been vaccinated, they will return this month.
In North Carolina, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is facing pressure from GOP lawmakers to reopen more schools. In South Carolina, there is a bipartisan action to bring students back to class five days a week.
“After this pandemic ends, I hope I never make another Zoom call,” said House minority leader Todd Rutherford, a Democrat. “I hate that. I can’t stand them. I can’t imagine I’m in third or fourth grade and I have to look at a screen to learn.”
In Utah, the Salt Lake City school system has announced plans to resume in-person learning for at least two days a week under pressure from lawmakers who have threatened to cut funding.
The head of schools in Washington State insists that teachers be vaccinated when it is their turn, but also insists on returning immediately to classrooms, shot or not.
“The bottom line is that a vaccine is a great safety net, but it’s never what will create the perfect scenario,” said Chris Reykdal, the superintendent of public training.
Emily Van Derhoff, a first-grade teacher in Fairfax County, Virginia and a union official, was to be vaccinated last Friday. But she and others saw their appointments canceled when vaccine supply fell.
The superintendent of Fairfax County has revealed a provisional plan for students to start returning on February 16, but the union says less than 10% of teachers believe it is safe to return.
“Even after we are all vaccinated, we will need to have less community outreach to make people feel safer and safer to have students in schools,” VanDerhoff said.
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Kunzelman reported from College Park, Maryland. Associated Press reporters Bryan Anderson, David Pitt, Sophia Tareen, Don Babwin, Jeffrey Collins and Jocelyn Gecker contributed to the report.