Dear Editor,
No one wants to be back in the classroom more than educators. I want to welcome every one of my students back to my classrooms in a way that keeps everyone safe: students, their families and staff.
As California continues to struggle to control the pandemic, which is still impacting many communities disproportionately, a phased-in approach that responds to local conditions and transmission rates has to be part of a responsible return to in-person instruction.
Any path to bringing students back to campuses will require implementing multi-layered mitigation strategies that consider community conditions and include robust cleaning and updated ventilation systems, asymptomatic testing of students and school employees, six-feet social distancing and enforcement.
To reopen schools for in-person instruction, the state must ensure all employees required to report in person have been provided the opportunity to be vaccinated before students return to campus. The vaccine distribution should prioritize educators in schools already open and schools in communities with high transmission rates.
We must take a comprehensive and data-driven approach to reopening schools that includes addressing community spread. After all, no matter how safe of a bubble we put around our schools, the students and staff inside go home at the end of the day.
If mitigation efforts are inadequate in the community, the risk of it being brought back to school increases significantly.
Sincerely,
KHRISTINE STOCK
San Jose, Calif.
Hey Khristine,
The CDC has already come out and said it is safe to offer ftf classes for younger students, but that is not happening in CA. Other states, yes. CA is SOOOO behind. Other states have been offering in class teaching for months, with no consequences.
You want teachers to be prioritized for vaccines. Gov Newsom is doing that, but the teachers still do not want to be in the classrooms.
Do you see how this does not make sense? I am not sure what else you want.
Cynthia
Practically everything asserted in this opinion piece goes against the data and science. Private schools have been open and teaching students for many months, without silly mandates, such as updating the ventilation systems. Schools in Europe have also been open with little to no issues since shortly after the pandemic began. I don’t have children, but, if I did, I can see these assertions/demands as little more than a means to an end: more money for institutions that are historically good at wasting it. I also don’t believe many of these “teachers” that say they want nothing more than to return to teaching. If this were true it would have happened long ago, and there has been a great deal of anecdotal evidence to support this. Many of these “teachers” are little more than cowards and shills for their unions. The generation of teachers that taught my generation would never have reacted this level of disgrace and selfishness.