Teachers in quandary
Return to schools raises wariness of coronavirus, uncertainty about health rules
Cathy Candisky and Alissa Widman Neese
Martha Boyd has been teaching high school science for 20 years and loves it.
At 62 years old, the Liberty-benton High School teacher had planned to work several more years.
But as coronavirus cases surge in Ohio and pressure to fully reopen schools grows, Boyd is anxiously awaiting her Hancock County district’s plan for the coming school year.
“If we go back to school and kids aren’t wearing masks and we aren’t social distancing, I do have a concern. I am over 60, and my husband is over 60. We’ve been social distancing and being very careful,” Boyd said.
“I had hoped to teach three or four more years, but if I don’t feel safe, I don’t want to return. My health is worth more to me than going back to work. If I’m afraid every day, that’s not a good situation for the kids.”
Teachers say the classroom is the best place for learning, and most of them want schools reopened — albeit with appropriate health precautions.
“If we don’t take social distancing and maskwearing seriously, we could have students getting sick, students taking it home to parents and grandparents, and passing it on to teachers,” Boyd said. “Our numbers have been low. but it’s still out there, and as people get more mobile, things could change very quickly.”
Guidelines released by Gov. Mike Dewine require teachers to wear masks, but the guidelines only recommend them for students. The guidelines also recommend maintaining social distancing of at least six feet for everybody in buildings, frequent handwashing, sanitizing desks and other surfaces, banning field trips and limiting school visitors.
Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, said that as districts finalize plans for fall, “we’re pushing really hard that there have to be safety measures in place.”
“We need to increase the amount of testing and tracing. There needs to be the proper amount of (personal protective equipment), people wearing masks — not just teachers, but students who are able to wear masks. We need to make sure we have plenty of sanitizer, and there has to be money to buy all this stuff and added staff.”
Scott Dimauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, said that although each district’s plans for the fall will differ, it’s important that educators have a seat at the table as decisions are made.
Districts must prepare for various scenarios, including pivoting quickly to online-only instruction in the event of a local outbreak, he said.
The Columbus Education Association is negotiating a memorandum of understanding regarding job expectations for the upcoming school year.
John Coneglio, president of the teachers union in the Columbus City Schools, said he receives more emails from concerned educators than he can respond to.
“The decisions that are being made, for some people, they could be life or death,” he said.
Even everyday habits, such as taking young children on bathroom breaks, become complicated in a setting where students must stay apart.
“If you have 10 kids lined up to go to the bathroom, and you need to keep them six feet apart, that’s 60 feet of hallway — can you do that?” Coneglio said. “What about buildings where the air-conditioning doesn’t work, and your classroom doesn’t have a window? Does everybody sit in that petri dish?”
And even the most thorough plan could be upended if the state’s coronavirus cases continue to climb, he said.
“There are so many unknowns. You can have a plan, but the reality of what it looks like on paper, versus the real, first day of school, if kids go back, can be completely different,” Coneglio said.
A new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a California-based nonprofit, estimates that nearly 1.5 million teachers — or 24% of those in the country — have health conditions that put them at higher risk of serious illness if they contract COVID-19.
A recent poll by the National Association of Secondary School Principals found that just 35% of 1,450 principals who responded were “somewhat confident” or “extremely confident” about their school’s and district's ability to preserve the health of the staff and students as schools physically reopen in the fall. A similar percentage (35%) indicated that they were “somewhat unconfident” or “not at all confident.”
While there have been national reports of an increase in teachers retiring because of the pandemic, that hasn’t happened in Ohio, at least not yet. Nick Treneff, spokesman for the State Teachers Retirement System, said there has been no uptick this year.
Mary Kennedy, president of the teachers union in the Hilliard City Schools, said her district has created an instruction option that is completely online for the upcoming school year for families who might not feel comfortable sending children back to a classroom yet. Teachers with concerns may ask to be part of that experience.
Kennedy’s membership has expressed feelings that run the gamut, she said. Some are eager to see students again, while others are anxious and concerned about health risks.
“Doing everything online certainly would be the absolute healthiest,” she said. “But at the same time, that may or may not be the best educational experience for students. It’s a difficult balance, to try to figure out how to meet all of those needs.”
James Lautzenheiser, who teaches history and government to eighth graders at Crestview Middle School in Van Wert County, said he and most of his colleagues want to return “to school as normal as possible ... but there’s a lot of apprehension and anxiousness.”
“My biggest fear is that, heaven forbid, we lose a student or staff member … if we could have done something and didn’t think of it in time or didn’t have the resources to come up with the solution we needed,” said Lautzenheiser, 38.
“In a regular year, my biggest regret is, if I can’t reach a student, if I have a hard time getting them to understand a concept or to enjoy history. This year it’s completely different. It’s, if a student would become ill, and I could have done something about it.” ccandisky@dispatch.com @Ccandisky awidmanneese@dispatch.com @Alissawidman