The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which met with unions and other education leaders as they prepared to draw up a new set of guidelines for the reopening this week, also hampered the conversation with some message sniffing. But there is hope – among unions and student families – that a new round of leadership, coming this week, could lower the temperature in the debate and provide clearer indications going forward.
Mixed messages
“There is increasing data indicating that schools can reopen safely. And that the safe reopening does not indicate that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely,” she said. (The next day, Psaki said Walensky spoke in her “personal capacity”, although Walensky made the remarks at an official Covid briefing by the government.)
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, told CNN that many teachers responded to Walensky’s comments last week with fear and concern.
“That was the headline: they don’t need any vaccines,” Pringle said. “They were very anxious and very upset.”
Pringle said she appreciates what she sees as the urgency of the government and focuses on the issue of reopening schools. But she said the rest of Walensky’s remarks – to make sure schools had access to other mitigation measures such as masking, social distance and proper ventilation – were sadly missed by some teachers who were noticed by her vaccination.
Prandi, as well as President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, says that teachers should be prioritized for the vaccine, but this is not necessarily a requirement for a complete return to personal learning.
“Medical vaccinations were not a prerequisite for opening hospitals. It is not a prerequisite for open schools,” Weingarten told CNN. “The mitigation strategies are a prerequisite for open schools.”
“What the Biden government can do is that they can do their best to use the bullying opportunity chair to make the educators prioritize,” Weingarten added.
A Biden administrative official said he plans to reiterate this week that the federal government considers teachers to be essential workers who should be a top priority in receiving the Covid vaccine. It is not clear whether the CDC’s announcement this week will explicitly address the issue of teachers and vaccines.
The bottom line, the administration official said, is this: “We want schools to open. We want them to open safely. We want to make sure they stay open – and that applies to all schools across the board, not just private, affluent ones. school. ‘
Balance sheet
At its core, the debate over school openings is about how to balance the risk for teachers with the risk for students – and for the country, as children fall further behind.
Without clear guidelines for a safe return, an already enormous public health challenge has increasingly become a political message contest: Democrats largely argue that reopening decisions should follow ‘science’ – without clear agreement on what it means – while the Republicans set their zero on liberal-leaning unions for teachers and accused them of making unreasonable demands on the system.
But the struggle also extends across party lines and into more complex and burdensome socio-economic politics.
Democratic leaders in some states and major cities, under pressure from frustrated parents, clashed with the unions pushing for more robust security measures. Negotiations have largely focused on complex Covid tests, housing for teachers with high-risk family members at home, infrastructure improvements in school buildings, and in some cases, securing vaccinations for teachers. But a lack of resources and funding has contributed to the deadlock, which can be mitigated if Congress bids Biden’s aid and incentive plan, which includes new money for schools, succeeds.
The Biden government will face skepticism, especially among historically disadvantaged communities, that new federal guidelines will make a tangible difference for educators, parents and students.
“CDC guidelines do not build trust and confidence in school communities that have been left behind for generations and robbed of resources because black and brown children attend them,” said Stacy Davis Gates, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union.
“How many times have we heard that there is no money for black schools? How many times have we heard that there is no money for schools that serve majority Latinx communities? Why would I think it would be different in this pandemic? ”
The purpose of 100 days meets reality
Asked on Tuesday for the definition of the president of public schools, Psaki set out the administration’s parameters regarding personal education.
“His goal is to keep most schools, more than 50%, open on day 100 of his presidency. And that means teaching in the classroom. So at least one day a week,” he said. said Psaki. “Hopefully it’s more – and of course it’s as much as it’s safe in every school and local district.”
In Nevada, the Clark County Education Association, the country’s largest independent teachers’ union, is preparing for a partial return to buildings using a hybrid model, which mixes kindergarten students and distance education.
The association’s president, Marie Neisess, said she was optimistic that new CDC guidelines would help separate the facts from the insinuation, but that there was anger in her ranks with the discussion about decisions to return to personal file.
“Our educators get very offended when someone says ‘reopen schools’ because schools are open, they teach, they have learned. It’s just through a distance education model,” Neisess told CNN, arguing that the tone of the debate is less. the extremes to which teachers became involved under difficult circumstances.
Neisess also said that the suggestion that teachers want to wait uniformly to return to their buildings misses the point. In fact, she added, there is a rift in the education association among teachers who have threatened to drop their union because they want to return for a full schedule from Monday to Friday. Others, however, are “concerned that we are not protecting them enough and that we are forcing them back into the classroom.”
So far, the federal government has not kept track of how many schools are open for personal education, but the Department of Education recently announced that it will begin data collection this month.
One estimate from the private data tracking company Burbio says that about 35% of K-12 students currently visit schools that offer only virtual education, almost 40% visit schools that are open daily for personal education and 25% go to schools with a hybrid models.
Public schools in the US operate largely outside the control of the federal government. But even with the new CDC guidelines expected in the coming days, doubts remain as to whether a uniform code can be applied to schools in different environments and circumstances.
Waiting for a plan
Yet policy and political stakeholders seem ready to adopt a clearer set of signposts and expect Congress to act to make the benchmarks achievable.
The new leadership could be a ‘game changer’, said Danny Carlson, director of policy and advocacy at the National Association of Elementary School Principals.
“The previous leadership did not have a clear, coherent version. The fact that it was haphazard and caught up in politics has eroded a lot of confidence among those who make decisions on the ground,” he said.
The previous lead appeared in pieces and former President Donald Trump sowed confusion when he called on the CDC to review it. Now teacher unions and other school leaders are involved in the behind-the-scenes process.
But both Biden and union leaders say schools need more money to comply with the new CDC guidelines and to reopen safely, putting a spotlight on Congress. Democratic lawmakers are moving toward the $ 1.9 billion Covid relief package proposed by Biden this week.
The Home Education and Labor Committee on Monday unveiled a bill that would provide $ 130 billion to K-12 schools to help students return to the classroom. Schools will be allowed to use the money to update their ventilation systems, reduce class sizes, purchase personal protective equipment and hire support staff. This would require schools to use at least 20% of the money to address learning loss by providing services such as summer school.
“We know we will be led by the CDC this week. It’s going to be another uncertainty,” Weingarten said. “But the resources from the rescue plan, the availability of vaccines and educator priority – it’s in the air – and the variant is in the air.”
But for now, the teachers’ unions are holding their head. In Chicago, where the city government and the school system clashed with the union, the mayor on Wednesday morning ratified a preliminary agreement to return to personal learning.
New York City was one of the first major metropolitan centers to bring students back. The initial reopening, last September and October, followed months of interest negotiations. Thereafter, an increase in cases – which the test positivity meters of the city and its largest trade union agreed upon – exceeded in November, before primary schools reopened by the end of 2020. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this week that the high school students who have been expelled since November will return by the end of the month.
High schools taught rigorous interviews.
But even in New York City, which made expensive new investments before reopening, only a fraction of students chose to learn in person. And across the country, the demographic outline of those who prefer to go to class highlighted the option there, the complexity of reopening in traditionally underserved communities, where school buildings have suffered from decades of uninvestment and students are more likely to live in multigenerational households . .
“We’re in a situation of bad choices,” Weingarten said. “You are not going to make everyone happy in a situation with bad choices.”