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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Tuesday that 80% of all teachers, school staff and educators in the United States have received at least the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.
About 8 million workers in Kindergarten to Grade 12 had been vaccinated by the end of March, following President Biden’s March 2 directive to make all school staff and educators eligible to the vaccine.
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“Our efforts to ensure that teachers, school staff and educators were vaccinated in March paid off and paved the way for safer in-person learning,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday. “The CDC will build on the success of this program and work with our partners to continue to expand our immunization efforts, as we work to build confidence in COVID-19 vaccines.
But despite the rapidly increasing number of shots administered to school officials, teachers’ unions have remained reluctant to have their members return to class for in-person instruction.
Legal battles have erupted across the country, from San Francisco to Chicago, over the issue of returning teachers to the classroom for in-person instruction.
At the end of March, an agreement in Oakland, Calif. To reopen classrooms early for students with high needs, including homeless children, foster families and children with special needs, was canceled after insufficient numbers of teachers agreed to return to class, despite cash incentives and vaccine prioritization. .
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Oakland teachers are due to begin in-person instruction on April 14, just three weeks after the district and teacher unions agreed to bring instructors back to the classroom for some students.
But the father of a college student in Southern California, Scott Davison, said from what he saw, it’s not teachers who are stopping schools from reopening, but rather union officials.
“I think it’s important to distinguish the attitude of the majority – the vast majority of teachers do not share the opinion of their union,” Davison, a lawyer who helped launch a lawsuit under the Parent Association against six school districts in California and the state, told Fox News. “I talk to a lot of teachers all the time, who strongly disagree with the position of their teachers’ union.”
“I think it is important to distinguish that these are union leaders who have political talking points and political agendas who are trying to claim benefits for them, who really go against their calling – which is d ‘helping students,’ Davison added.
Members and supporters of the Chicago Teachers Union join a caravan of cars outside the Chicago Public School Headquarters as a Chicago Board of Education meeting takes place in Chicago on July 22, 2020 (Photo by Max Herman / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Davison isn’t the only one who suspects that teacher unions are behind the narrative and teaching teachers how to act during this unprecedented time.
Last month, reports surfaced alleging that Chicago Teachers Union officials ordered teachers not to disclose whether or not they had received the vaccine.
Chicago teachers have returned to the classroom after a tense public battle, but parents suspect unions across the country are using the pandemic as a bargaining chip for pay increases.
“It comes down to these negotiations with the teacher unions and the district,” Jonathon Zachreson told Fox News, noting that after combining every aid package passed by Congress, California received $ 33 billion for the financing of schools.
“It really has to do with Gavin Newsom’s lack of leadership. He effectively closed schools at the behest of teachers’ unions over the summer,” Zachreson said.
“These teachers’ unions are wasting time negotiating more funds, using our children as bargaining chips,” he added.
Chicago Teachers Union supporters take part in a caravan of cars, as negotiations with Chicago public schools continue on a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) safety plan deal in Chicago on January 30, 2021 (REUTERS / Eileen T. Meslar)
While some schools have reopened in southern California following Davison’s lawsuit, northern California parents remain frustrated with the state’s lack of intervention.
San Francisco caught the nation’s attention after the city forced the district to act by suing the Board of Education and the San Francisco Unified School District in a last-ditch effort to reopen schools for in-person education.
Although schools are reopening in the Bay Area for blended learning, they are still in negotiations with teachers’ unions.
Zachreson, who lives outside of Sacramento, started one of the nation’s largest petitions, calling on Newsom to demand that all schools from kindergarten to 12 provide full-time in-person education – a measure that 14,000 Californian parents have already signed up. .
Zachreson said union officials are using “security” as an excuse to keep schools operating on hybrid schedules in order to conserve bargaining chips.
“What I believe is happening, they’re going to keep pushing with these models, these ridiculous hybrid models under the guise of safety, to negotiate more salaries and benefits for their members,” he said. Tuesday.
The CDC said it was not necessary for every teacher and student to be immunized before returning to class, and noted that the detrimental effects on children who conduct virtual learning outweigh the threat of transmission of the virus during the classroom. learning at school.
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In February, the CDC director encouraged schools to reopen, highlighting the significant risks children face as they continue to be isolated, such as lack of education and food insecurity.
President Biden said almost all Americans aged 18 and over can expect to be vaccinated by this summer. But parents remain concerned that this will not change the attitudes of teachers’ unions when it comes to returning children to the classroom full time.
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