Tag Archives: classrooms

American teachers grapple with patchy COVID-19 vaccine rollout

By Maria Caspani and Brendan O’Brien

NEW YORK (Reuters) – For New York City high school teacher Rebecca Crawford, receiving the coronavirus vaccine meant taking the first concrete step towards seeing her students in person again, after an uncertain year that she spent mostly teaching online.

On Wednesday afternoon, Crawford, 39, was administered the first dose of a two-shot COVID-19 vaccine at Kings County Hospital in the borough of Brooklyn, days after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo opened up inoculations for teachers.

“For so long,” Crawford told Reuters shortly after being vaccinated, “there’s nothing that felt concrete that I could do to get to see my students.”

Crawford is one of the lucky ones. Across the country, many teachers, including those in neighboring New Jersey, are still not eligible to receive the vaccine. The lack of a federal blueprint for mass inoculation has left individual states to decide who gets the shots and when.

It is yet another example of the unevenness that has long characterized the national effort to tackle the pandemic. Many of the 50 million public students in the United States are still taking their classes online, almost a year after the virus shut down schools nationwide.

While teachers in some states wait to be vaccinated, some of them say they are being pressured to return to the classroom during a surge in COVID-19 infections. In Chicago, where teachers are not getting vaccinated yet, the powerful teachers union is pushing back against the district requiring teachers to return to classrooms as it gradually reopens school buildings.

“Teachers may get their vaccines, but our family members may not be getting them as early as we will. That is why we need a safe reopening plan,” Chicago kindergarten teacher Nicole Flores, 28, said.

In one New Jersey district, educators holding signs that read “First vaccinate then return” staged a walkout on Wednesday, the first day of in-person instruction there, saying they are concerned that the reopening was premature and dangerous.

“We cannot help but feel that we are entering into a situation of very real danger, to ourselves and colleagues, and to our students and their families,” Rocio Lopez, the president of the South Orange-Maplewood Education Association said in a statement.

Lopez said she would urge local health authorities to postpone in-person education until vaccines are “amply available.”

CLASSROOM CONCERNS

In New York, some teachers who are grateful to be getting vaccinated are also concerned that inoculations alone won’t make classrooms safe again.

“I cried when I made the appointment,” said Sari Rosenberg, a New York high school teacher who is scheduled to receive the vaccine next week, describing her anticipation.

At the same time, Rosenberg said, she feared classrooms would remain a fertile breeding ground for COVID-19 as her teenaged students were not yet eligible for the vaccine and could take the virus home to their families and vulnerable members of their communities.

In-person education has resumed for some in New York City public schools and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said this week he was eager to get more children back in the classroom.

Scientists say more data is needed before we can know whether individuals who have been vaccinated can still spread the virus. Health officials have urged the public to stick with mitigation measures such mask-wearing and social distancing, at least for a few months.

Regardless of access, some educators – like many members of the public – are hesitant about getting inoculated, expressing concerns about the vaccine’s safety.

“The vaccination was put together a little too quickly for me,” said Rochell Wallace-Haley, a 37-year-old Milwaukee seventh-grade special education teacher who does not plan to get inoculated. “I believe that it is still in the experimental stage right now and I don’t want to be part of that experiment.”

Milwaukee schools are currently offering remote learning only. In the next month, the district’s school board is expected to decide whether to send students back to classrooms. Teachers in the Wisconsin city could begin getting vaccinated within weeks.

Even though Wallace-Haley is not willing to get vaccinated, she is still eager to get back into the classroom.

“I would be willing to put on a gas mask and wear a suit because I’m not working for a paycheck, I’m working because it is my passion,” she said.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Lessons from around the world: How schools are opening up after COVID-19 lockdowns

(Reuters) – Public health official Anthony Fauci warned on Tuesday about the dangers to children if U.S. schools are reopened and California’s state university system, the largest in the United States, canceled classes for the fall semester.

As the U.S. debates when to bring children back into classrooms, phased-in reopenings have begun in numerous countries around the world.

Here’s how schools around the world are trying to protect children as they reopen:

SOCIAL DISTANCING MEASURES

Denmark eased its coronavirus lockdown in mid-April by reopening schools and day care centres, although concerns they might become breeding grounds for a second wave of cases convinced thousands of parents to keep their children at home.

Teaching staff there are under instruction to keep social distancing in place between children and, with many school buildings staying closed, some teachers are taking pupils outside and writing with chalk on the playground instead of a blackboard.

In Switzerland, children at Geneva’s La Tour School had to adapt to new rituals, with parents dropping them off at a distance. Classrooms were half full to reduce crowding and desks spaced two meters (6.5 feet) apart.

Under a courtyard shelter in heavy rain, children laughed while others played hopscotch and one girl helped a smaller child put on disposable gloves.

PLASTIC SHIELDS AND HAND SANITISER

In the Netherlands, the Springplank school in the city of Den Bosch installed plastic shields around students’ desks and disinfectant gel dispensers at the doorways.

“Our teachers are not worried,” said Rascha van der Sluijs, the school’s technical coordinator. “We have flexible screens that we bought so we can protect our teachers if students are coughing.”

