Marin teachers rally for safer school reopenings
Stronger protections sought before returning to classroom
Scores of Marin County teachers staged a car caravan and rally Thursday to demand stronger protections for reopening schools as the coronavirus continues to spread.
“We can’t have guidelines that ignore the conditions on the ground,” Morgan Agnew, president of the San Rafael Federation of Teachers, said before more than 150 teachers and supporters gathered in front of the Marin County Office of Education building in Terra Linda.
“In the last 24 hours, there’s been some progress — but we still need more,” Agnew said. “We’re asking for an unequivocal commitment not to reopen schools for in-classroom instruction until the virus is under control.”
On Wednesday, Marin County officials said schools should plan to reopen initially with distance learning and delay in-classroom instruction at least until after Labor Day. That was a pivot from earlier guidelines that urged a full in-classroom reopening five days a week for all TK-12 Marin schools.
“We still have hope that we can bring students back into schools full time, but with the current spikes we’re seeing in Marin County and across the region, we need more time,” Dr. Matt Willis, Marin County public health officer, said in
Wednesday’s announcement. “We’ve been watching the data closely. If we open when community transmission is high, we may have to close classrooms more frequently, which could be even more disruptive.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to announce Friday that all schools in the 32 counties on the state’s virus “watch
list” — including Marin and all other Bay Area counties — will reopen next month with only full distance learning allowed. The “watch list” counties are being monitored by the state because their virus infection and hospitalization rates are climbing.
Earlier this week, Newsom announced that all counties must close indoor operations for such businesses as restaurants, wineries, bars, zoos and retail. The “watch list” counties also must close indoor operations for malls, fitness centers, personal care services and worship services.
“We’re moving back into a modification mode of our original stay-at-home order,” Newsom said. “It’s what I refer to as the dimmer switch — not an onand-off switch, but a dimmer switch.”
Mary Jane Burke, Marin County superintendent of schools, said the “pause” for in-person classroom instruction that she and other local and state officials seek will allow extra time for teachers, students and parents to adjust to the uncertain conditions in the fall term.
“While we can’t be certain when our students will return to school for in-person instruction, I continue to be hopeful that it will be soon after Labor Day,” Burke said Thursday. “I know that we all have the same goal, and that is to get our students and staff back into our schools safely.”
At Thursday’s rally, many teachers displayed “Keep Schools Safe” signs or similar placards. Most were members of local union chapters of the California Teachers Association or the California Federation of Teachers, as well as participants in a new group, Marin Educators for Safe Schools.
The group, which held online forums on three days last week, has argued that the county’s guidelines for 4 to 6 feet of distance between children and between 25 to 32 students in a classroom were less protective than the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines of 6 feet of distance between people and no large gatherings.
“I want to be back in school, but there’s one thing I want more than that,” Agnew said at the rally. “I want to keep myself and my family safe.”
Marin teachers were joined by allies in other public service professions, such as firefighters, nurses and elected officials.
“Today, we’re not talking about rhetoric here, we’re talking about people’s lives,” Holli Thier, vice mayor of Tiburon, told the cheering crowd. “How is it OK to say it’s not safe for people to go to bars and restaurants, and yet we’re going to put our teachers in classrooms with 35 children?”
John Bagala, president of Marin Professional Firefighters Local 1775, said firefighters throughout the county have been contending with infected residents, infected colleagues and infected inmates at San Quentin State Prison. Even with extensive safety training, it is a struggle, he said.
“Teaching is a tough enough job to begin with — they’ve got their hands full, even on a good day,” said Bagala, a retired fire captain. “Asking these people to be safety professionals, while simultaneously adjusting their schedules and taking care of their families, it’s just not realistic.”
Novato school parent Jennifer Jaeger, a nurse practitioner in San Francisco, said it was “crazy” to think that teachers could be expected to add sanitizing and cleaning duties, monitoring social distancing and masks to their primary jobs of educating students.
“I see COVID-19 through two lenses — as a health care provider and as a parent,” she told the gathering. “COVID-19 is scary.”
Belvedere school parent Chelsea Schlunt, however, said she and dozens of other parents in the Reed Union School District strongly support a return to in-classroom instruction. She said a survey in the district indicated that 86% of parents want to send their kids back to school in the classrooms.
“The demands the teachers are making are incredibly unreasonable,” Schlunt said. “Name me one other industry that is refusing to work right now. There isn’t one.”
Schlunt said she was attending the rally Thursday to “amplify the voices of our students who want to go back. Children want to be in school.”
“We believe it can be done safely,” Schlunt added. “Do you think parents would send kids into school if they thought it was a science experiment? No one loves their kids more than their parents.”