Educators Prepare for Reopening with Living Wills and Life Insurance
As school districts and college campuses get ready for the school year, and as COVID-19 cases rise across the U.S., anxious educators have a message for administratorhttp://neatoday.org/wp-admin/upload.phps and lawmakers: We want to teach our students, but we don’t want to die doing it.
“I want to be in my class, teaching them and getting to know them. But, for me, it’s far more important for everybody to be safe, and I don’t think they can guarantee that,” says Shaela Rieker, a fourth-grade Washington teacher. In anticipation of returning to school this fall, Rieker, the sole income-provider in her family, recently updated her will and increased her life-insurance coverage, saying, “it would be irresponsible of me not to.”
Many states and school districts are listening. From Maryland to California, lawmakers or school officials have said they will begin the school year with distance learning, or delay the start of school until infection rates decrease. Other governors, such as in Florida, continue to bow and scrape for President Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who threatened to withhold federal funds from districts that don’t physically open their doors every day for every student.
In Florida on Monday, the day after a 51-year-old Pasco County sixth-grade teacher died from COVID-19, the Florida Education Association (FEA) filed a lawsuit on behalf of educators and parents, seeking to block Gov. Ron DeSantis’ emergency CONTINUE READING: Educators Prepare for Reopening with Living Wills and Life Insurance
