On Reopening Schools

NO ONE had better be lecturing teachers on how school closures affect students.

We know our kids need to be in school with us, and with each other. We know the burden it puts on families (including our own, but most of us also recognize that we were senselessly privileged to be able to keep our jobs, and do not for one second doubt that we deserve every dollar we earned during the school closure. Most of us worked harder in the last three months of the school year than we'd imagined could be possible when we didn't even see our kids). And we know it wasn't enough. Or it was too much. We know it didn't work, we know it was messy. My coworkers and I cried ourselves sick most nights in the beginning. We know nothing about it was "just right."

We understand the impact not just on their academic growth, but their mental and physical well-being, their emotional health, their very safety. And we understand this because we've been tasked with attending to these needs for a very long time, without a lot of support. Teachers pool their money to buy food and clothes for their students when they need to. We spend hundreds of our own dollars every year on supplies our district won't cover. We worry all summer long, and during breaks, because we know that school is so much more than academics to many of our students; it's a safe place to land, with predictability and routines and people who genuinely love them even when they're shitheads. (For that matter, that's why I love my school, too. I can be a perfect shithead sometimes, and my people there still love me. It's one of the reasons I've stayed for so long.)

Many of us tried to limp through a sudden free fall into "remote learning" while we tried to support our own families at home at the same time. Many of us are women, and I could write for days about the ways in which this pandemic has brought all sorts of gender inequalities into the glaring, unflattering light. Many of us have our own children at home. I have two absolutely wonderful, independent, resilient kids I love spending time with and I was absolutely not equipped to be their teacher. I have never once wanted to homeschool. I can hardly think of their teachers without literally weeping tears of sheer love and gratitude; they worked so hard to keep them engaged and connected, and we all still know it's not enough. We do all this while FOX news screams at us and every third comment on any story about teachers comes back to how it must be nice to get paid for nothing. And I think most of the time we can ignore that, because it's nothing new, but when you're experiencing trauma, you spend less time constructively taking on household projects and learning a side hustle or whatever and more time weeping into your wine and watching Outbreak too many times for it to be considered remotely healthy. (Or maybe that was just me?)

I'm not saying this because I want you to thank a teacher (although that's always nice) but because I want you to know WE GET IT. And we know everyone wants schools to open. We want schools to open. (If you doubt that I do, please read what I wrote only six weeks ago here.) But we want them to open safely, and what we DO NOT KNOW is how to do that safely, because no one has been able to provide answers beyond "We will follow these vague guidelines, created by people woefully out of touch with the reality of working in public schools."

Today, right now, these are a few of the questions I think NEED to be answered before anyone can expect teachers and students to return to work in a grotesque public health experiment. There are more, but let's start with the basics. And as of today, no one has been able to provide those answers. We shouldn't even consider returning to our schools until we have them. (Disclaimer: I know there are folks working so hard on precisely this, and I want to honor that. It is hard work. But we still need to know what it means for us and for our safety.)

What PPE will schools provide for staff and students? If masks are required (spoiler: in Washington, they are, and they are mandated at schools as well as everywhere else), who provides them for students who don't have them? Will teachers be expected to purchase our own face shields?

If a student takes off their mask or refuses to wear one, what will administrative support look like? What immediate steps will be taken? Don't tell me this won't be an issue. I teach teenagers who are terrible at social distancing. Younger kids are brand-new to wearing them and they're not great at social distancing. (I don't blame them! But also, seriously, what support will teachers receive?) Not only that, but there are folks on my Facebook friends list who are still posting about their refusal to comply with these government mandates, and in one case, they're also the ones insisting we figure it out and get their kids back to school because they need it. You know who you are, by the way, and I'm telling you right now, absolutely do not bother coming to comment here or on my Facebook page where I'm likely going to share this. I'm in no damn mood for that nonsense.

It's important to note that our concern about administrative support is real. I don't have a lot of "discipline" issues in my class, but I rely on proximity and close one-on-one conversations to handle a lot of issues. If my school district, not to mention state leadership, insists that we'll follow strict social-distancing protocol, please tell me what that looks like.

How will social/physical distancing be possible when the most my classroom can hold is about fifteen while still maintaining MINIMAL social distancing? (Seriously, that's if we're considering literally every inch of classroom space.) I am a program coordinator, so have about 130 students on my part-time teaching schedule; a full-time high school teacher in my district sees 180 kids, not including advisory. And what about classrooms that don't use individual desks but have tables instead? We have a lot of those. Who will provide different classroom furnishings?

Who will be responsible for cleaning and disinfecting rooms? How often will that happen?

Desks?
Light switches?
Door handles?
Shared supplies?
Pencil sharpeners?
Phones?
Laptops/chromebooks?

Will we be provided with adequate hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, access to soap and water? In my 19 years of teaching, I can count on one hand the number of bottles of hand sanitizer I've been provided. One or two of them were distributed during particularly nasty flu seasons; otherwise I had to ask in the office. I've always bought my own disinfecting wipes and cleaning supplies, but can anyone even find those anywhere these days? And as the mother of children who go to public school, I don't think it should depend on individual teachers to sanitize entire classrooms after each use and hope they all have the same standards of cleanliness.

My room is not remotely well ventilated, and my windows don't work well. Custodians have requested I not try to open them as they're "sort of broken." What is the district's response to teaching in such rooms?

How will students maintain physical distance on buses? (Spoiler: While some districts claim they will maintain physical distancing at school, I have yet to see them make this claim about buses, and some are quite open about saying they won't be doing this. Where would we get the extra buses and drivers anyway? We were already barely scraping by.)

Two weeks of quarantine can wipe out an entire year of wellness/sick leave. If a staff member is exposed and needs to quarantine, because that is the morally responsible and socially necessary response, are they expected to use their sick leave?

If a staff member falls ill with COVID, recovery can take significantly longer than two weeks. What support will be available?

We have a severe shortage of substitute teachers. Can we reasonably expect them to cover for our classes during a COVID outbreak if the school doesn't close altogether after an exposure? If a teacher is infected with COVID, we all know it's not just a matter of staying home for a day or two. We'll need long-term substitutes who can deliver our curriculum.

If a student is exposed to COVID or tests positive, what are the next steps for the school? Does that student's teacher and class quarantine? In high school, students have multiple classes; do they all quarantine? Do they close? How will we alert families? If my own child is exposed at a different school, I would obviously need to self-isolate. What about my students? What if a student's sibling is exposed? We're a large district, and many of our families have children in different schools. Can you see how quickly this would escalate?

What specific circumstances would necessitate a school-wide closure?

If schools wouldn't close because a student or staff member was infected (and let's just say infected and not merely exposed, for the sake of argument), what steps would be taken to ensure everyone's safety?

If we're teaching in a hybrid model (that has been proposed by so many districts) and a teacher gets sick, with COVID or otherwise, would that teacher be allowed to teach remotely, or would a substitute be required?

If we are expected to teach remotely FROM our classrooms in an entirely online model, what happens if we get sick (COVID or otherwise)? Would we have the option to teach from home? If not, will we have subs equipped to step in and teach remotely for us? What will that look like?

Don't lecture teachers -- and for that matter, don't thank them either -- if you're not willing to advocate for them. The only folks who have been advocating for teachers are teachers, and make no mistake: when the "leaders" of our country call for a return to school, it's not because they care about our students. WE care about our students. And what we need is to be safe to do our jobs as well as we can. We shouldn't be your public health experiment.