President Biden’s plan to reopen schools in 100 days has met opposition from teacher unions over concerns about the safety of the coronavirus, leaving other teachers frustrated.
“Last year, there was basically a strike by the national teachers union that left tens of millions of families without access to adequate education,” said Tommy Schultz, vice president of the American Federation for Children, a nonprofit organization that supports programs choice of schools.
Schultz cited figures for October 2020, showing that about 3 million children have not had an education day since last March, “falling completely through the cracks”.
“This will haunt our country for decades, and the teachers ‘unions’ blatant refusal to ignore science in the name of political extortion is shameful,” he said.
Rebecca Friedrichs, who was an elementary school teacher in California for 28 years, echoed Schultz’s concerns about American children and the state of their education.
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“Most good teachers are deeply concerned about strikes,” she said. “We never want to deny children even a day of learning and we understand that we are leader servants for these children.”
The leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union lists its demands and leaves a coal box outside the entrance to City Hall after a caravan in which teachers and supporters demanded a safe and equitable return to personal learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in Chicago on 12 December, 2020. (Photo by Max Herman / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Friedrichs is also a former union representative and was the lead plaintiff in the 2016 Supreme Court case, Friedrichs v CTA, the case against the National Education Association and the California Teachers Association, which he sought to give to teachers and other staff the right to decide whether or not to finance unions. The case lost after the United States Supreme Court came to a halt in a 4-4 decision and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals finally ruled against it.
Friedrichs said unions are using strikes to “push their muscles” and essentially pressure communities to meet their demands, sometimes at the expense of children’s education.
“Unions use these tactics with good teachers and threaten their jobs and peace at work,” she said. “Therefore, most teachers participate in strikes just to ‘go along and get along’.”
Lisa Disbrow, a 34-year-old elementary school teacher in California, agreed, saying the teachers remain in the union because they fear the union’s reaction to their departure.
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“They were told that no one else would look after them, no one else would protect them,” she said. “They are surrounded by people who pressure them and try to undermine the focus on academics, quality classroom management and the search for real academic growth as the whole spectrum of agendas and platforms for indoctrination arise. It is very politicized. “
Teachers and members of the PSC CUNY union hold up posters during a strike outside Hunter Campus High School in New York, USA, on Wednesday, September 16, 2020. (Photo: Paul Frangipane / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Willie Preston is the father of six children who attend public schools in Chicago. He said his children’s teachers and Chicago public school teachers in general are “too scared” to speak publicly because the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is a “very relentless organization”.
“I don’t know if a member of the CTU, even those against what is going on, would be willing to speak publicly,” he said. “CTU has teachers who directly seek out parents to create social media status that does not align with their views. These teachers will not say anything.”
Karen Cuen, a primary music teacher for more than 25 years in the unified school district of Chino Valley, California, believes that other teachers are also frustrated with their unions, because schools need to reopen.
“Teachers’ unions are never right to strike,” she said. “Teaching is not just a job, it is a vocation. Our ‘clients’ are precious children who deserve to have their teachers teach them, not picket.”
Cuen said he understands the issues of the workplace and the need for bargaining power, but said that some demands by unions to reopen schools “are often not even related to education”.
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“We were told to ‘follow science’, which increasingly points to the opening of schools, but politics seems to rule around every corner,” she said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that schools can open for face-to-face learning without vaccines for teachers “even in the most widely disseminated areas of the community” with due safety precautions.
“We have a consensus among non-political medical experts, including the main CDC leaders who wrote in the leading medical journal, JAMA, three weeks ago that schools do not contribute to transmission – a position that contradicts the official CDC guidelines,” said the Dr. Marty Makary, physician and professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, as well as a contributor to Fox News.
Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, family doctor and emergency medicine and director of CityMD and contributor to Fox News, agreed.
ARCHIVE – In this January 11, 2021 archival photo, pre-kindergarten teacher Sarah McCarthy works with a student at Dawes Elementary in Chicago. (Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Chicago Sun-Times via AP, Pool, File)
((Ashlee Rezin Garcia / Chicago Sun-Times via AP, Pool, File))
“I understand the fear that teachers can be,” she said, “however, let’s look at the data, and the science that shows the transmission of COVID-19 in the classroom is less than in the community. I think we need to support our teachers and allow them access to vaccines so that they feel safe when they return to the classroom. “
“The CDC already issued school guidelines in September. The Biden government’s request for another updated set of guidelines halted the reopening of schools and resulted in more pediatric suicide, aggravated the child hunger crisis and created other health problems in children,” he said. he. “The excessively expensive requirements for schools in guiding the CDC have further paralyzed school reopenings and have harmed children even more. Time is life.”
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Preston said he wants his six children to be able to go back to school in Chicago for a variety of reasons, but mainly that “the science of CDC and others says that schools can reopen safely, as long as mitigation policies are put in place, as per the Chicago Audience The school system did that. “
“In fact, CPS spent almost $ 100 million to make CPS classrooms safe,” he said.
Preston believes it is possible for Biden to achieve his goal of reopening schools in his first 100 days if he supports science and “defends American children and their families, and does not allow education to become a political struggle”.