‘ Are we putting ourselves at risk?’
Teachers weigh health, age concerns as they prepare for schools to reopen
Carol Ardito wants to go back to school in the fall.
The career and technical education coordinator for North Haven Public Schools misses the kids.
It’s hard to teach culinary arts, robotics and auto shop from a computer screen.
“We had to get creative,” said Ardito, who has been an educator for 45 years. “In my heart I think we have to go back. Education has to happen.” But Ardito also calls it scary.
She has no underlying health issues like many colleagues. But Ardito does have her age. She is 67 and is not ready to retire.
“We have multiple teachers in their 60’ s,” Ardito said. “Are we putting ourselves at risk to be in a building with hundreds of people?”
Margarita David, a Greenwich High history teacher, is only 49, but she is a breast cancer survivor and has Type 1 diabetes.
“I am definitely concerned about myself and I am not comfortable,” said David, whose doctor in April warned her to take precautions and stay home.
Lorraine Nusdeu, 67, a third- grade teacher in New Haven, has more than a doctor’s warning. She has a note.
“He said to me, ‘ You know I am not going to allow you to go back into that school building,’ ” said Nusdeu, who has chronic autoimmune diseases. “I got the letter in my hands and it hit me like a ton of bricks. It said going back could result in a high risk of COVID and death — ‘ Death’ was in there.”
As the state works toward a goal of returning to full- day, in- person public school in the fall, anxiety runs high among teachers about how to do it without putting themselves and their students at risk.
The numbers
Statewide, some 5,796 of 53,188 — 11 percent — of public school educators are 60 or older, according to the state Department of Education.
How many have health concerns that might warrant them to stay home as long as the COVID- 19 pandemic
remains a threat is uncertain.
A healthy and safe return to school is a top priority of both major teachers unions in the state who say recent state guidance has not allayed fears.
“Having the right resources to protect the health of students and educators is critical,” said Jeff Leake, president of the Connecticut Education Association.
So far — other than a vague promise that the state will fund districts for what they need to open safely — Leake said the state hasn’t guaranteed it will empower school districts with the resources needed to carry out the in- person learning plan outlined.
Joan Verrillo, 60, who teaches kindergarten and first grade in North Haven, said she sat down and read the state’s 50- page school reopening guide cover to cover.
“I went to every link it sent me to,” Verrillo said.
As someone who witnessed how hard it was emotionally for 6- year- olds to try and learn at a computer screen, Verillo said she deeply appreciates the need to return to normalcy.
The last three months of the 2019- 20 school year, she said, was contrary to everything that is positive about going to school and learning about how to become part of a community.
But Verrillo said she doesn’t want to put herself or her students in harm’s way. Verrillo has lung damage. “It would not be good if I caught ( the coronavirus),” she said.
She envisions different scenarios where social distance guidelines will fly out the window — like how to help rush two kindergartners to the restroom at once to avoid accidents or navigating carpet time or keeping hands off someone else’s crayons.
“In my classroom, everything is a high- touch surface,” Verrillo said.
A framework for districts
In a webinar that drew more than 2,500 viewers on
At right, Students are dismissed on the first day of school at Greenwich High School in Greenwich on Aug. 29, 2019. Below, Connecticut Commissioner of Education Miguel Cardona.
Thursday, Commissioner of Education Miguel Cardona called the guide a framework that districts should use as a basis to craft local solutions.
“We want schools to open but only as long as public health data continue to support moving in that direction,” Cardona insisted, acknowledging later that teachers should be mindful of their contractual and legal rights in going back into the classroom.
Deidre Gifford, acting commissioner of the Department of Public Health, said her advice continues to be that older adults and those with health conditions remain home as much as possible.
The guide tells districts that parents can continue to keep their kids home in the fall. A survey is going out to see how many want that.
It is suggested teachers uncomfortable returning until the pandemic subsides might be the ones to provide those students instruction.
Margaret Fitzgerald, a fourth- grade band teacher in Brookfield and a cancer survivor, is weighing her options.
“There is a lot to consider,” said Fitzgerald who spent the spring teaching 145 students one on one via the computer.
Fitzgerald missed giving students immediate feedback when a note was played wrong. She missed relationships. She didn’t miss the colds and flu she would inevitably catch each fall and spring from her students.
“I am a big hugger and high- fiver,” said Fitzgerald, 63. “I worked hard to make the best of it.”
Besides beating cancer, Fitzgerald has hypertension, asthma, and a thyroid disorder. But mostly, she said, she is concerned about not spreading the virus to her 87- year- old mom.
She’s seen the state report and said she doesn’t see a lot of teeth in it. Or funding. She sees a lot of contradictions.
“They want students to ride in crowded buses to school but socially distance once in school. That boggles the mind,” said Fitzgerald, who lives in New Milford.
Michele King- Vasquez, a
“We want schools to open but only as long as public health data continue to support moving in that direction.” Miguel Cardona, Connecticut Commissioner of Education
sixth- grade teacher at Thomas Hooker School in Bridgeport, also sees contradictions.
“They want us to open our windows, but my room is on the inside facing a courtyard where there is no breeze,” said King- Vasquez, who had knee- replacement surgery in February.
The open- windows, opendoors advice flies in the face of safety directives that came out following the Sandy Hook school shooting that urged classrooms be made secure from intruders.
“I want to be there,” said King- Vasquez. She timed her surgery so she wouldn’t miss the start of the fall 2019 school year when rapports are built. She doesn’t want to missing this coming fall either, but she also doesn’t want to get sick. She has high blood- pressure and is quick to catch whatever illness her students bring to school.
“I miss teaching, but will I be putting them and myself in danger,” King- Vasquez said. “I have 28 students in a classroom that is really not large enough for 20.”
Teachers’ Plan B’s
So far this year, 945 public school teachers have put in for retirement. That is down from the 1,138 requested last year but August 2020 numbers are not all in, state officials said.
Nusdeu said she did not take her doctor’s blunt warning to mean that her career is over.
“There are so many ways to teach,” said Nusdeu, who teaches at Wexler- Grant in New Haven.
If the opening of school is not delayed, Nusdeu said she hopes to be part of the cadre of teachers called on to help instruct students who also don’t return to school because of their own health concerns or parent wishes.
“We have children with conditions; they should never be back,” Nusdeu said. “They should be taught remotely.”
David is of the same mind. She said she is just not comfortable returning to Greenwich High School in late August. She is comfortable with distance learning.
Since the reopen guide gave parents a choice to keep kids home, David is hoping she will be a candidate to offer distance- learning instruction like she did in the spring.
“I am going to wait it out and see what additional roles there will be,” David said.
As nervous as she is, Ardito, president of the North Haven Education Association, said she will go back in the fall if that is what is decided.
“My husband and I talk about it on a daily basis,” Ardito said. “I don’t know how do it without putting myself in jeopardy, but for me, personally, I can’t retire yet..”