The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which met with unions and other educational leaders as it prepared to launch a new set of guidelines for reopening this week, also complicated the conversation with some messy messaging. But there is hope – both among unions and among students’ families – that a new round of guidance, coming this week, could cool the debate and provide clearer indicators in the future.
Confusing messages
“There is growing data that suggests that schools can reopen safely. And that this safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated to reopen safely, ”she said. (The next day, Psaki said that Walensky had spoken of his “personal ability”, although Walensky had made the comments in an official Covid administration briefing.)
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 vaccines,” said Pringle. “They were very anxious and very upset.”
Pringle said he appreciates what he considers the government’s urgency and focuses on the issue of reopening schools. But she said the rest of Walensky’s comments – about ensuring that schools have access to other mitigating measures, such as masking, social detachment and adequate ventilation – have unfortunately gone unnoticed by some teachers who were surprised by her observation about the vaccine.
Both Pringle and the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, say that teachers should be prioritized for the vaccine, but have not come to call it a requirement for a full return to face-to-face learning.
“Medical vaccines were not a prerequisite for opening hospitals. They are not a prerequisite for opening schools,” Weingarten told CNN. “Mitigation strategies are a prerequisite for opening schools”.
“What the Biden government can do is do its utmost to use the pulpit of intimidation and prioritize educators,” added Weingarten.
A Biden government official said he planned to reiterate this week that the federal government sees teachers as essential workers who should be an urgent priority in receiving the Covid vaccine. It is not clear whether this week’s CDC announcement will explicitly address the issue of teachers and vaccines.
The end result, said the administration official, is this: “We want schools to be open. We want them to open safely. We want to ensure that they remain open – and that applies to all schools, not just wealthy private schools. ”
Balancing act
In essence, the debate about opening schools is about how to balance risk for teachers with risk for students – and for the nation, as children fall further behind.
Without clear guidelines for a safe return, an already huge public health challenge has increasingly become a contest of political messages: Democrats widely argue that reopening decisions must “follow science” – without a clear agreement on what to do. that means – while the Republicans ran into liberal teachers’ unions, accusing them of making irrational demands on the system.
But the struggle also crosses party lines and reaches more complex and charged socioeconomic policies.
Democratic leaders in some states and large cities, under pressure from frustrated parents, have clashed with unions, which are pushing for more robust security measures. Negotiations have largely focused on Covid tests at school, accommodation for teachers with high-risk family members at home, improvements to school building infrastructure and, in some cases, ensuring vaccinations for teachers. But the lack of resources and funding contributed to the stalemate, which can be eased if Congress passes Biden’s relief and stimulus plan, which includes new money for schools.
The Biden government will have to deal with skepticism, especially among historically disadvantaged communities, that the new federal guidelines will make a tangible difference for educators, parents and students.
“The CDC guidelines do not build trust and confidence in school communities that have been depreciated and deprived of resources for generations 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 Latin communities? Why would I think it would be any different in this pandemic?”
The 100-day goal meets reality
Asked on Tuesday about the definition of the president of open schools, Psaki detailed the government’s parameters with regard to classroom teaching.
“The goal he set is to have the majority of schools, that is, more than 50%, open until the 100th day of his presidency. And that means some teaching in the classroom. So at least one day a week, ”said Psaki. “Hopefully it is more – and it is obviously just as safe in every local school and district.”
In Nevada, the Clark County Education Association, the nation’s largest independent teacher union, is preparing for a partial return to buildings using a hybrid model, which combines school and remote learning for younger students.
The association’s president, Marie Neisess, said she was optimistic that the new CDC guidelines would help to separate facts from innuendo, but that there was anger in their ranks over the conversation about decisions to return to personal learning.
“Our educators are very offended when someone says ‘reopen schools’, because schools are open, they are teaching, they are teaching. It is only through a distance learning model, ”Neisess told CNN, arguing that the tone of the debate minimizes the extremes that teachers have gone to to engage students in difficult circumstances.
Neisess also said that the suggestion that teachers uniformly want to wait as long as possible to return to their buildings misses the mark. In fact, she added, there is a division within the education association between teachers who have threatened to “leave our union” because they want to return to a full schedule from Monday to Friday. Others, however, “are concerned that we are not protecting them enough and we are forcing them to go back to the classroom.”
So far, the federal government has not monitored how many schools are open for face-to-face education, but the Department of Education recently announced that it will begin collecting data this month.
An estimate from the private data tracking company Burbio says that about 35% of elementary and high school students are currently attending schools that offer only virtual education, almost 40% are attending schools open for face-to-face education every day and 25% are going to schools with hybrid models.
Public schools in the USA operate largely outside the control of the federal government. But even with the new guidance from the CDC 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
Still, both policies and stakeholders seem ready to adopt a clearer set of signals and are anticipating Congressional action to help make benchmarks viable.
The new orientation could be a “game changer,” said Danny Carlson, director of policy and defense for the National Association of Elementary School Diripals.
“There was no convincing and coherent version of the previous guidance. The fact that it was random and linked to politics has eroded a lot of confidence among those who make decisions to reopen on the spot,” he said.
The previous guidance came to pieces and former President Donald Trump sowed confusion when he asked the CDC to review it. Now, teachers’ unions and other school leaders are involved in the process behind the scenes.
But both Biden and union leaders say that schools need more resources to meet the new CDC guidelines and reopen safely, putting the spotlight on Congress. Democratic lawmakers are moving this week to consider Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion Covid aid package.
On Monday, the House’s Education and Labor Committee released the text of the bill that would provide $ 130 billion to K-12 schools to help students return to school. 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 deal with learning loss, providing services like summer school, for example.
“We know that we will get guidance from the CDC this week. There will be less uncertainty, ”said Weingarten. “But the resources of the rescue plan, the availability of vaccines and the educator’s priority – this is in the air – and the variant is in the air”.
For now, however, teachers’ unions are holding back. In Chicago, where the city government and the school system clashed with the union, the bases on Wednesday morning ratified a provisional agreement to return to face-to-face learning.
New York City was one of the first major metropolitan centers to bring students back. The initial reopening last September and October came after months of intense negotiations. Then an increase in cases – which exceeded a test positivity metric agreed by the city and its largest union – triggered closures in November, before primary schools opened again in late 2020. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced this week that high school Students, who have been paralyzed since November, start to return at the end of the month.
Secondary schools remained in strictly remote learning regimes.
But even in New York City, which made expensive new investments before reopening, only a fraction of the students opted for face-to-face learning. And across the country, the demographic outline of those who choose to go to class when there is an option highlighted the complexities of reopening in traditionally underserved communities, where school buildings have suffered from decades of divestment and students are more apt to live in multigenerational families. . .
“We are in a situation of bad choices,” said Weingarten. “You are not going to make everyone happy in a situation of bad choices.”