Teachers unions in at least three major cities are demanding that their school districts maintain indoor mask requirements, despite recently released guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that say students can safely unmask at schools.
Teachers unions in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Chicago have pushed back against attempts by local and state leaders to lift mask mandates, insisting the districts must negotiate with them first.
The unions’ position puts them at odds with official guidance from the CDC released last month, which said that students can safely attend school without wearing face masks.
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In a March 1 letter, the Seattle Education Association said that maintaining mask mandates would “contribute to feelings of safety and normalcy that schools provide our students” and that “removing masks will significantly disrupt that sense of normalcy.”
https://twitter.com/Jusrangers/status/1500589575718191108?s=20&t=D5XXOI9DTrXO-FVbaMkyIASeattle public schools have maintained their mask mandate, saying that any attempt to remove it requires negotiation with the SEA per the union’s collective bargaining agreement.
“It is our strong recommendation that the mask mandate be lifted no earlier than May 1,” the union said, claiming that date would “center the needs of our [minority] communities and those who are immuno-compromised or cannot yet be vaccinated.”
In Chicago, where the teachers union went on strike in January in a bid to force the city’s schools to move classes online, the union accused Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who lifted the city’s school mask mandate Monday, of violating an agreement that had been struck in January following the strike.
The union plans to file an unfair labor practices complaint against the city for removing the mandate, according to a report for the Chicago Tribune.
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Even as school districts across California drop their mask mandates, officials in Los Angeles County have not yet made changes to the district’s mask mandate, and the Unified Teachers of Los Angeles, the city’s largest union, has made clear it will oppose any efforts to lift mandates.
Union President Cecily Myart-Cruz said it was “premature to discuss removing these health and safety measures while there are still many unvaccinated youth in our early education programs and schools.”
“LAUSD schools have been the safest and most well-equipped in the country because educators and families united to demand critical health and safety protocols,” the union president said. “These protocols, like indoor masking, have protected tens of thousands of educators and more than half a million students, along with their families.”
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said the unions’ refusal to adapt to the CDC guidelines is a “clear” indication that union bosses “are more interested in their own ability to control … the process and kids in the system.”
The former education secretary took particular notice of the Seattle union’s use of the word “normalcy” to describe mask mandates.
“There is nothing normal about kids wearing masks over their face every day in school,” DeVos said. “For them to consider that or suggest that is normal, just shows how bent out they are on their own agenda, not on what’s right for kids.”
“Seeing facial expressions is such an important part of human interaction,” she went on. “We’ve seen the photos and seen the video footage of classrooms where, when the kids were told they could all remove their masks, there was cheering and crying. It was joyful, because [they were] being freed from this false protection.”
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Mask mandates were a major point of contention between parents and school officials in districts nationwide before they were mostly lifted in recent weeks. The issue became politically charged, and support for such mandates largely fell along party lines, with Democrats supporting mandates and Republicans opposing.
Several Republican-controlled states like Florida banned school districts from implementing mask mandates, even as most other schools around the country mandated masks.
