Surviving and exhausted the last 2 years due to COVID-19 outbreaks, the public school’s teachers are now facing difficult circumstances due to the rising Omicron wave. The first class post-winter break saw a shortage of staff, low attendance, and inadequate safety protocols, all of which gave public teachers a hard time making in-person public instruction.
The Push For Remote Learning
According to the Department of Education, around 14000 students and teachers tested positive with the Omicron Variant daily.
Even though the teachers, staff, and students were allowed in school if they had negative COVID-19 test report, the Los Angeles Unified School District saw approximately 15% of the COVID-19 cheerful staffs, students, and teachers, and more than 33% of the students were found absent on their first day post-winter break.
Facing a shortage of teachers and no substitute to replace them, these city’s public schools teachers openly and publicly call for remote learning options.
Remote Learning- The Proponents?
The first day of the school’s post-winter outbreak saw attendance plummet to 67% (while in September 2021, it was down to nearly 82%).
The teachers are frustrated with the Department of Education, the Unions, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, and the newly sworn-in mayor Eric Addams.
Despite rising Omicron cases, Eric Addams is resisting going remote learning. According to the media report, he will not compromise students’ “quality of education.”
The superintendent Alberto Carvalho is similarly resisting going remote. He said that COVID-19 would stay for a while, and we should learn to coexist with it.
Frustrated and exhausted with the staff and teachers shortage, a group of rank-and-file teachers filed a lawsuit forcing the city to close the school and go remote learning through January 18.
The nation’s third-largest school system, the Chicago Public School System, decided to cancel classes and teach virtually. The Chicago teacher’s union jointly decided on the vote.
P.S. 15 in Carol Gardens also went against the city policy by going fully remote, citing the Omicron surge and shortage of staff and teachers.
According to Burbio (School tracking site)- 6273 of all public schools- 6% of all public schools in the U.S. announced closure and went into virtual-learning mode.
The closure has been accelerated to other states – especially North-East and Midwest Regions including Utah, Mexico, Texas, and Oregon.
However, few schools have been easing restrictions. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has removed the provision of mandatory masks and argued that it’s up to parents to decide if their child would wear the mask.
Schools in Massachusetts have announced at-home rapid antigen test kits for students and staff.
The Parents And Democrats?
The Axios conducted and published a poll regarding the citizen’s take on this matter and found that the majority of the U.S. citizens felt that education should go online at least during the Omicron wave.
Citizens from Low-income also support going remote.
As far as political parties are concerned, 37% of the Republicans and 70% of the Democrats support going online.
Keeping in mind the GOP and the upcoming midterm elections, the Biden administration has constantly touched with school leaders. In coordination with the Centre for Disease and Prevention, the White House has announced various strategies to keep students healthy and learning in person, which includes 10 million new tests each month for K-12 Schools, a directive to Health and Human Services, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This would prioritize school communities among the federal testing sites.
Summing It Up
Various research since the pandemic outbreak concluded that the effect of COVID-19 has been minimal on Children. The Centre for Disease and Control has repeatedly claimed that children show no or very mild symptoms and that the effect on children is far less than it is on adults.
Also, even though the transmissibility rate of the Omicron variant is high, studies from South Africa claim that the hospitalization rate is as low as 80% for vaccinated people.
The never-ending mutations- the newly Omicron, Deltacron, and now IHU – and various researches suggest that instead of waiting for the pandemic to end, we should learn to coexist with it keeping all precautions in mind.
The solution is simple- vaccinate aggressively, provide substitutes to teachers and staff, make the mask and adverse COVID-19 reports mandatory.
Kids should be in school. Let’s not take the school away from them!
