Arizona will expose its teachers to COVID-19 to babysit
Teachers aren’t babysitters or social workers or nutritionists or psychologists or cops.
They are paid to teach.
But they’re expected to be all those things and more. That has become increasingly apparent in the fight over when to let — force, more like it — teachers and students to go back to the classroom amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic.
Let’s be honest. Requiring K-12 teachers to do in-person teaching and potentially expose them to COVID-19 isn’t just that kids are falling behind academically.
That’s part of it, yes.
But fact is, teachers have become the
de facto babysitters and everything else to kids. More than a million youngsters in Arizona and millions more across the nation are stuck at home trapping their parents, too.
Activists and politicians are crying foul. Kids aren’t learning. Too many don’t have computers and internet to do long-distance learning. Parents can’t go to work because they can’t afford day care. Too many are going hungry. Domestic violence calls to police are up.
All that is heartbreaking. But how is that teachers’ responsibility?
Those are societal problems that we must all tackle. But no. Instead, we’re expecting teachers to solve them, or at least alleviate them, by returning to the classroom.
That’s too much to ask of teachers. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey initially agreed with schools’ chief Kathy Hoffman to delay in-person teaching until Aug.17. On Thursday, he ordered schools to provide in-person services to students who need it starting Aug. 17 and gave districts flexibility for everyone else.
How many of Arizona’s 1.1 million K-12 students will need a place to go is unclear because “need” could mean anything ranging from food to access to technology to someone looking for somebody to look after students while parents work -- some of them serving on the front lines of the pandemic.
“Children deserve a safe learning environment,” Ducey said Thursday, adding that the kids in need of face-to-face services include those enrolled in freeor reduced-lunch programs, special education students, English Language Learners and foster kids.
Just those on free or reduced lunch represent at least half of the entire student population. Some districts will be hit hardest. At Phoenix Union, for instance, 90% of the district’s 30,000 students are on free or reduced lunch.
Ducey is setting aside $370 million in federal CARES Act money for schools, which have been underfunded for decades. That’s good but then again he’s doing it primarily for educators to accommodate -- babysitting -- students who don’t have any place else to go.
Congresswoman Debbie Lesko and other Republicans had been pushing Ducey to open up schools, saying parents must have a say over their children learning.
“It is critical parents have a say in their child’s education and that they have the option to send their kids back to school in person, as pediatricians have said kids are less likely to transmit the Coronavirus,” Lesko said July 22 on Twitter.
Of course they do. But so do teachers. They, too, must have a say and the right to assess their own risk of returning to the classroom in the midst of the pandemic.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 won’t go away in a month or two or even a year. Unfortunately, too, parents are suffering because of it. Many have lost their jobs and can’t feed their kids. Others need to go work but can’t afford babysitting.
These are tough issues. But instead of tackling them head-on politicians like Lesko and others would rather dump the problems on teachers.
What about boosting unemployment benefits after the federal $600 monthly stipend expires at the end of this week? That’s a hard no from Ducey and many other Republicans across the nation.
How about providing direct subsidies to those who need it most so they can pay rent, feed their kids or even pay for day care? Ducey is looking to Uncle Sam to do that.
You get the point. There are many ways to help parents stuck at home with their school-age children but Ducey and others would rather dump the problem on teachers.