A Los Angeles teachers union warns California‘s school reopening plan is “a recipe for propagating structural racism.”
United Teachers of Los Angeles lashed out on Monday at the effort by Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s administration to incentivize schools to reopen their doors with studies showing a low COVID-19 transmission risk in reopening schools, particularly for lower grades, and others showing the adverse consequences students face via virtual learning.
“If you condition funding on the reopening of schools, that money will only go to white and wealthier and healthier school communities that do not have the transmission rates that low-income Black and Brown communities do,” UTLA president Cecily Myart-Cruz said. “This is a recipe for propagating structural racism and it is deeply unfair to the students we serve.”
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Newsom’s administration revealed its plan to restart in-person instruction on Monday, offering $2 billion in funding to schools that reopen transitional kindergarten through second-grade classrooms by April 1, regardless of the level of COVID-19 transmission in their region.
When a school district’s region falls into the “substantial” tier, meaning seven or fewer cases new daily cases per 100,000 people, they will be required to restart in-person learning for all elementary school grades and at least one middle or high school grade in order to receive the grant money.
UTLA argues that schools in Los Angeles’s less-prosperous neighborhoods, which have experienced a significant number of COVID-19 cases, will be disadvantaged by the plan.
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“Educators are being unfairly targeted by wealthier and healthier people who are not experiencing this disease in the same way as students and families in our communities,” the union added. “If this were a rich person’s disease, we would have seen a very different response. We would not have the high rate of infections and deaths.”
