To please 'burned out' teachers, schools are closing classrooms again — leaving parents to scramble for child care: Report



In an effort to retain "burned out" teachers amid the COVID-19 pandemic, school districts across the country are reportedly canceling classes or going fully remote once again with little notice for parents, leaving many scrambling to find child care.

What are the details?

Last month, TheBlaze reported that Detroit public schools had responded to a surge in COVID-19 cases by adopting fully remote Fridays for the month of December.

Since then, according to the New York Times, districts in other states such as Florida, Oregon, Utah, and Washington have followed suit, though not always to combat the virus. Instead, the districts are reportedly hoping to convince disgruntled teachers to stay on staff.

"After a few months of relative calm, some public schools are going remote — or canceling classes entirely — for a day a week, or even for a couple of weeks, because of teacher burnout or staff shortages," the Times reported this week.

At least six other districts in Michigan extended days off during Thanksgiving break, while three districts in Washington state abruptly closed on Friday, Nov. 12, due to staff shortages. Meanwhile, in Florida, one district reportedly used leftover reserve "hurricane days" to close schools for an entire week.

In Utah, one district recently announced that from November until March, schools would go remote on Fridays once a month. In perhaps the most shocking development, a middle school near Portland, Oregon, decided to cancel classes from Nov. 17 until Dec. 7 due to "fights and outbursts" from students — and gave parents just two days' notice.

Why are they doing it?

The Times reported that districts cited various reasons for the schedule changes related to the pandemic, from rising infection rates to the need to sanitize classrooms.

"But for many schools," the report stated, "the remote learning days — an option that did not exist before the pandemic — are a last-ditch effort to keep teachers from resigning. They are burned out, educators said, after a year of trying to help students through learning loss, and working overtime to make up for labor shortages."

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten told the paper that battles in the classrooms over mask mandates and critical race theory have taken a toll on the nation's educators.

“What you hear from teachers is that it’s been too much,” she said. “And they’re trying the best that they can.”

Weingarten previously made a similar claim in May, arguing that teachers were "tired and exhausted" amid the pandemic despite being home for months during the first year. She added that "we have to find a way to repair and nourish" those teachers — and was swiftly lampooned online.

Why does it matter?

Whatever the benefit for the nation's teachers, the Times reported that many parents are frustrated, and even "furious," over the renewed cancellations.

Due to the short notice in many cases, working parents have been forced to take off work or otherwise reorder their schedules to care for their children. Some parents told the paper that abrupt closures have left them "scrambling" to find child care.

Others are concerned that the schedule disruptions will result in their children falling further behind academically. Last year, nearly nine in ten parents expressed as much in a survey. Their concerns have been backed up by studies showing students falling behind significantly, especially in math and science.

Teachers union boss gets shellacked for saying teachers, who spent months at home, are exhausted and need to be nourished



The president of the second-largest teachers union in the United States got slammed for recently saying that teachers are "tired and exhausted," despite being at home for months. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten also said that "we have to find a way to repair and nourish" teachers, which was lampooned by online commenters.

Weingarten appeared on MSNBC Friday night, where she attempted to persuade viewers that the AFT wants to reopen schools, despite having yet to commit to in-person learning in the fall.

"Number one we want schools to reopen for a rapport and we don't want outbreaks," Weingarten said. "We want schools open and we want them to stay open."

But Weingarten said that teachers "don't want to be the mask police," adding that Texas and Iowa made a politically motivated decision to "rush to say no mask mandates when we still don't have a vaccine that's okay for elementary school students."

"Well there's two plans: one is for the summer and one is for the fall," the union boss of 1.7 million members said. "In the fall we have to first and foremost create a safe and welcoming environment."

Weingarten attempted to garner sympathy for teachers.

"Teachers are tired; they are exhausted," she said. "We have to find a way to repair and nourish them as well as families in terms of attracting and retaing our teaching force."

Online commenters mocked Weingarten's comments about teachers being "exhausted."

