The Logical Inconsistencies of School Districts' Irrational Drive to Reopen

 Dear Superintendent and School Board,

March 10, 2021

Your directive to teachers who have their own kids who are still distance learning, telling them to bring them with us to school, is dangerous, irresponsible and logically inconsistent with all previous policies about bringing our children to work. 

The only reason I can think of why you no longer consider it a liability issue, when it had always been one in the past, is that the government has exempted schools and businesses from liability due to students or staff contracting covid while at school and work. This is both illogical and absurd. If we get injured or die because of the negligence or dangerous working conditions, you are liable. Forcing anyone back to school during a raging pandemic, with all the new highly transmissible new variants now proliferating in the community, is precisely a dangerous and negligent work environment. If someone gets seriously ill or dies from covid, student or staff, the district certainly should be fully liable. There is absolutely no good reason why schools need to be, or should be, open until everyone is vaccinated (kids and adults) and the pandemic is fully under control or over. 

Consider that we do not allow anyone on campus who has not been vaccinated against polio, mumps, measles, rubella, diphtheria, typhoid, or pertussis. For these diseases, we can truly promise families that school is safe, that their children will not contract any of these diseases at school. Yet, even if every adult is vaccinated against covid, the students will not be any time before then end of the 2020-2021 school year, making every one of them vulnerable to infection and potentially death.

But even if we ignore the risks of covid, all the other same risks to the safety of our own children exist now as existed before the pandemic, plus the additional risks of our kids contracting covid or spreading it to our students. They could still fall down the stairs and crack their skulls. They could still slip on a spill or break glassware. 

In addition to that, they bring one more potential carrier of the virus into the school environment. Classrooms that have a teacher's child present in them will have more people in them than those that don't, creating both an increased risk of transmission and an equity issue for students and staff working in those classrooms. And teachers with very young children will have to attend to them (e.g., diapers, feeding, keeping them entertained and in their seats for 5 hours) at the expense of their students. If  the district tells us to take Family Leave, this is another equity issue. Why should teachers with infants and toddlers be forced to hire childcare or take unpaid family leave, when parents of older kids are allowed to bring them to work and get free babysitting?