Two weeks before the Rochester City School District opens its doors to elementary school students for hybrid learning, the Rochester Teachers Association is mounting a spirited campaign to scuttle the plan and delay reopening.
RCSD was the last district in Monroe County, and the second-to-last in the state, to reopen when it welcomed a few hundred students with disabilities back to school at the beginning of January. Superintendent Lesli Myers-Smallframesaccess to in-person learning as a question of equity and defends the district's preparations for the next step two weeks from now.
Teachers, meanwhile, appear to be increasingly firm in opposition. They are critical ofthe specifics of RCSD's belated reopening plan and also don't trust the district to enforce health protocols properly.
Myers-Small on Monday invited a review of the district reopening plan to help settle the dispute.About 90% of teachers who responded to an RTA polloppose the return to in-person learning, according to the union — but they have no power to stop the move if the district insists upon it.
Teachers: district plan is lacking
Teachers' voluminous public comments— at a school board meeting last week, on social media and in form letters to local journalists — focus on a few key complaints.
First, that the district's plan lacks sufficient detail. For instance, teachers allege the written regulations are not clear enough in stating thatstudents mustwear their masks in the classroom.
The district plan states: "Face covers will be worn in classrooms at all times unless a mask break is given. ...Mask breaks will only be given when six feet of space is available and will be short in duration."
Second, teachers say the experience of the first wave of reopening shows a troubling lack of regard for protocol, by students as well as staff, bus drivers and other employees.
Lisa Reyes, a speech-language pathologist who has been working in person, wrote in an email that a student was permitted to attend school despite living with several people who had tested positive.
"Masks aren't being worn properly, nor with fidelity and there is no way to enforce this," she wrote.
From an instructional perspective, teachers say it will be impossible to teach remote and in-person students simultaneously, as they're being asked to do. The same situation existsin some suburban districts, where teachers have objected as well.
Lisa DiRenzo Englert is a science teacher who will return in Phase Three. She signed a petition to delay reopening.
“They use my colleagues as canaries in a coal mine,” she said. “Phase one, phase two—and I have heard it said, ‘Well we’re going to see how those phases do before we go to phase three.’ You’re literally gauging from my colleagues and the students’ lives. I’m sorry. I just don’t agree with this at all.”
District defends plan
Myers-Small did not respond to those criticisms point-by-point but said in a statement that the district has"been working tirelessly to ensure our buildings are ready and set up to follow social distancing guidelines," including working together with local health officials.
She also criticized the RTA for"leading the charge to keep schools closed for City scholars who face significant educational disparities."
Rochester-area Regents T. Andrew Brown and Wade Norwood expressed support of the district's plan as well. "We strongly believe that the district has done its due diligence and that school buildings in Rochester are safe and ready to welcome students and faculty back," they said in a statement.
Parents and students also have shown ambivalence about returning to the classroom, though with less vehemence than teachers. A December survey showed that about one third of elementary students intend to participate in hybrid learning, though the district believes that number will fall when the time actually comes Feb. 8.
More:RCSD reverses course, will offer hybrid for high schoolers
More:After 298 days, RCSD welcomes first wave of students back to the classroom
Aaniyah Simmons, a 12th-grader at World of Inquiry School 58 and president of the district's Student Leadership Congress, reported to the school board that many students are struggling to find motivationwith online learning.
"They are finding it hard to get a focused school mindset because they are in their bedrooms;the in-personpeer motivation they would usually receive is absent during virtual school," she said. "Because of this mentality it makes school days very repetitive."
Llerena Searle, the mother of a student at Anna Murray Douglass Academy School 12, said she was disappointed with the RTA's position.
"Teachers’ concerns about safety must be weighed against the deep harms school closures inflict on students and families," she wrote in an email. "Rather than flaming fears over risk, the RTA should have sought way to re-open schools in the fall, when regional COVID infection rates were low. Now, the RTA should be collaborating with the Superintendent to design a re-opening plan that serves students' needs."
Few options for recourse
The district partly cultivated teachers' apprehension with its ever-changing reopening plans, even in just the last two months.
It announced in November that elementary students would return to school in February using a hybrid model, to be followed by 7-12 grades weeks later. That then changed to students in grades 7-12 remaining remote for the rest of the school year. Later, the district announced that it would in fact offer hybrid classes to grades 7-12.
Ultimately, only teachers with a recognized medical excuse will be permitted not to return to their RCSD classrooms. In Chicago, teachers facing a similar situation have refused to return to the classroom, a move the district is considering a strike.
Adam MacIntyre-Ross teaches art at a middle school and in a high school. Because of the staggered reopening plan, he goes in person to teach one student in person, while teaching the other students online. When he got to the school, he found out that his classroom had been converted to the “COVID Room” — a room in which people who potentially have COVID are sent. He now shares a classroom with another teacher.
“I worry about my family, I worry about my students, I worry about my students’ families,” he said. “I’m traveling between schools. I couldn’t live with myself if I ended up… giving kids COVID because even though I was careful,I accidently still ended up getting infected.”
His spouse is immunocompromised — she has had cancer and chemotherapy twice — so MacIntyre-Ross is particularly concerned about ensuring that his family is protected from getting sick.
“If the choice is going to be between do our best to teach in a difficult situation or make it only possibly slightly less difficult for some students, but also risk everybody’s health, I think it is wiser to go with the remote than half and half,” he said.
RTA President Adam Urbanski told teachers earlier this month that a return to the classroom, while largely "a matter of management prerogative," must nonetheless adhere by contractual regulations, and held out the possibility of a grievance if it does not.
Adria R. Walker covers public education for the Democrat and Chronicle in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on Twitter at @adriawalkr or send her an email at arwalker@gannett.com. You can support her work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America.