  • "Let's try this, Randi. STUDENTS are tired; they are exhausted. They've been put on the back burner by teachers unions for over a year so a virus could be used for political power gains. And MONEY. And pushing CRT so they can be told their skin color is all that matters.Shameful."
  • "From what? Sitting our your asses on Zoom? People have had it with your no work, whining nonsense."
  • "Why do public school teachers think they're so special? Parents and students not exhausted and tired too. medical workers and grocery store workers need to be nourished and repaired too. You. Aren't. Special."
  • "Poor teachers. Where I live in Oregon they got vaccinated before 80+ months ago, and many are still not back at school. My kids are getting 2 hours twice a week in person. When it was Zoom it was 2 hours 4 days a week. They must be so exhausted. I hope the teachers are ok."
  • "Having a whole year off must be exhausting!"
  • "Straight talk: Schools should not have closed this year. What was always clear is now *crystal* clear. Accountability for the high costs of closures to children is beyond-fair."
  • "If you don't actively scorn teacher's unions by this point, you're not paying attention."

Weingarten, who has a reported salary of around $500,000, has recently been attempting to change the perception that she is a proponent of reopening schools thanks to the help of Democratic figures, including first lady Jill Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

Randi Weingarten is the person most responsible for destroying this school year for so many kids. She led the way o… https://t.co/F7hK9Z7ByG

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) 1621343927.0

On May 18, Weingarten appeared on C-SPAN, where frustrated parents grilled the AFT boss for refusing to reopen schools.

Parents call into C-SPAN to grill Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers:https://t.co/rzrKkiXoYp

— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) 1621428916.0

One upset parent astutely asked Weingarten, "How come the parochial schools and the private schools could navigate their way through this scenario, but the public schools didn't seem to be able to manage that?"

Weingarten's answer via Reason:

So this is part of the reason why we asked the last administration to collect data on all of these things. So there were many many many public schools that have been open in a hybrid manner or in a full-time manner since September. And there have been many private schools, and many parochial schools [open]. And there have been many private and parochial schools that were not open. But we don't have the data, we have the anecdotal data. Fifteen percent, for example—a piece of data that I just got a couple of weeks ago—fifteen percent of parochial and private schools have closed fully during this period of time.

Many of the private schools that I know when I started asking them the questions about how are they doing this because we have to learn from each other, they said that they got the PPP loans that was in one of the first COVID packages so that they could do the testing that I just talked about, and they could do the layers of mitigation. And they also had parents, in a couple of the private schools, they had parents who shelled out a lot more money to do that. And the parochial schools, we saw some extra space that got used in those kind of ways.
And frankly, some of us also, you know, said that every one of the schools, you know, who were serving poor people had to get additional funding, and I got criticized by my, you know, public education friends for doing that. This is a matter of we have to learn from each other. But at the end of the day, if you have a ventilation system that doesn't work, if you don't have soap and water in your schools, if you can't get soap and water, and you need to have, you know, you need to wash kids, everyone needs to wash their hands, perhaps sanitizing stations, all of those things were resource-based things that were really important.

Earlier this month, Weingarten implied that Fox News and former President Donald Trump were at fault as to why schools are not reopened now.

Weingarten's AFT has been scrutinized for its cozy relationship with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Damning emails between AFT officials and the CDC suggest that the teachers union successfully lobbied the CDC on the health agency's reopening guidance and language.

AFT donated nearly $20 million to Democrats in 2020, according to watchdog The Center Square.

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'Get back on the job': New York Post demands that all schools reopen full-time now that teachers have been given vaccines, pulls no punches on unions



In a scathing editorial posted Monday night, the New York Post editorial board demanded that teachers get back in the classrooms for in-person learning and unions get out of the way now that New York City is vaccinating teachers against COVID.

What's happening?

New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced over the weekend that teachers and education workers are being prioritized for vaccinations and urged all education employees to make appointments to get their shots.

We’re relieved that teachers & education workers are starting to be eligible for COVID-19 vaccination like fellow N… https://t.co/ko23WkwyS6
— Chancellor Richard A. Carranza (@Chancellor Richard A. Carranza)1610317062.0

With that news, many advocates, parents, and members of the media began to call for all Big Apple schools to be fully reopened instead of the part-time and/or hybrid schedules the city elected to employ last fall.