The Canadian province of Quebec reopened some of its schools on Monday, as some parents and teachers expressed uncertainty over the move’s safety. The Ecole St-Gerard, in a Montreal suburb, opened with staff wearing visors and using hand sanitizer.

STAGGERED SCHOOL SHIFTS

Schools in Australia’s biggest state, New South Wales, reopened on Monday but only allowing students to attend one day a week on a staggered basis.

Australia’s second-most populous state, Victoria, will resume face-to-face teaching from May 27, weeks earlier than expected. The state including the city of Melbourne will allow teenagers in classrooms first, followed by younger pupils from June 9, Andrew said.

Israel reopened some schools this month but the move was boycotted by several municipalities and many parents who cited poor government preparation.

Kitted with masks and hand-cleaners, the first three grades of elementary school and the last two grades of high school were allowed back, redistributed in classes capped at 15 pupils to enforce social distancing.

Across France, primary school pupils on Tuesday sat at least a metre apart in small classes and listened to teachers in masks on their first day back after two months of home-schooling during the coronavirus lockdown.

TESTING AND TEMPERATURE CHECKS

In Cyprus, health workers wearing personal protective equipment tested students for COVID-19 at a school in Nicosia after high schoolers were allowed to return beginning May 11.

In Shanghai, students and staff alike were required to enter the school building via a thermal scanner when school reopened last week after three months of lockdown. The walls are papered with posters on measures to tackle the coronavirus and in the spotlessly clean school canteen, glass walls divide the tables, so only two students can eat together.

It may be more like going to a hospital than a school, but the Shanghai students returning to class after three months of lockdown are thrilled to be there.

“I feel so excited coming back to school. Usually we look forward to the holidays but suddenly our holidays became so long, 17-year-old Zhang Jiayi told Reuters. “This time, we longed to go back to school, where we can see our friends and teachers.”

(Editing by Mark John and Lisa Shumaker)

Florida teachers can arm themselves under new gun bill

FILE PHOTO: A selection of Glock pistols are seen for sale at the Pony Express Firearms shop in Parker, Colorado December 7, 2015. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – Florida’s legislature on Wednesday passed a bill allowing teachers to carry guns in the classroom, expanding a program launched after the deadly high school shooting in Parkland with the aim of preventing another such massacre.

Florida’s House of Representatives voted 65 to 47 to pass the bill after hours of debate over two days in which the Republican majority thwarted Democratic efforts to amend, stall or kill the measure. Florida’s Senate approved it 22 to 17 last week.

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to sign the bill into law, enabling school districts wishing to take part in the voluntary Guardian program to arm those teachers who pass a 144-hour training course.

On Feb. 14, 2018, a former student armed with a semiautomatic rifle opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and wounding 17 others.

President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association have argued an armed teacher could provide the best defense against a shooter bent on mass murder.

Opponents questioned whether the solution to gun violence should be the presence of even more guns and warned of the danger of a teacher misfiring during a crisis or police mistaking an armed teacher for the assailant.

Passage marks a victory for gun-rights advocates, who were on the defensive a year ago when Parkland students inspired nationwide protests in favor of gun control.

After the Parkland shooting, Florida lawmakers rushed through legislation that required schools to place at least one armed staff member or law-enforcement officer at each campus.

The law also imposed a three-day waiting period for gun purchases and raised the age limit for buying rifles from 18 to 21 – remarkable measures in a gun-friendly state.

Although last year’s law allowed some school personnel to carry weapons, guns were still banned from the classroom.

Backers of arming classroom teachers revived the issue this year, arguing that school shootings often erupt too quickly for law enforcement to respond.

In anticipation of passage, school employees in 40 of Florida’s 67 counties already enrolled in or planned to take the 144-hour course, a spokesman for the Speaker of the House said. Some counties have resolved not to participate in the Guardian program.

Florida’s gun-control advocates had made stopping the proposal a top priority, among them Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense, which is funded by billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; additional reporting by Steve Gorman)

Oklahoma teachers end nearly two-week walkout that shut schools

Protester march during a strike by Oklahoma educators demanding more school funding near the Oklahoma state Capitol in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., April 9, 2018. Picture taken on April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Heide Brandes

By Heide Brandes

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – Oklahoma’s largest teachers union on Thursday called off a nearly two-week walkout that shut public schools statewide, saying it had secured historic gains in education funding after school budgets were devastated by a decade of cuts.

The move came after the Republican-dominated legislature passed its first major tax hikes in a quarter century that raised about $450 million in revenue for education. Republican leaders said they had no plans to go as high as the $600 million being sought by educators.

“We absolutely have a victory for teachers,” Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, told a news conference.

“Our members are saying they want to go back to the classroom,” said Priest, whose union has about 40,000 members.

Some major districts have said they will resume classes on Monday.

The strike was part of a wave of actions by teachers in states that have some of the lowest per-student spending in the country. A West Virginia strike ended last month with a pay raise for teachers, and educators in Arizona protested before classes on Wednesday, without skipping work, to seek enhanced education funding.

