We cannot put teachers or students on front lines of global pandemic to reopen schools

Public schools are essential. Experts across disciplines agree that in-person school serves students better than distance learning. Students need to be with their peers. Parents need in-person school to meet childcare needs. Businesses need schools open for employees to come to work.

But if schools cannot open safely, then they must remain closed. Our children’s safety must be our top priority. Numbers of COVID-19 cases are spiking across the state. If we cannot contain the virus, then we cannot expect our students to return to in-person school or demand that teachers and school workers put their lives at risk.

Public schoolteachers and other school workers have long served as frontline workers, even before the pandemic. Decades of disinvestment in public schools have forced teachers to be the first line of defense against the effects of every injustice and unmet social need: poverty, racial trauma, hunger, domestic violence, substance use disorder, childhood sexual abuse, homelessness, parental incarceration, and more.

Teaching is challenging. It requires training and experience in pedagogy, behavior management, subject matter expertise, assessment, and communication. Yet, too often, we expect teachers to also serve as stand-ins for social workers, nurses, psychologists, disciplinarians, and even parents. Teachers show their commitment to our community’s children by rising to these unreasonable expectations, time and again.

But there is one thing that we simply cannot ask. We must not ask teachers to be guinea pigs in an experiment to re-open schools as the virus gains ground across our state. We cannot put teachers on the frontline of a war against a global pandemic.

A Jefferson County school board member shared with me this excerpt of a message received from a constituent: “For the …future prospects of those not reached by distance learning, I believe JCPS should be willing to accept COVID transmissions and some COVID deaths as a price to be paid.”

KY school districts should be “willing to accept” no such thing. A preventable pandemic-related death of even one member of Kentucky’s school community is too high a price. Our students’, teachers’, instructional assistants’, and other school workers’ lives are not expendable.

Even as school leaders face difficult re-opening decisions as cases continue to climb, Kentucky’s Attorney General last week filed a lawsuit that would have eradicated Governor Andy Beshear’s executive order granting our public schools the flexibility to conduct distance learning during this emergency. The short-sightedness of this measure was met with the Kentucky Supreme Court’s swift intervention, as they ruled that all of our Governor’s pandemic-related orders remain in place until they can be separately reviewed. When lives of students and school workers are at stake, this course of action by Kentucky’s Attorney General was not just risky, but potentially deadly.

There are opportunities in these unprecedented times. Distance learning requires shared sacrifice, but can also inspire innovation. Teachers are leading the effort by learning new ways to practice their craft. Parents and friends will be required to engage more directly in our children’s education. New childcare solutions will be necessary, and employers will need to extend flexibility to workers with school-age children. Community leaders must find new ways to ensure that students’ basic needs are met while school buildings are closed.

Our teachers, school workers, and public schools play vital roles in our communities. That fact should be clearer than ever to my colleagues in the Kentucky General Assembly. This recognition should spark action to fully fund our public schools, increase pay for teachers and classified school staff, ensure secure retirement for educators, extend policies that grant our schools increased flexibility, and allow our teachers to lead, both in their classrooms and on education policy.

We hope there will be a vaccine or cure for this dreadful plague soon. Until then, let’s keep our students and educators safe. And let’s invest in the safe, healthy, and equitable public schools that our students, educators, and communities deserve.

Lisa Willner represents the 35th district in Kentucky’s House of Representatives. She is a past member of the Jefferson County Board of Education.