Teachers, parents push back against school reopenings

(NBC) – There is a growing debate over schools and how to resume classes nationwide, with many teachers pushing back against in-person teaching and some schools already reporting outbreaks.

In many communities across the country, including places where infections are surging, some teachers say they’re being pressured to go back to the classroom.

As districts start to reopen, there’s no doubt many parents are eager to put their kids back on the bus. But some teachers, like Karla Reyes, fear the risk is too high. “There’s no teacher who wants to be working from home behind a computer all day while also having to provide for their own families in real time,” Reyes said. “No one wants that. But we don’t want to come back to a place that’s putting our lives at risk.”

Before classes even resumed in Georgia’s largest school district, there was news that 260 employees must quarantine because they either tested positive or were exposed to coronavirus.

Schools that already reopened in Mississippi, Indiana, and Tennessee, are reporting COVID cases, prompting concerns nationwide.

In Dallas, Texas, they’re preparing for the possibility of in-person classes with plans to take students’ temperatures, provide three masks and a face shield for each student, and put plexiglass dividers between desks.

Leslie Stephens works with the Dallas Independent School District. She said, “The minute we know there is an illness, we will remove students from the classroom and disinfect and clean.”

When classes resume in San Jose, California, students will learn remotely but teachers will be required to work on campus in empty classrooms. The district says the agreement was reached with the teachers’ union in response to educators who had difficulty working from home in the spring. High school English teacher Jodi Disario was just granted permission to work from home because of underlying health conditions. But she said many teachers are upset with the new policy. “Nobody should be required to be somewhere that they don’t feel safe or productive,” she explained.

It’s hard to gauge the numbers nationwide of just how many kids are doing in-person classes versus remote learning as things are constantly changing as schools assess the situation. But according to the trade publication “Education Week,” of the 15 largest school districts in the U.S., at least 11 of them expect to be online-only in the fall, impacting more than 2.8 million kids.