School districts are scrambling to establish plans for re-opening (or not) in the midst of the rapidly changing COVID-19 pandemic. School and government officials are forced to navigate a complex array of medical, social, and economic factors. Schools in New York City will open for at least some in-person instruction while schools in Los Angeles will remain closed.
The Los Angeles Unified School District’s decision to remain closed is due in part to pressure applied by the United Teachers of Los Angeles, a teachers’ union which represents 35,000 teachers. “In March, UTLA called on LAUSD officials to close schools in light of the growing urgency of the COVID health crisis, and they closed them,” UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz said. “It was the right thing to close school campuses then, and it’s the right thing to keep them closed now. In the face of the alarming spike in COVID cases, the lack of necessary funding from the government to open schools safely, and the outsized threat of death faced by working class communities of color, there really is no other choice that doesn’t put thousands of lives at risk.”
According to a survey administered by the U.S. Department of Education, approximately 70% of teachers are members of a union. Few industries are so well organized.
No district COVID plan will be perfect but suffice to say many teachers across the U.S. will face circumstances similar to what many (mostly low-wage) workers have been facing for weeks: return to in-person work or starve. Due to their high-levels of organization, many teachers may choose a third option: strike.
It seems as if the Trump administration is aware of the looming situation. Trump has taken to Twitter to begin crafting a narrative to discredit teachers and entire school systems as ‘Radical Leftists.’
If the strikes do happen, Trump will frame the teachers, not as educators who are forced to make critical decisions regarding their lives and their livelihoods (not to mention the health of their students and families), but as ‘anti-fascist radical leftists,’ the new Trump buzzwords for anyone who dares to believe the global pandemic is real and who put human life above economic health.
