Good news: New York City started vaccinating teachers against COVID-19 on Monday. This leaves the teachers’ union with no excuse to continue to oppose face-to-face learning: classrooms at all levels of education must be reopened so that our children can have the education they are entitled to – but they have lost it for almost a year.
United Federation of Teachers Head Michael Mulgrew announced on Sunday that his members were given priority vaccine, along with the elderly and traffic and public safety workers, after Governor Andrew Cuomo finally gave in to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s request and increased your eligibility. And Blas said that teachers who work inside classrooms are the first to impose themselves. (Although some of the 20,000 – more than one in four – who have received medical exemptions for working remotely have also started to apply.)
Elementary and high school students haven’t seen the inside of a classroom since the city closed schools on November 19. Although even that was only part-time. Pre-kindergarten and elementary school students resumed “hybrid” learning last month, while children with special needs returned to classrooms full-time. Congratulations to Blasio for doing so much; children in need of special education are particularly poorly served by remote classes.
But all children need to come back, full time. “Without face-to-face instruction, schools are at risk of children falling behind academically and worsening educational inequalities,” warned a report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine last year. Nathaniel Beers, co-author of the American Academy of Pediatrics report, explained that all children suffer from distance learning, even teenagers: “Adolescence is a time in life when you must explore your own sense of identity and develop your identity, “he said.” It’s difficult to do that if you stay at home with your parents all the time. “
These experts emphasize that children are at low risk of catching or transmitting the coronavirus, but UFT is not concerned with science – or with students. He first threatened a lawsuit and then a strike, only returning to work when the mayor offered new concessions, including a guarantee of non-discharge. And it has been pressing constantly to close schools again and avoid reopening, with more radical factions demanding that all schools be closed until the whole city is basically virus free.
However, as de Blasio noted last week, “The safest place to be in New York City is, of course, our public schools.” As the city’s positivity rate increases to 9%, schools are well below 1%.
With teachers almost at the front of the line for vaccinations, there’s no reason why they can’t go back to work instead of teaching classes remotely, as some of them did, from vacation locations and even from the back seat of a car. New York’s children missed nearly a year of study; it’s past time to learn in the classroom again.