At Bloomberg its owner, Michael Bloomberg, urges President Biden to take steps to reopen public schools:
To help more districts reopen, President Joe Biden should reassure union leaders that he takes teacher safety seriously. But he also needs to apply some pressure to states and cities. Funding from previous relief bills — more than $67 billion, all told — has helped schools to pay for testing, protective gear, improved ventilation, added staff and more. Biden is offering an additional $130 billion, and has rightly pledged sweeping federal support for schools that need it. But he should be clear that this is a two-way street. The government will do everything it can to ensure classrooms are safe; in return, school districts must prioritize getting kids back at their desks.
concluding:
The pandemic has demanded sacrifices from everyone. Hospital employees and first responders, who work in environments that are far more dangerous than classrooms (and who are also often represented by unions), as well as transportation workers and other public employees, have steadfastly done their jobs throughout this crisis, honoring their responsibility to their communities — and making the nation proud. Children — and all of America — need teachers to join them.
I don’t believe that the impediments are what he believes they are. Here’s what some Chicago teachers are doing with the time they aren’t using to teach:
They clearly have a lot of time on their hands.
And people wonder why families go to the suburbs to raise kids.
I just looked at our district Covid tracker. Since August there have been a total of 361 Covid cases out of a total population of about 30k students and staff. We had to go all online for the last month of the fall semester before the winter break because of precautionary quarantines, not because of actual case-load. We are back to full-time in-person schooling for k-6 and hybrid for 7-12 for most students. Some high schools are 4 days in person.
I don’t think that Bloomberg’s or Biden’s (should he adopt it) message will be effective at convincing these obstinate unions. I also don’t think that the urban teacher’s unions taking this extreme stance understand how their efforts will ultimately be a pyrrhic victory.