The Post made its position clear in a staff editorial titled "Teacher vaccinations mean all schools should reopen full-time ASAP."

The piece began by going after the teachers' unions that have stood in the way of a return to full-time in-person instruction:

Good news: New York City began vaccinating teachers against COVID-19 on Monday. That leaves the teachers' union no excuse for continuing to oppose in-person learning: Classrooms at all grade levels must reopen so our kids can get the education they're entitled to — but have lost out on for nearly a year.

The United Federation of Teachers has long stood in the way of getting back into classrooms daily, despite the fact that experts repeatedly stated that kids are a very low-risk population for catching or transmitting the coronavirus. But, in the words of the Post, the union "doesn't care about the science — or the students."

The UFT, the paper said, threatened lawsuits and strikes to avoid getting back into the classrooms before the school year started. The union agreed to go back to work only after Mayor Bill de Blasio was forced to offer new concessions. But the UFT wasn't done there, the editorial noted; it has repeatedly tried to get schools closed and to avoid any reopenings — even some "more radical factions" demanded that all Gotham schools remain closed "until the whole city is basically virus-free."

The need to get back into the schools is obvious to the Post's editorial board:

Middle- and high-school students haven't seen the inside of a classroom since the city shut schools on Nov. 19. Though even that was only part-time. Pre-kindergarten and elementary students resumed a “hybrid" learning last month, while special-needs kids returned to classrooms full-time. Kudos to de Blasio for getting that much done; children needing special ed are particularly ill-served by remote classes.

But all kids need to go back, full-time. “Without in-person instruction, schools risk children falling behind academically and exacerbating educational inequities," warned a National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine report last year. Nathaniel Beers, coauthor of the American Academy of Pediatrics' report, explained that all children suffer under remote learning, even teens: “Adolescence is a period of time in life when you are to be exploring your own sense of self and developing your identity," he said. “It's difficult to do that if you are at home with your parents all the time."

It's far past time, the paper said, for students to get back into the classroom — and with vaccines in the arms of teachers, there's no longer any reason not to.

"New York's children have lost nearly a year of education," the Post said. "It's long past time they get to learn in a classroom again."

Florida teacher arrested for allegedly spraying disinfectant at students who didn't wear masks properly, faces felony child abuse charges



A Florida teacher faces felony child abuse charges after a reported incident involving face masks. Largo High School teacher Christina Reszetar allegedly sprayed disinfectant at her students because they weren't wearing their face masks properly.

According to the Largo Police Department, Reszetar became aggressive because four students refused to wear their face masks properly in the classroom. Reszetar, an Exceptional Student Education math teacher, allegedly sprayed aerosol disinfectant into the faces and bodies of the students.

Reszetar was escorted from the Largo High School, located in a suburb of Tampa, and booked into the Pinellas County jail on Wednesday. She was charged with four counts of felony child abuse with great bodily harm.

The 51-year-old educator appeared before a judge on Thursday.

"In the courtroom, Reszetar told the judge she teaches Learning Disabled Math at Largo High School and has been a teacher for 21 years, 18 of them at Largo High School," WFLA-TV reported.

"I think I can fairly characterize this as a severely misguided attempt at discipline," the judge said in court on Thursday.

The incident was reportedly captured on surveillance video, but police have not released a copy of the footage. Reszetar said in court that the video would show the allegations are not true.

The judge asked Reszetar, "Are you going to be able to hire a lawyer to represent you?" The teacher responded, "I will not be able to afford one on my teacher's salary."

Reszetar was released from Pinellas County Jail on Thursday night on her own recognizance. Since the teacher had no serious prior record, the judge released her from jail without bond. A Pinellas County School District spokeswoman said Reszetar is still employed with the school district.

As part of its coronavirus precautions, Pinellas County schools require students and staff to wear face masks and maintain 6 feet of social distance.

This isn't the first time that teachers have allegedly acted erratically during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last month, an Oregon teacher flipped out on anti-lockdown protesters in the town of Bend.

In the summer, teachers organized a mass "sickout" to force a school district in Arizona to cancel reopening during the coronavirus pandemic.

Largo Teacher faces child abuse charges after she said students weren't wearing masks properly www.youtube.com

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