A few questions about sending our kids to school
As we near the beginning of a Pandemic school year, I have compiled, with the assistance of others, just a few questions for our school district administrators and boards of education.
If a teacher tests positive for COVID-19 are they required to quarantine for 2 weeks? Does their sick leave cover, will they be paid? That teacher, likely, has 5 classes a day with 30 students each, so do all 150 of those students need to then stay home and quarantine for 14 days? Will all 150 of those students now have to be tested? Who pays for those tests? Will they happen at school? How are the parents being notified? Will not everyone in each of the student’s families need tested and who pays for that? Will not the school district “foot the bill”?
And for those who live in the same house as a teacher who tests positive? Does that teacher now need to take 14 days more days off of work to quarantine? Is that time off covered? Paid? Does not the school district “foot the bill?”
While the teacher is quarantined, the likelihood of the district finding a substitute teacher who will work in a classroom full of exposed, possibly infected students for substitute pay, is slim to none.
Substitutes teach in multiple schools. What if they are diagnosed with COVID-19? Do all the students in each school now have to quarantine and get tested and who is going to pay for that?
Let’s explore this mess more. What if a student in your child’s class tests positive, or your child? Does every other student, school staff, and teacher they have been around quarantine? Do we all get notified who is infected and when? Or are parents and teachers just going to get mysterious “may have been in contact” emails all year long?
What is this stress going to do to our teachers and students? How does it affect their health and well-being? How does it affect their ability to teach and learn? How does it affect the quality of education they are able to provide? What is it going to do to our children? We know that the long-term effects of consistently being stressed out will affect our health, social interactions and economic freedom. We know of the adverse effects that this will affect students and faculty when the first teacher, parent , grandparent or student in their school dies from COVID-19. Thirty percent of the teachers in the US are over 50. About 16% of the total deaths from聽COVID-19 in the US are people between the ages of 45-65.
What are the legal liability issues of the school district for preventable illness and death of our students and teachers? Why are we willingly choosing to put our teachers in danger? We are not offering “hazard (hero’s) pay”. We are not spending anywhere near the right amount to protect them. And if we did were, where would the money come from, raising taxes?
We are putting ourselves and our children in danger. School boards need to think this through and answer these and other questions. Only fools rush into judgement.
Adam Sedlock is a resident of Chalk Hill