Educators in many parts of the country are now eligible for the coronavirus vaccine, which should mean one thing: No more excuses. It’s time to return to school in person, full time, as quickly as possible.
There was already little evidence supporting teachers’ hesitance to head back to the classroom. If anything, the science supported the opposite: The academic setbacks and social problems incurred as a result of remote learning far outweighed the risk of transmission among children. Yet, for months, teachers unions have lobbied against cities’ efforts to reopen, arguing that in-person learning is not safe for the teachers they represent.
Now that the vaccine is available, the safety concern no longer applies. But that hasn’t stopped teachers unions from doing everything they can to extend schools’ shutdowns once again.
In New York City, the United Federation of Teachers is arguing that the vaccine is not enough and that the city must wait to see whether vaccinated people can still spread the virus. The city’s high school and middle school students haven’t seen the inside of a classroom since the city shut down for the second time in November, and even then, their return was only part time. Elementary school students have been back for the past month but only on a hybrid basis. These students are losing months of educational opportunity, and for what? The city’s schools have yet to see the catastrophic coronavirus outbreak that the teachers unions have warned about.
Fairfax County, Virginia, is similarly dragging its feet, even though its vaccination process is in full swing and even though students in the area have had to put up with distance learning since the pandemic broke out in March of last year. Fairfax’s teachers are now eligible for the vaccine, but Superintendent Scott Brabrand refused to say whether parents could expect their children to return to school soon. Meanwhile, Fairfax’s students are suffering massive academic losses. Failing rates have spiked across all grades, and many students have simply checked out of virtual learning altogether, according to Fairfax teachers.
The situation is even worse in Los Angeles. The county’s largest teachers union has convinced city officials that schools must not only vaccinate every teacher before reopening schools, but they must vaccinate every student as well. The problem with this approach is that the vaccine has not been tested on younger people, and given they are low risk, they will be among the last to receive the shots. This could push Los Angeles’s reopening back to the end of this year at the earliest.
If it was not already clear that teachers unions are more interested in their political ambitions than the safety and well-being of students and teachers, this should make it crystal clear. A long-term solution to this pandemic has finally presented itself, but the unions are trying to shift the goal posts once again.
City officials must see this for what it is: political extortion. The longer these cities agree to abide by the unions’ demands, the more aggressive their demands will become. We saw this summer when an alliance of teachers unions threatened a “national day of resistance” and issued an ultimatum to city leaders across the country. Their list of demands included canceling rents and mortgages, placing a moratorium on charter schools, and taxing the wealthy to fund reopening.
If the cities allow these unions to continue dictating schools’ reopening policies, they can expect unions’ demands to become even more absurd. The only benefit to this would be that more people would finally see the true nature of today’s teachers unions. They are self-interested activists who will gladly hold your children’s educations hostage if it means advancing their leftist agendas.
The jig is up. The vaccination is available to the majority of teachers nationwide, and the longer the unions try to delay the inevitable, the more obvious it is that this was never about the coronavirus at all. This was about power — and our cities have put up with it for far too long.
