Teachers ask to continue virtual learning in SCS
They list demands if forced back into classrooms
Resuming in-person schooling next month will put students, teachers and their respective families’ lives at risk. That was the message of a teacher-led protest outside the Shelby County Schools district office Tuesday afternoon, where more than 100 teachers, school personnel and community members gathered to ask for all teaching to be virtual until the county goes two weeks without a new reported COVID-19 case.
Superintendent Joris Ray has said teachers and students would not be sent back into school facilities if cases in Shelby County continue to increase. Teachers who spoke Tuesday called on him to live up to that promise and asked the school board — which has been meeting in virtual meetings — not to send them back into schools until it was safe to do so.
“Right now there is no control. There’s a fire and they want us to run into the burning building while the fire is ablaze,” SCS teacher Tikelia Rucker
“There’s a fire and they want us to run into the burning building while the fire is ablaze.”
Teacher Tikelia Rucker
said in an interview before the protest.
Rucker, who helped organize the protest, and other teachers talked about their fear of seeing their students get sick and their worries for their own health. They also talked about how difficult it would be to secure cleaning products for their classrooms and multiple said bathrooms at their schools didn’t have soap even in normal times.
If in-person education is resumed, the teachers are asking for personal protective equipment, hazard pay and nurses in every school building, among other requests. Shelby County Schools did not respond to a request for comment about the protest.
Tuesday evening, Ray sent an email to teachers that said they can potentially choose to teach remotely. The Commercial Appeal obtained a copy of the email Wednesday.
“Just as we have promised our families flexibility in the learning options available for students this fall, please know I am committed to providing the same flexibility to our educators regarding the opportunity to teach remotely,” Ray wrote.
The request is not guaranteed, though, and must be approved by the teacher’s principal, he said. Teachers have to agree to and meet the criteria within the “District’s Virtual Instruction Telework Agreement.”
Ray said that “the only reason a teacher would be required to teach from the school site is if the conditions of the Virtual Instruction Telework Agreement are not met.”
The agreement’s stipulations are unclear.
Tuesday night, Ray said more details about the agreement document are coming “soon.”
The S.A.F.E. re-entry plan released earlier this month calls for students and staff to wear masks, daily health screenings to be performed and hand sanitizer stations to be placed in classrooms. Social distancing measures will be in place and interaction between classes will be limited. However, Rucker said getting kids to mask properly and not physically interact with other kids is a tall order.
“Realistically, we will not be able to do that. That is laughable. A normal day in the classroom is already an adventure,” she said.
Rucker also worries about how safety measures would impact the bond between teachers and students. What happens when students, especially younger students, who are disturbed by the masks and temperature checks seek comfort from their teacher and the teacher has to push them away, she asked.
The Shelby County Health Department was set to meet with SCS and the municipal school districts Wednesday to discuss reopening plans. Health department director Alisa Haushalter said Tuesday the department wanted to see school districts utilize the guidance published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics. She said it was also essential that schools and school districts have the flexibility to adjust their re-entry plans and Covid-19-related policies as the school year progresses.
Ray has previously described the plan as flexible and said if schools are reopened, they will be closed again if COVID-19 cases are identified within schools.
SCS teacher Tiffany Crow, who also helped organize Tuesday’s protest, said she contracted COVID-19 in April and now, more than two months after being told she was free of the virus, is still suffering muscular, respiratory and nervous system issues.
“I went from being a really healthy 27year-old but now I have residual health issues I never had before,” she said. “I may never see the quality of life I had before again.”
Crow also said the issues presented by COVID-19 weren’t as simple for SCS students as worrying about the kids catching the virus. Many of the district’s students live in multigenerational households and come from low-income families without access to affordable healthcare. The majority of the district’s students are Black or Latino, and Black and Latino communities have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.
“I love my students too much to have them go through what I’m going through,” Crow said.
She said she previously did not believe in remote learning but has remotely taught summer school classes in the past few months and has seen progress in her students and been able to build relationships with parents as well.
Jolie Madihalli, president of the Memphis-shelby County Education Association, said Tuesday’s protest was meant to press the school board to support allremote learning if cases continue to rise.
“Are we really willing to risk the lives of kids,” who could also pass the virus onto older relatives, she said. “It’s going to be a snowball effect. Are we going to risk all these lives to have in-person learning as the cases rise?”
Madihalli said she understood the challenges many SCS parents would experience with remote learning, despite the training the district is making available for them. Students will be provided with digital devices and internet support, but technology is not infallible. Some parents are discussing having multiple children meet to do remote learning together, to give working parents more flexibility, but that presents its own problems with possible COVID-19 transmission.
However, teachers are afraid to return to the classroom, Madihalli said, and are worried about having to take on the responsibility of being a nurse, taking temperatures and keeping an eye on students for symptoms, on top of their teaching duties and myriad other responsibilities taken on by teachers working in districts with staffing shortages.
“I’m not saying we should not have school but personally... my children will be going remote,” given the current case numbers, Madihalli said. “I think it would be a wise choice for us to be virtual.”
Wednesday afternoon, Madihalli said her concern with the district’s proposal for teacher choice would be how principals determine which requests are honored. If all teachers submitted a request to teach remotely, for example, how would a principal determine which of those requests to honor?
M-SCEA, which has about 4,000 members, was not part of the task force that drafted the re-entry plan. Danette Stokes, an SCS teacher and the newly elected president of the Shelby County UEA, was on the task force and collected ideas and concerns from other educators to pass on to the rest of the group. She said she thought the task force had crafted a good plan that will help protect students and teachers, should they return to the classroom.
“It’s flexible, that’s the main thing, it’s flexible and if it needs to be changed it can be,” Stokes said. “There’s no blueprint out there. We used the guidelines from the medical doctors and the scientists to develop a plan.”
Discussions about re-entry included doctors, community partners, statisticians and other experts, she said, adding that moving forward, decisions about inperson and remote learning would be made based on data, not what is said by politicians.
“Our main concern the entire time was the safety of how we go back to school,” Stokes said.
Parents and guardians have until 11:59 p.m. July 24 to decide whether they want their child to attend in-person school or participate in remote learning. Due to the delayed start to the school year, students will be locked into that learning mode through Feb. 4, when the first semester ends.
So far, more than 75% of respondents have opted for remote learning.
Commercial Appeal reporter Laura Testino contributed to this report.
Corinne Kennedy is a reporter for the Commercial Appeal. She can be reached via email at Corinne.kennedy@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @Corinneskennedy