Last night, my 29-year old daughter picked at the wooden veneer on my kitchen table and said, "Mom...I should probably write a will." She's a social studies teacher in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. In a month and a day, she, and all of us employed by PPS, will be forced to go back to school in person..whether we, like Sarah, have serious underlying health problems that could make a case of COVID-19 fatal, or not.
Pittsburgh Public Schools is not offering teachers with COVID-risk factors an option to continue to teach virtually after November 9th. Sit with that a minute. You read it right.
All teachers MUST report in person on that date, no matter what their health problems might be. This has created a panic among PPS employees with risk factors. The added stress about what could happen to our medically fragile students and colleagues contributes to the pain. Thinking about the possibility of students who are orphaned by COVID-19 sickens me and keeps me up at night. I take more medication, go to the doctor more, feel sicker, and I'm in more chronic pain because of it. And I am not alone. I have friends with much more serious health problems than mine, who are much more talented educators than me, who face truly life-or-death decisions now.
To make things worse, PPS teachers are finding the District is not approving COVID-health related leaves. Trump's appointee Scalia's Labor Department has laid out three reasons you can take a COVID-related leave: either you are caring for a child whose school is closed due to COVID, you have COVID, or you're caring for somebody with COVID. Other options available to you to avoid a possible death sentence are an ADA leave, or an unpaid FMLA leave.
If you are a childless, not-disabled person with severe asthma, or caring for our 83-year old mother-in-law who has severe COPD---too damn bad, says Pamela Harbin, Sylvia Wilson, Kevin Carter, Terry Kennedy, Devon Taliaferro, Sala Udin, Bill Gallagher, Cynthia Falls and Veronica Edwards.
Too bad for you, your daughter, and to hell with your mother-in-law. Go back to school...and welcome to the 77th HUNGER GAMES, in which we wait to see which teacher, which aide, which janitor, which child gets sick first, who dies first.
I can't imagine the stress of being there as kids behave as normal children do, especially after being cooped up since March at home. I can't imagine the stress of being there, trying to do my already difficult job of interesting children who are growing up in a world oriented toward video games and phones in reading and books when my other, competing job will be to keep them safe from an invisible but deadly virus.
Doing my job while keeping them safe from racism, ableism, misogyny, misogynoir, homophobia, transphobia, violence and school shootings was a lot. I had a plan for a school shooter-- go out the library door first so the shooter could kill me and the kids could hopefully run around my dead body and get out of the building.
This is different. All a kid has to do is take off their mask and wipe it on somebody's face while they are horse playing-- in an an instant-- and another child and their family could be dead. It's that simple. And I'm being asked to prevent that?? HOW? DOES ANYONE ON THE BOARD HAVE ANY SCHOOL-BASED EXPERIENCE?
Children are children. We can teach them, we can instruct them, but they ride the bus by themselves, they walk the halls by themselves, they enter the restrooms and cafeterias by themselves, and they are normal, adolescent human beings whose brains are not fully developed yet. They goof around. It's part of the beauty of being a teenager. How can I possibly keep them safe from this virus if they are in school in person? THE VIRUS IS AIR BORNE.
And what about my colleagues? As of this moment, librarians are considered itinerants, along with PE and art teachers. At the elementary level, all of these specialists are going to be on carts-- visiting classrooms, instead of classrooms visiting them. Elementary librarians have two schools each. What if a librarian goes to one of her schools, sees all 500 of her kids in one day, plus 50 teachers, the school secretary, the Vice-Principal, a janitor and two cafeteria workers-- then the next day, feeling great, goes to her next school-- and sees the 380 kids there, plus the 40 teachers, Principal, school secretary, SDSS, her bestie the school social worker in that building, and maybe the art teacher for some craft supplies, and the janitor. Two days later that librarian feels sick, takes a COVID-19 test and comes up positive. How does the District do contact tracing? Who can possibly imagine all of the people each of the people that librarian interacted with interacted with?
During the Spanish flu, some children didn't go to school at all. The point is, they survived, the country survived, and they lived to tell about it. To me, survival must remain tantamount. The main goal. Nobody is expendable. In September, 300 children in Allegheny County got COVID-19. That was WITHOUT PPS being in session in person. What of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome, which could have long-term health effects upon children? Why is nobody talking about the fact that COVID-19 is more prevalent among Black and Brown children and families, who make up the majority of PPS' constituency? I feel as if I'm screaming in the dark.
I can not imagine the reasons why Pamela Harbin, Sylvia Wilson, Kevin Carter, Terry Kennedy, Devon Taliaferro, Sala Udin, Bill Gallagher, Cynthia Falls and Veronica Edwards are forcing teachers back to school in person, with no way to stay virtual if they have at-risk factors should they contract COVID-19. But I know where I will be sending the bill for my daughter's funeral expenses, should she, God forbid, pass away due to their malfeasance.
PGHCity Paper's Daily Allegheny County COVID case counter
COVID-19-related deaths of young teachers raises alarm
Elementary teacher dies 3 days after COVID Test
Pittsburgh-area teacher a whistle-blower for lax COVID sanitation in schools
300 Allegheny County Kids Have Contracted COVID Since Beginning of September
Call or email the PPS Board to ask them to Stay Virtual/Stay Safe