The Oklahoma walkout began on April 2 and affected about 500,000 of the state’s 700,000 public school students.

Opinion surveys showed it had garnered wide support among Oklahoma voters, many of whom had seen firsthand how students at struggling schools had to share outdated and tattered textbooks and sometimes go to a four-day school week to help save districts money.

Oklahoma teachers, who were seeking a $10,000 annual wage hike over three years, will see an average annual pay raise of about $6,100 from the increased funding, lawmakers said.

In May 2017, their annual mean wage was $41,880, among the lowest in the country, compared with neighboring states such as Texas at $57,830 and Kansas at $50,470, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

School districts for the most part supported the teacher walk-out. But they began to run out of wiggle room to make up for lost time when the labor action threatened to extend the school year, piling pressure on teachers to return.

Low wages have created an exodus of educators, causing a teacher shortage in Oklahoma. As a result, school districts had to cut curricula and deploy nearly 2,000 emergency-certified instructors as a stop-gap measure.

(Reporting by Heide Brandes in Oklahoma City and Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton in Tulsa; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Sandra Maler)

Oklahoma teachers press Senate to pass tax plan to end strike

Teachers rally outside the state Capitol on the second day of a teacher walkout to demand higher pay and more funding for education in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., April 3, 2018. REUTERS/Nick Oxford

By Heidi Brandes

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – Oklahoma teachers packed the state Capitol on Monday to press the Republican-dominated Senate to enact a capital gains tax overhaul educators said could bring in about $100 million and help end a statewide walkout now in its second week.

Tens of thousands of teachers have come to the Capitol each working day since the strike started April 2 calling for increased spending for an education system where inflation-adjusted general funding per student dropped by 28.2 percent between 2008 and 2018, the biggest reduction of any state, according to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Public schools serving more than half of the state’s 700,000 students were closed on Monday, including those around Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Oklahoma teachers are some of the lowest paid in the country.

“We need lawmakers to make a long-term investment in our children’s future,” the Oklahoma Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union with about 40,000 members, said on Monday.

In the past few weeks, lawmakers approved nearly $450 million in new taxes and revenue to help fund teachers’ pay and education, but that is still short of the $600 million being sought by teachers.

The Senate is set to meet this afternoon and discuss a bill that would remove a tax exemption on capital gains. If the bill is enacted, the union has said it would be a major step toward ending the strike.

They also want lawmakers to implement a hotel tax that would bring in an estimated $50 million.

The strike has garnered strong public backing, with a statewide survey from the Sooner Poll agency released last Friday showing that 72.1 percent of respondents supported the walkout.

The job action comes after a West Virginia strike last month ended with a pay raise and as teachers in other states, increasingly angry over stagnating wages, consider walkouts of their own.

Opponents of the tax hikes, including Oklahoma Taxpayers United, argue that lawmakers could boost education spending by cutting bureaucracy and waste rather than raising taxes.

The new tax and revenue that has been approved by lawmakers translates into an average teacher pay raise of about $6,100.

Teachers are seeking a $10,000 raise over three years. The minimum salary for a first-year teacher is currently $31,600, state data shows.

A major cause of budget strain comes from tax breaks Oklahoma granted to its energy industry, which were worth $470 million in fiscal-year 2015 alone.

(Writing and additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin and Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and Tom Brown)

Buckets of rocks are Pennsylvania schools’ last defense against shooters

Students from Gonzaga College High School in Washington, DC, hold up signs with the names of those killed in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting during a protest for stricter gun control during a walkout by students at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

By David DeKok

HARRISBURG, Pa. (Reuters) – A rural Pennsylvania school district has equipped all 200 of its classrooms with buckets of rocks that students and teachers could use as a “last line of defense” in the event of a school shooting, the district’s superintendent said on Friday.

The buckets are just one of the measures that Blue Mountain School District in Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania, has put in place this academic year, along with security cameras, secured building entrances and fortified classroom doors, Superintendent David Helsel said in a telephone interview.

“We didn’t want our students to be helpless victims,” Helsel said. “River stones were my idea. I thought they would be more effective than throwing books or book bags or staplers.”

Last month’s massacre of 17 students and educators at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, sparked fresh debate in the United States over how to prevent school shootings.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to join rallies in Washington and around the country on Saturday calling for tighter gun laws in “March for Our Lives” protests organized by the young survivors of the Parkland shooting.

Helsel said the idea of equipping classrooms with rocks grew out of his reading of the active-shooter defense program known as ALICE, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.

He first spoke about the rock buckets in testimony at the Pennsylvania state house in Harrisburg last week.

Helsel said his school board approved the rock buckets before they were put in the classrooms at the district’s five schools last fall. Parents in Orwigsburg, about 92 miles (148 km) northwest of Philadelphia, have been mostly supportive, he added.

“It is so unbelievably tragic that our society has come to a point where schools have to arm themselves with buckets of rocks to defend the against active shooters,” said Robert Conroy, director of organizing with gun-control group CeaseFirePA. “We should be talking about real reform of gun laws.”

(Editing by Scott Malone and Dan Grebler)