Teachers Left Out of School Reopening Discussion—Even on the Left

Ari Paul

A Jacobin interview (9/19/20) with epidemiologists called for "an age-targeted strategy" towards Covid-19, including "keeping schools open for our children."

A recent interview in Jacobin (9/19/20) with two scientists put forth a rather controversial case against government interventions to stop the spread of Covid-19. In the interview, Harvard medical professor Martin Kulldorff asserted, “Children and young adults have minimal risk, and there is no scientific or public health rationale to close daycare centers, schools or colleges,” while Harvard biologist Katherine Yih said, “I don’t think it’s wise or warranted to keep society locked down until vaccines become available.”

The article caused quite a bit of chatter among the magazine’s readers. One issue that stood out in the piece for many unionists is the knock against school closures. Said Kulldorff:

Good education is not only important for academic achievement and financial well-being; it is also critical for the mental and physical health of children and into their subsequent adulthood. Kids have minimal risk from this virus, and it is sad that we are sacrificing our children instead of properly protecting the elderly and other high-risk groups.

While FAIR (9/25/20) has already addressed the question of the risk faced by children, it’s also perplexing that a socialist magazine would skip over the worker-led movements that have brought us these closings, delays and remote learning during this pandemic. This is the latest iteration of something this writer has noted (FAIR.org, 5/28/20): Coverage of the issue of reopening schools downplays the risk faced by teachers and other adult staffers, and far too often ignores education unions as sources.

At the K–12 level, most notably, the Chicago Teachers Union threatened to strike in response to what it viewed was an unsafe reopening plan, forcing the city to go full remote. Los Angeles schools went to full remote, with the administration working closely with the teachers union. In New York City, the United Federation of Teachers threatened to strike, and then pulled back after the city announced a delay in reopening;however, teachers around the city continue to organize with what they see are unsafe conditions. And it should be pointed out that such struggles to push for full-remote schooling until health concerns can be met come not just from teachers;  in New York City, the UFT (and the principals’ union) was supported by the union of cafeteria workers.

New York City school workers have reason to be worried: This spring, at least 74 Department of Education workers died from Covid-19.

Then there is higher education. Reopening has been problematic, to be sure, as the University of North Carolina was forced to end in-person education after an outbreak. At the University of Michigan, a coalition of graduate student workers, dining workers and other campus workers have mobilized for safety around reopening. Faculty there say the administration has not been open around specifics of reopening, where there rumors that donation money influenced the decision to go in-person this fall.

Benjamin Balthaser, an associate professor of English at Indiana University at South Bend, said in an email:

Universities, with their quarantine dorms, their testing regimes, their glossy brochures on hand-washing, have totally failed, with many campuses now closed or on lock-down after massive Covid spikes. This proves the lie at the center of the interview: that somehow populations can be separated, that management is an effective strategy and that workers will not bear the brunt. Already over 60 university workers have died, just this summer, and tens of thousands have been sickened, many with lingering and chronic conditions after they are “well.”  If this is a pro-worker policy, I would hate to see what being against them would look like.

Nobody is happy about closing campuses and schools. Schools workers are pushing for full remote learning until school buildings are safe, but far too often there is the insinuation that these workers are doing this at the expense of students and parents. This is a false conflict, often created by anti-union propaganda. A great many teachers are also parents who would like to see their children in school, and juggle the complexity of remote learning while also managing their families at home.

More than that, the unsafe reopening of schools could spread the virus beyond the school buildings themselves. In cities, teachers and schools workers often ride public transportation to and from work. And there is research showing children can spread the virus to adults. In this sense, union concern of school reopening isn’t just about the union’s membership, but the public at large.

Epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves (Twitter,  9/21/20) called the Jacobin interview "Malthusian drivel" and "practically Trumpian."

Other critics have taken the interview to task on the scientific argument about reopening the economy. Yale epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves called the argument “Trumpian” and “Malthusian” in a series of posts on Twitter (9/21/20), and pointed out that while Sweden didn’t lockdown its economy, many other countries did lockdown and had much better results with Covid-19. And it should go without saying that just because Sweden enacts a policy doesn’t mean it would roll in the United States with the same results. Sweden is a social democracy where the government could manage response to the crisis. One can’t say this about the United States.

Jacobin’s interview pointed to real injustice, which is that while many white-collar workers have the option to work remotely, many blue-collar workers are forced to be exposed to the virus. But the jump to the solution that all workers should be exposed to the same risk is perplexing, and insinuates that the blame for this inequality is on “professional class” workers like teachers, who have been able to stay home, while blue-collar workers have often remained on the front-lines, or, if not, lost their wages over lost work. This is pitting the working class against itself, due to a crisis that capitalist government can simply not offer workers fairness in response to the economic crisis caused by Covid-19. Teachers are workers, and schools and campuses are worksites for dining workers, bus drivers, maintenance workers, janitors and clerical workers, all of whom imperiled by unsafe schools reopening.

It is depressingly common for education unions to be treated unfairly in the corporate US press. Suffice it to say, Jacobin should strive to do better than that low standard.

Featured image: Creative Commons photo by Phil Roeder