In the Absence of COVID Safety Plans, Teachers Are Resigning and Retiring Early

In the Absence of COVID Safety Plans, Teachers Are Resigning and Retiring Early

In the Absence of COVID Safety Plans, Teachers Are Resigning and Retiring Early

This should have been Cheryl Dubberly’s 40th year as a music teacher, but in August 2020, she resigned from her position with the Duval County Board of Education in Jacksonville, Florida.

“It was dreadful to think about continuing,” Dubberly told Truthout. “I would not have been able to stay safe because I was responsible for teaching music to the entire school — 500 to 600 kids.” The job, she says, required her to go from classroom to classroom even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that singing with others can spread COVID-19.

“The job was not worth my life,” she says.

Like Dubberly, Christine Vehar, also a music teacher, left her position in the metro Atlanta area this fall. She had taught for just three and a half years. “When the schools closed in March, I had a great remote teaching experience,” she says. “The students were very engaged and despite some initial disorganization, it worked well, and I ended up loving teaching from home.” But when Vehar’s district decided to move to a hybrid schedule in October — holding in-person classes from 7:15 am to 2:15 pm four days a week, with Wednesdays as a remote teaching and learning day — she resigned.

The reason was fear of catching and spreading the virus.

“My mom is 63, and she lives with me,” Vehar told Truthout. “She is a three-time cancer survivor and an amputee with a compromised immune system, so there was absolutely no way for me to give her the care she deserves and continue to teach in-person.”

A fall 2020 survey conducted by the National Education Association (NEA) confirms that neither Dubberly nor Vehar are unusual. “Teachers with less than 10 years in are leaving the profession,” NEA President Becky Pringle told Truthout. “And 40 percent of mid-range teachers — CONTINUE READING: In the Absence of COVID Safety Plans, Teachers Are Resigning and Retiring Early

JEFF BRYANT: Truthout: DeVos Is on Her Way Out, But Public Education Is Still Very Much Under Attack | National Education Policy Center

Truthout: DeVos Is on Her Way Out, But Public Education Is Still Very Much Under Attack | National Education Policy Center

Truthout: DeVos Is on Her Way Out, But Public Education Is Still Very Much Under Attack

When a Biden victory in the 2020 presidential election became certain, supporters of public education gleefully took to social media to say good riddance to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. DeVos came into office with an agenda to further the privatization of public education by expanding charter schools and by encouraging families to opt out of public schools by any means possible. During her tenure, she effectively used her bully pulpit to cheer on efforts by Republican state lawmakers to expand various forms of voucher programs that give parents public money to homeschool their children or send them to private schools. She awarded many of the nation’s largest charter school chains with millions in federal funding, and she used the pandemic as an opportunity to redirect emergency funds for public schools to private schools and internet-based instruction — all the while refusing to even visit struggling public schools.

Biden is expected to oppose voucher programs and limit the growth of the charter school industry. But despite the promising prospect of a transition from DeVos to a Biden administration, progressive public school advocates can’t afford to overlook a threat to democratically governed schools that preceded DeVos and will continue when she is long gone.

In midsized metropolitan areas like Indianapolis and Stockton, California, parents, teachers, and public school advocates warn of huge sums of money coming from outside their communities to influence local politics and bankroll school board candidates who support school privatization. In phone conversations, emails, and texts, they point to a national agenda, backed CONTINUE READING: Truthout: DeVos Is on Her Way Out, But Public Education Is Still Very Much Under Attack | National Education Policy Center