How will America protect its teachers? Could Distance Learning be key to a pre-vaccine Covid-19 world?

Many of the discussions about reopening our schools and colleges focuses upon the students’ “needs” and/or upon the negative effects on the economy if we don’t reopen. But few discussions give much more than lip service to the needs and concerns of the teachers themselves. For example, it any American county, is there any mention of how many teachers are older than 50 years old, or how many have pre-existing medical conditions that would place them at higher risk of harm from infection?

A recent article addresses the staggering numbers here, that are conspicously absent in many school board discussions — as many as 1/4 of American workers (assuming this includes teachers and school support workers, admin, etc.) — are at greater risk. This raises the question, at this time (pre-vaccine) is there any SAFE way to reopen our schools and colleges, etc.?

“1 in 4 workers, including 10 million people 65 and over, are at higher risk for developing serious illness if they become infected with the coronavirus. New research highlights challenges to workplace safety and creative approaches businesses may take as employees return to job sites.”

Please see: https://www.aarp.org/work/working-at-50-plus/info-2020/older-workers-covid-risks.html?cmp=SNO-ICM-FB-COVID-WJ&socialid=3448624367

In June 2020, many schools, colleges and universities began planning a return to in-person classes in August or September 2020. But the number of states with catastrophic numbers of new cases raises questions about the wisdom of these plans.

Institutions must consider their legal, financial, moral and professional duty-of-care toward not only their students, but equally toward their staff and faculty. When will these conversation begin, and who will be invited to the table? Hopefully teachers will not be left out.

Either way, the expensive costs of planning sessions might be for naught, because if numbers of cases and deaths rise high enough, students, parents and teachers might opt to not show up, when schools reopen. In this case, it seems that Distance Learning planning and support would have been a better invest of time and energy over this stressful summer of 2020, wouldn’t it?