Good news: New York City began vaccinating teachers against COVID-19 on Monday. This leaves the teachers’ union no excuse for continuing to teach in person: classrooms at all grade levels need to reopen so that our children can get the education to which they are entitled – but they have lost for almost a year.
Michael Mulgrew, head of the United Federation of Teachers, announced on Sunday that his members, as well as the elderly and transport and public safety workers, preferred the vaccine, after Governor Andrew Cuomo finally conceded to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plea and its expansion. And Blas said teachers working inside classrooms get the first time. (Although some of the 20,000 – more than one in four – who receive medical exemptions to work remotely have also started reporting.)
Middle and high school students have not seen the inside of a classroom since the city closed schools on Nov. 19. Even if it was only part-time. Preschool and basic students started a ‘hybrid’ learning again last month, while children with special needs returned to the classrooms full time. Congratulations to de Blasio for doing so much; children who need special training are especially not served by the remote classes.
But all children must return full time. “Without personal education, schools run the risk of children falling behind academically and exacerbating educational inequalities,” 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 distance learning children, even teenagers, suffer: “Adolescence is a time in life when you need to explore your own sense of self and develop your identity, “He said, ‘It’s hard to do that when you’re with your parents all the time.”
These experts stressed that children are at low risk of catching or transmitting the coronavirus, but the UFT does not care about science – or the students. It first threatened a lawsuit and then a strike, and only went back when the mayor offered new concessions, including a guarantee for non-dismissals. And it has constantly insisted on closing schools and avoiding reopening, with more radical factions demanding that all schools be closed until the entire city is basically virus-free.
Yet, as de Blasio remarked last week, “The safest place to be in New York, of course, is our public schools.” As the city’s positivity rate drops to 9 percent, schools are well below 1 percent.
Since teachers are near the forefront of vaccinations, there is no reason why they can not get back to work, but not from the outside, as some of them did, vacation spots and even the back seat of a car. The children of New York lost almost a year of education; it’s been a long time since they went to study in a classroom again.