Posted on 07/29/2020 6:18:55 PM PDT by karpov
As the nation heads toward a chaotic back-to-school season, with officials struggling over when to reopen classrooms and how to engage children online, teachers’ unions are playing a powerful role in determining the shape of public education as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage.
Teachers in many districts are fighting for longer school closures, stronger safety requirements and limits on what they are required to do in virtual classrooms, while flooding social media and state capitols with their concerns and threatening to walk off their jobs if key demands are not met.
On Tuesday, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union raised the stakes dramatically by authorizing its local and state chapters to strike if their districts do not take sufficient precautions — such as requiring masks and updating ventilation systems — before reopening classrooms. Already, teachers’ unions have sued Florida’s governor over that state’s efforts to require schools to offer in-person instruction.
But even as unions exert their influence, they face enormous public and political pressure because of widespread acknowledgment that getting parents back to work requires functioning school systems, and that remote learning failed many children this spring, deepening achievement gaps by race and income.
With the academic year set to begin next month in much of the country, parents are desperate for teachers to provide more interactive, face-to-face instruction this fall, both online and, where safe, in person. But many unions, while concerned about the safety of classrooms, are also fighting to limit the amount of time that teachers are required to be on video over the course of a day.
The unions are “really on the backs of their heels on this,” said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research and advocacy group that sometimes takes positions contrary to unions.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I have one of the so called “educators” living two doors down the street. They have unruly children, the requisite Subaru, BLM sign, no one is illegal sign, everything that a good Libtard needs.
If the children they’re teaching are brave enough to work at McDonald’s and Burger King... Why aren’t they brave enough to teach them? These people are pathetic.
Great! I hope they don’t come back. They have already screwed up enough generations. Quit paying them though.
They all say how much they care about the children, yet refuse to reach in person or spend too much tome on camera teaching. Make them go back to the schools for in person OR tech from the classroom live via the internet like a regular school day. If they don’t like either option, fire them. If they are such smart useful people, they can easily get a job somewhere else.
Fire the unions and defund the schools. Replace teachers with 70” flatsceens and heavily armed monitors. Have all the teaching provided from 1 centralized source like High School curriculum designed by Hillsdale University, focusing on reading writing and arithmetic. No social bullshit permitted!
Well, I won’t give the NYT a click. But I think instead of re-imagining policing we should re-imagine schools.
...and if they went on strike, what would that look like? Would we know?
Simple.
No work no pay.
Why are they special?
fire all the snowflakes
Declare them “Essential Workers”.
I’m 64, Essential Worker(Instrumentation & Electrical engineer in petrochem...we make bleach and other required items), and have been working through this entire “event”. My 3 sons(LEO, food chain worker,and aerospace/software engineer) are all “essential” and have also been working through this.
Yet, teachers cannot possibly work?
Let me go gaze at my property tax bill and ponder the large percentage taken from my wife and me for local school funding.
I’m actually on the side of the teachers on this one — at least in principle. If COVID-19 is serious enough for businesses to shut down and for people to work from home if they are able, then it’s serious enough to keep the schools shut ... since teaching is obviously a job that can be done from home.
Thats the whole point, its not serious enough where anything should be shut down! Teachers are in the most optimum environment. Kids dont get it, so teachers are safe. This is all to make people who have to work for a living suffer. Why in the hell would anyone shut anything down for a disease that is 98% survivable and if you have doses of hydroxychloquine and zinc, that make it damn near 100% survivable. Meanwhile the flu season is spreadable from kid to kid to teacher and can be far more fatal to kids!
They are wary of returning to the classroom but they sure as heck won’t miss out on a good riot...err protest.
I’m a ditchdigger and we haven’t missed a day
We actually fall under 3 of the criteria...
Agriculture
Public Works
Flood control
This is a golden opportunity to destroy the Marxist teachers unions and replace all the communist brainwashers with patriots who have the education to teach our children to love their country NOT TO HATE THEIR COUNTRY.
Then no pay.
Bkmrk
Bkmk
Every teacher I have ever known works 9 to 12 months a year. And, they are only paid for that time. They just choose to have their pay spread out over a years time. Yes, they are overworked and underpaid. I would rather work in a prison than in an inner city high school. And, so would you if you spent any time in them.
Yep. I’ve been fighting all these battles in real time, with the school board and the district, when first the teachers won—no in person schooling—and now they are on to the second topic—no live, synchronous teaching. They want to throw up one assignment a week plus a link to a Khan Academy or youtube video and they won’t have to teach at all.
The wealthier districts are more likely to be requesting live synchronous teaching. Teachers in general don’t want to do live teaching and/or don’t want to be filmed.
My daughter’s private school is offering live synchronous teaching and my son’s public school is debating it with the union as we speak. The district wants 75% live teaching.
This is a mess. I’m a few days ahead of the NYT this whole summer. The United States is collapsing educationally while we talked about bars and restaurants all summer.
The teachers in my district have not been “perfecting distance learning” all summer—they have declined to do anything along those lines because they are “not being paid.”
“virtual learning” does not work. It is posting one assignment a week and one link to a Khan academy video a week. Of the 14 high school teachers between my two teens, only two did anything at all last Spring—the rest disappeared. The whole thing is soul deadening, isolating, and depressing.
I’m sorry your wife’s computer and printer didn’t work when she returned to the classroom but honestly those items are not needed right now for in person, excellent 5 day live instruction in a classroom. It’s time to be creative, hold classes outside, make it happen. most other nations in the world have been open for months now.
I’m glad your district reopened. Mine won’t—maybe all year. Maybe never (CA).
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