Pressure is mounting on local and national officials to get kids back into schools, even as the COVID-19 pandemic shows no signs of abating. In Minnesota, the Republican-controlled state senate has refused to provide enough resources for schools to reopen safely. But they are nonetheless insisting that Tim Walz, the state’s Democratic governor, open them up anyway.
From Orange County, California to Miami-Dade County in Florida, parents, teachers, and local officials are resisting efforts to reopen schools without safety precautions in place.
This conforms with the Trump Administration’s approach to school reopening and coronavirus mitigation plans. Recent news reports have detailed how senior White House officials “pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this summer to play down the risk of sending children back to school.”
Now, educators across the country are pushing back.
From Orange County, California to Miami-Dade County in Florida, parents, teachers, and local officials are resisting efforts to reopen brick and mortar schools without stringent safety precautions in place.
On September 30, this tension led teachers, classroom aides, and childcare workers from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and the St. Paul Federation of Educators to rally on behalf of safe and equitable school reopening plans.
As a blustery fall wind took hold, union members stood on the banks of the Mississippi River, which runs between the two cities, and listened to their colleagues describe working conditions in both online and in-person school settings.
Shaun Laden, president of the Education Support Professionals chapter of the Minneapolis teachers union, helped kick off the event with a reminder: Classroom aides, food service workers, and building engineers—all union members—have been on the job throughout the coronavirus pandemic because their services were deemed essential.
“They know what is needed to open schools safely,” Laden insisted, before introducing Willa Johnson, a childcare worker for the Minneapolis Public Schools.
Johnson said she has been at work for the district throughout the pandemic. In the spring, Johnson told the mask-wearing crowd, she and her coworkers not only received hazard pay for taking care of the children of essential workers—which the school district is obligated to do—but also were responsible for just five children per adult.
It was an atmosphere of “amazing teamwork,” Johnson said, as the childcare workers were joined in the classroom by education assistants and others qualified to help students complete their schoolwork.
Now, she insisted, “we are alone in a room with fourteen kids,” as the district has put together a more limited program this fall. Johnson says the childcare workers have been instructed not to help kids—even those as young as kindergarten or first grade—with their distance learning assignments, but end up doing so anyway, with no extra support or resources.
The hazard pay is gone for childcare workers in the Minneapolis schools, and so are the more generous adult-to-child ratios, Johnson noted, insisting that she and her fellow support professionals could have helped the district design a better reopening plan, if only they had been asked to do so.
Johnson’s perspective was echoed by Carlo Franco, who works as a Student Success Coordinator at Humboldt Senior High School in St. Paul. Speaking forcefully into the microphone, Franco lamented the “system barriers” that are making it hard for the families of color he works with to fully participate in distance learning.
Internet service, Franco declared, is “not a luxury; it’s a utility.”
“Students are lacking resources,” Franco argued, highlighting how students often lack “free and reliable Internet in their own home,” which makes it difficult to complete online assignments from home.
Internet service, Franco declared, is “not a luxury; it’s a utility.”
Both Johnson and Franco touched on aspects of the five-point school reopening plan put together by union leaders from Minneapolis and St. Paul. Before any school district decides to switch from distance learning to a hybrid or fully in-person model, the unions insist that input from stakeholders must be included.
They also want officials to “publicly acknowledge and immediately address the history of underfunding in the districts that has allowed Black, brown and Indigenous students to go without essential educational opportunities while the richest 1 percent of Minnesotans fail to pay their fair share,” according to a statement.
St. Paul Federation of Educators president Nick Faber riled up the crowd at the rally by raising this very issue. Teachers are always told that there is not enough money for essentials such as tech support or reliable Internet service, but that’s a false narrative, he said.
Local corporations have raked in tons of money during the pandemic, Faber argued. He called out the Target Corporation in particular, noting that the Minnesota-based retailer has profited mightily in recent months due to a surge in coronavirus-related purchases.
“We are making political choices to give money to the rich, not students,” Faber argued, earning shouts of approval from the crowd.
Other educators, such as Kaia Hirt, who teaches in the suburban Anoka-Hennepin School District, also spoke. Hirt’s district started the year with a hybrid model, meaning students are in school part-time while teachers have to try and meet the needs of different groups of kids at the same time.
“We are in crisis,” she said, arguing that the hybrid approach is neither sustainable nor equitable. Distance learning is the only model that makes sense, Hirt added, but even that must be modified.
Requiring teachers and students to be online all day, with cameras turned on and timely attendance noted, is not feasible. How can students be marked late if they can’t join a class on time because they are helping babysit younger siblings while their parents work, Hirt wondered.
The rally ended on a positive note, as Erin Murphy, a nurse and former majority leader of the Minnesota House of Representatives who is now running for a seat in the state senate, implored educators to get out and vote, and help put pressure on lawmakers to “raise the money to fund our schools.”
Now is the time to “recognize our power,” Murphy declared. Still, pressure is rising in districts like St. Paul’s, where officials have said they are hoping to partially reopen schools as soon as October 19.