It is a bright, bitterly cold day in Minneapolis. As an arctic blast lingers, driving temperatures below zero, a clear, blue sky can be seen from my frost-tipped windows.
From a distance, the cold doesn’t look so bad. It’s not until you are in it that you realize just how quickly it can knock the wind out of you, or make your eyelashes clump together under a coating of frost.
The high level of dysfunction surrounding the vaccine is a reflection of the deeper problems that shape this country’s approach to public education, and to the public in general.
Is this some kind of metaphor for the return to in-person learning that is taking place in Minneapolis this week? Maybe.
Beginning February 8, elementary school students in Minneapolis will be boarding school buses and heading back to the classroom for the first time since March 2020, when the pandemic forced a sudden shift to remote learning models.
Getting kids back in school with their teachers and peers seems like an absolutely necessary thing, especially, perhaps, in the Upper Midwest, where the current blast of frigid temperatures is forcing people to be even more isolated and homebound than they already had been. (There’s also been an unfortunate uptick in violent crime locally, attributed in part to the fact that many young adults are not attending school.)
But up close, returning to school looks more problematic than hopeful.
For one thing, teachers in Minneapolis, like their peers in Chicago, Philadelphia, and St. Paul, among other cities, have not been universally vaccinated prior to receiving the call to head back to the classroom.
It might be tempting to shrug this off as some sort of minor inconvenience. Plenty of other people, after all, have not been able to work from home during the pandemic, without being given preferential access to the COVID-19 vaccine. The Washington Post covered this recently, pointing out that frontline, non-medical workers have been “lost in the vaccine scrum” as states have scrambled to prioritize seniors.
Reporters Lena H. Sun, Isaac Stanley-Becker, and Akilah Johnson, writing for the Post, document the shifting priorities, lack of adequate planning on a national scale, and confusion over just who should be first in line to get the vaccine. (The assumption, of course, is that there isn’t enough to go around, but that’s another topic.)
“Different jurisdictions [are] taking different approaches,” they write, highlighting how messy and ineffective—not to mention inequitable—the vaccine rollout has been.
Why, then, should teachers be expected to happily return to the classroom in some of the nation’s largest public school districts?
The high level of dysfunction surrounding the vaccine is a reflection of the deeper problems that shape this country’s approach to public education, and to the public in general.
In Minneapolis recently, this took shape in a court injunction filed by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers against the city’s school district. For the first time in more than twenty years, in fact, the union accused the district of unfair labor practices for an alleged refusal to “negotiate crucial safety measures for educators returning to in-person teaching,” according to an article in the Star Tribune.
This allegation led to a last-minute court injunction, filed just days before teachers were set to return to work in person.
On January 30, a Hennepin County District Court judge ruled that the Minneapolis Public Schools could not force teachers back to work on February 1, as had been planned, if teachers had applied, or were in the process of applying, for a health-related accommodation that would allow them to continue working from home.
A stark photo accompanies the Star Tribune’s coverage of this court ruling, featuring local teacher Lindsey West holding a sign that simply states, “I Can’t Teach From A Grave!”
Meanwhile, a fellow Minneapolis parent just posted an urgent note on the private Facebook page of our local, K-8 school. She wanted teachers to know that Sam’s Club was offering vaccination appointments for K-12 educators.
I know, a teacher responded. She then said she had tried to get an appointment for a colleague who hadn’t been vaccinated but was now teaching in person. It turns out you have to be a Sam’s Club member to get an appointment, and even then, the teacher stated, there are currently no appointments available anywhere in the state.
This is undoubtedly a scary position to be in, not only for teachers but for the bus drivers and support staff who also will not be able to work from home. But, as writer Sarah Jaffe argued recently on Twitter, it doesn’t have to be this way.
“It’s actually astonishing to me,” Jaffe tweeted, “how many articles can be written about schools reopening that don’t describe any other policy choices that led to this place.”
By “this place,” Jaffe is referring to the familiar storyline of teachers unions locked in a political grudge match against local decision makers.
We always revert to blaming teachers, she insists, while conveniently overlooking the overcrowding in schools, or other problematic working conditions that are likely at the root of their reluctance to simply get back to work in person.
Maybe help is on the way, thanks to the Biden Administration’s focus on getting kids safely back in schools as soon as possible, as well as renewed interest in addressing K-12 infrastructure issues. Until then, we shouldn’t expect teachers to shoulder our collective failures for us.