Was my Trump vote my death warrant?

Don’t lecture teachers for wanting to stay safe

I am a special education teacher and lifelong Republican who reluctantly voted for Donald Trump in 2016 as the less bad of two bad choices. When the pandemic hit, the incompetence of the man for whom I had voted and the complicity of everyone around him forced me to admit that I could no longer maintain any kind of self- respect as a Republican.

So even though I had voted Republican in every presidential election since 1976, I changed my voter registration to independent, and I will be voting for Joe Biden in November.

Nevertheless, I am still haunted because, deep down, I fear that with the 2016 vote I may have signed my own death warrant.

I live and teach in a small Oklahoma town. It’s not far from the site of President Trump’s Tulsa campaign rally on June 20 that appears, as common sense would have predicted, to have been a superspreader event. About two weeks after the rally, Tulsa County reported a record high number of cases.

I am over 60, with two autoimmune diseases. This outbreak has me worried as it is. Now, with the prospect of schools reopening in a few short weeks, I am terrified.

Teachers are out of choices

And I am not the only one. A young teacher I know has chronic kidney problems and is at high risk for complications if she contracts COVID- 19. She can’t quit her only source of income. Taking a cue from our governor, who hosted Trump’s rally and has now tested positive for COVID- 19 himself, her school district has announced that wearing a mask will be optional, though the state is considering requiring it.

Her only choice right now, she told me, is to increase her life insurance and hope for the best.

That is not a choice. That is our government failing us.

Our country has long devalued and underpaid teachers, refusing to adequately fund the public schools that support our democracy. At the same time, teachers routinely have to use their own money to buy classroom supplies. Now the government is turning to us to risk our health or possibly our lives during a pandemic. My school district has no mask mandate and two nurses for more than 2,400 students in five school buildings. How is that going to work?

Officials from the president down to the local school board are kicking this can down the road, pretending it will all be OK. Teachers know it won’t.

For Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who have little to no experience in our public schools, to preach to career educators about the benefits of children being in school is not only unnecessary but downright insulting. Of course our kids need to be in school! And teachers want to be there with them. For most of us, it is not only a profession but a calling. However, it needs to be done safely. With the status quo as it is, that cannot be done in most of the country. And we need to stop pretending that it can.

I lost my gamble on Trump

This virus, if anything, has proved to be predictable. Scientists and medical experts warned that opening states too quickly could result in more cases and more deaths. It already has. We now have a coronavirus outbreak raging across much of the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued specific principles for safely reopening schools. But the administration criticized the CDC guidance as impractical or too expensive. So, just like in Texas, Arizona and Florida, I fear this virus will break out in my town and then in my school.

I hear proponents of opening schools suggesting that children are less likely to contract or die from COVID- 19. That’s all well and good until you or your child is the one who ends up on the wrong side of that statistic. What about the millions of grandparents raising their young grandchildren? Are we willing to take the chance of any of those kids bringing home a deadly virus to possibly the one stable loving adult in their lives?

Teaching is a calling, and Oklahoma teachers are as tough as they come. Some have sheltered their students as a tornado ripped the school building from over their heads. Most of us would do anything to help our students succeed. Now the man I gambled on to be president is asking us to risk our health and our very lives. The odds are most definitely not in our favor.

Nancy Shively, a special education teacher, lives near Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Nancy Shively is a special education teacher who lives near Tulsa.