Teachers’ voices silenced in back-to-school choice
Dear Gov. Ron DeSantis,
I doubt that you’ll ever even read this, but I have to try somehow to reach you, literally and metaphorically. I have taught and coached in Volusia County for 35 years now. I was voted Teacher of the Year and English Teacher of the Year this year. All these accolades, and yet I had no say in the matter of how schools could possibly reopen in the fall.
Sadly, not one teacher in Florida had a say in the matter. Do Florida public school teachers still matter at all in your realm?
Your logic seems to be that students stand a minimal chance of contracting the virus, yet the safety and welfare of teachers is held in absolute disregard. We aren’t even considered as part of the equation.
It is true madness considering what closed our schools in March and the exponential magnitude of that same threat now. And now we decide to open brick-andmortar schools here in the epicenter of the pandemic? And as I type this, no matter how you try to spin them, the numbers continue to climb.
The outrageous presumption is that teachers will run into the fire because it’s their duty. It’s not. Who will decide which teachers get to teach virtually and which teachers must put their lives on the line?
My family’s dynamic is just one example of the trauma this decision has created. My wife, a teacher at South Daytona Elementary, was planning on teaching one more year before retiring. My twin daughters are also teachers and one of them is eight months pregnant. As a result, she obviously does not want to jeopardize two lives, hers and my future grandson’s. Her sister fears infection via the inevitable contact issues she has with her extreme special needs students and then spreading it to her pregnant twin. My wife, after listening to your mandate, is now thinking she’s not going back.
That is the agonizing predicament of just one Florida family of teachers. Consider the countless others. We all signed on to take the bullet for our kids in the event of a school shooting, but this an invisible killer without political affiliation, and once the nightmare begins, those who allowed this to happen will have blood on their hands, and that stain will be permanent.
The political push to open schools is obscene, started by a leader who cares about nothing and no one but his reelection and himself. Are you really cut from the same mold? It is our hope that you are not, that you can somehow conjure the courage to break rank now. Imagine the immediate bipartisan respect you would garner if you chose to do so. Please stop catering to Trump’s every whim and find the empathy to serve those who elected you to office.
The stakes are too high when lives are at stake. Please do what you can: at least delay a return to brick-and-mortar schools until the second semester of the school year.