With coronavirus infections surging, public school teachers in San Jose are resisting plans to get kids and teachers back into physical classrooms as early as Aug. 12, saying that the effort would put teachers’ health at risk.
“Teachers do not feel that it is safe to return to teaching in person and, in large majority, they are unwilling to do so at this time,” Patrick Bernhardt, president of the San Jose Teachers Association, said in a letter Friday to the San Jose Unified School District.
District officials now say they are “reassessing the details of returning students to their classrooms in the fall.”
The move affects Silicon Valley’s biggest and most diverse public school system. The 2,700 staffers of San Jose Unified serve 30,000 students in 41 different schools, from kindergarten to 12th grade. The teachers’ union represents 1,500 educators.
“We all want schools open, right?” Bernhardt told The Chronicle Saturday. “It’s a critical component to getting parents back to work and it’s definitely where the best teaching and learning will take place. We just can’t do it if it’s not safe.”
“You know, I don’t want to die from teaching, I guess is the way to put it,” explained Jodi Disario, 49. She teaches high school freshmen in the district and says she is at high risk of serious illness if she gets infected.
“I have limits. I’ll work 60-hour weeks. I’ll buy thousands of dollars of supplies,” she said. “But I think I need to draw the line at dying.”
In a statement posted to its website, the district said it remains “committed to providing high-quality, equitable learning for our students for the 2020-2021 school year, but we cannot do that without teachers.”
The district now is asking parents, teachers, staffers and administrators to fill out an online survey by July 14 on school reopening.
Of all the brutal decisions forced on communities by the pandemic, choices about education have been among the toughest. Research suggests that most kids learn best in physical classrooms, surrounded by other kids and adults, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has warned that the isolation of distance learning can bring its own harm. America’s threadbare system of child care also has left many working parents struggling to manage kids and hold onto jobs, creating political pressure to reopen.
Some large districts in the Bay Area, like the San Francisco Unified School District, have yet to release detailed plans for the fall school year, while others have announced a hybrid approach that mixes some in-person classes with distance learning. Other districts, like the Oakland Unified School District, the Fremont Unified School District and the West Contra Costa district, have said classes will be virtual, at least initially.
Starting in late June, in public letters and webinars, the San Jose district laid out a plan for students to return on Aug. 12. According to the district, the plan would allow “as many students as possible (to) return to campus for in-person instruction” while also meeting state and county health and safety requirements.
But teachers grew nervous when they heard some of the details: Class sizes would not be capped, raising the possibility of 30 or more students packed into each classroom, and mask-wearing for elementary-school students would be optional; older students would be required to wear them, but there was no clear enforcement mechanism.
Before reading the plan, Melissa Garcia, 40, a middle-school English teacher with 15 years of experience, was eager to return to her classroom. “I’m like, we’ll throw masks on, we’ll spread out, we’ll be good to go,” Garcia said. But then, as coronavirus case counts rose every week and she tried to imagine the logistics, she changed her mind.
“I am going to have grown eighth-graders,” Garcia said. “They’re grown-ass people, these eighth-graders. They’re going to be in my classroom — in theory, it could be 30 kids.”
How was she supposed to enforce social distancing with 30 kids in a room in a 55-year-old building? And what if they forgot their masks?
“We have a dress code at our middle school,” Garcia said. “I can’t get my eighth-graders to wear polo shirts every day. So how am I going to be able to enforce mask-wearing?”
Harveen Bal, 51, had similar worries. A fourth-grade teacher and the parent of two children in the district, Bal felt it would be impossible to create enough social distance in full classrooms.
“I don’t have the physical space to spread out 31 desks and maintain a 6-foot distance between me and the children,” she said. “It just didn’t seem feasible to adhere to the protocols. To me, that was surprising and concerning, and not just for me as a teacher but also as a parent.”
Another parent in the district, 39-year-old Fabiola Pineda, said she supported the teachers’ stance.
“Being a single mother myself, yes, parents need to work,” Pineda said. But she doesn’t think it’s fair to make teachers feel unsafe or potentially expose them to the virus.
“They should be respected and valued,” she said.
Over the last week and a half, as the safety concerns of teachers mounted, many reached out to leadership at the union, asking about the process for taking a year-long leave of absence. Several teachers were even thinking about retiring, Bernhardt said.
In the letter to the school district, he stressed that teachers were willing to help the district fight for more financial resources to reopen schools safely, and in the meantime “to do what it takes to ensure robust, rigorous distance learning for all students.”
“Our laser focus for the next five weeks should be: Let’s get distance learning right,” Bernhardt said.
Talking about how much she will miss her students if distance learning continues, Garcia said she felt like she might start crying.
“It’s really hard,” she said.
“Nothing about distance learning is easy,” added Bal, “but teachers are willing to do the harder thing in order to keep our students and families safe.”
Jason Fagone is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jason.fagone@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfagone
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‘I need to draw the line at dying’: San Jose teachers say returning to school in August is too risky - San Francisco Chronicle
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