School closings not open-and-shut
Dems on edge over virus issue dividing parents, teachers
When Chicago teachers went on strike last week to protest COVID-19 safety protections in the nation’s third-largest school district, Democratic Party officials quickly responded.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker pushed for a quick end to the job action and helped secure rapid tests to entice teachers back to work. Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the strikers “abandoned their posts” in “an illegal walkout.” White House press secretary Jen Psaki stressed that students should be in school.
The standoff ended with a tentative agreement late Monday and students returning to classrooms Wednesday.
Nearly two years into a pandemic that shows no signs of waning, Democrats are speaking out more forcefully against COVID-19 school closures, recognizing a rising anger among parents worried that their kids are falling behind. But in doing so, Democrats risk angering some teachers unions, which are advocating for more protections for educators as the omicron variant takes hold and whose support helped get Democrats elected.
The political peril for Democrats became clear after their candidate lost the Virginia governor’s race in November to a Republican who focused on education and slammed the prior year’s school closures.
Now, in what already promises to be a tough midterm election year, with frustrations mounting among their base over stalled voting and spending legislation, they may face real trouble over an issue that directly affects Americans’
lives.
“When you tell a parent that their kid can’t be in school — a lot of times politics doesn’t touch people’s lives, but that’s a massive impact on parents’ lives that pisses them off,” said Brian Stryker, a Democratic pollster based in Chicago. “The Chicago strike may be the moment when Democrats said: ‘Enough. We’re done with all these.’ ”
That’s left some teachers feeling left out in the cold.
John Coneglio, head of the Columbus, Ohio, Education Association, said omicron has sickened so many teachers that students aren’t learning in overcrowded classrooms. The union has called for two weeks of remote learning.
Still, none of the Democratic-voting city’s leaders has backed the union.
“I think their silence speaks,” Coneglio said.
At the same time, Democrats are cognizant of the concerns of parents such as Megan Bacigalupi, who quit her job at a San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit last year to help her two children deal with the hassles of remote learning. She’s since founded a group, CA Parent Power, to push to keep schools open.
“Overwhelmingly, Democratic parents are quite willing to vote for an independent or a Republican in November,” said Bacigalupi, who just changed her registration from Democrat to unaffiliated and said she’s
never voted Republican in her life. “Two years in, it doesn’t feel like we are in a place where our worldview won’t be shaped by COVID policies.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the recent story of schools and COVID-19 is a triumph. She contrasted last winter, when as many as 45% of the nation’s schools were closed during a surge, to now, when vaccinations are widespread and 98% of schools are open despite even higher COVID19 caseloads.
“That shows remarkable strength and courage and fortitude on behalf of teachers and paraprofessionals,” Weingarten said. “Omicron is the enemy, not each other.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that schools can remain safe when proper protocols are followed, including observing safe distancing, wearing masks and getting vaccinated.
The White House announced Wednesday that it would be sending more COVID-19 tests to schools in an effort to keep them open during the omicron surge.
“Schools should be the first places to open and the last places to close,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said during a Senate hearing Tuesday.
The vast majority of schools are still in-person, and most switches to remote learning are happening on a case-by-case basis as the virus sickens too many teachers.
The few switches to remote learning that have happened, in places such as Prince George’s County in Maryland, are only supposed to last a couple of weeks, at the peak of the omicron variant spread.
But parent activists don’t trust the districts to return promptly.
“The idea that these numbers are going to drop precipitously in the next two to four weeks, I think, is a dubious prospect,” said Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform, which supports charter schools and has opposed the return to virtual learning. “I think this is a very slippery slope.”