Ingrid Jacques, writing for USA Today, would like to talk about people–namely Dr. Anthony Fauci–being “wildly irresponsible” in discussion of how to mitigate the spread of disease in schools. I think, then, that we also need to talk about Jacques’ simplistic and misleading op-ed on the subject. Jacques is appalled that in response to the question of whether some schools might need to close [temporarily] after the holidays due to the surging cases of Covid, RSV, and flu, Dr. Fauci said he was “not sure.” He went on to say, “When you talk about shutting down schools, there’s always the…collateral issue. So you have to balance, and you do it in real time depending upon the viral load of disease in your region.” Did Dr. Fauci say he wants to close schools? Did he say there are no downsides to such a possibility? No and no. And yet Jacques writes the rest of the piece as if he had said all that and then laughed maniacally, as opposed to the restrained, pragmatic answer he actually gave.
I have a modest proposal for Jacques and others like her who express such black and white perspectives: perhaps we should treat a complicated situation with a bit more nuance. For starters, how many times do educators (and public health officials) have to say it? No one wants to close schools, even for a short amount of time. Teaching remotely is AWFUL. (I know from experience.) But sometimes it’s the best of all the terrible options, especially when, as epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo, who runs the Pandemic Center at Brown University, explains in a recent article by NPR, “an exhausted nation has abandoned many of the precautions people were taking to protect themselves and others. Flu vaccination rates are down by about 10% to 15% from previous years. Only about 11% of those eligible for the new bivalent omicron boosters have gotten boosted.” Might Dr. Fauci be reminding the country about the possible consequences of our collective negligence? Consequences we should be better at and more concerned about avoiding, knowing how detrimental school closures were in so many ways? Perhaps it would be more intellectually honest and beneficial to everyone if Jacques included perspectives like Nuzzo's: “‘We can't just resign ourselves to assuming that it's going to happen no matter what. [...] We can very much take action to prevent a rise in hospitalizations and deaths.’"
It seems, however, that Jacques would rather demonize public servants than actually avoid school closures. Case in point: the author says teachers union president Randi Weingarten tweeted about the “tridemic” of respiratory infections circulating in the U.S., implying that she and the teachers she represents are rubbing their hands together in anticipation of shutting schools down. Except…what Weingarten says is true and extremely concerning. It’s problematic that Jacques chose not to share the actual stat and source Tweeted by Weingarten: "More than three-quarters of pediatric hospital beds nationwide are occupied, seniors are hospitalized at a higher rate for respiratory illness & flu hospitalizations are at a decade-level high." Even more to the point, in my opinion: “Infants 6 months and younger are getting hospitalized with RSV at more than seven times the weekly rate observed before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2018 at this time, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” (emphasis mine).
Jacques should care about this. Everyone should care about this. How wonderful for her that all she got from spending (a presumably maskless) Thanksgiving with family was the sniffles. That is clearly much milder than what many families are experiencing and will struggle with in the coming months. I wonder if she might feel differently as the parent of a seriously ill child waiting for hours in an emergency room because the resources of the medical community are stretched so thin. (Interestingly, the author doesn’t seem to be a parent at all. Perhaps she’s not aware that these children who get the sickest are often the younger siblings of those who attend school, who are much more likely to require hospitalization.
Many of them are also too young to get vaccinated, and would not have been infected with RSV yet regardless of the Covid pandemic, because they were born after the last seasonal wave of infections. The impact reaches far beyond just the people who spend lots of time inside school buildings.)
I also wonder if Jacques would feel differently as a medical professional. The ones I know certainly do, and I know quite a few. My sister-in-law is a doctor, and my next-door-neighbor and best mom friend as well as two of my cousins are nurses. They are all as exhausted and frustrated as teachers at the disregard by so many for the health and wellbeing of their fellow citizens and for the institutions that are so strained under the effects of that disregard, namely hospitals and schools. Jacques is not only incorrect but recklessly negligent in asserting that the current spread of disease is "completely normal.” The point Fauci and Weingarten are trying to make is that this is decidedly not normal, even for Covid times. And no, it’s not accurate to blame the spike in flu and RSV solely on masking and lockdowns, either. Here is a refreshingly nuanced perspective that actually contradicts the CDC’s narrative, for those who are mistrustful of the government agency and its leader or think all unions are shills of Fauci:
“RSV and other respiratory viruses are significantly more severe this year due to a complete abandonment of public health measures that have helped protect the public from Covid-19 and other respiratory illnesses,” said Deborah Burger, RN and a president of National Nurses United (NNU). “The lack of public health protections and the impact of Covid infections, reinfections, and long Covid are likely contributing to the significant impact of RSV on young children and infants. Promoting the idea of ‘immunity debt’ is not only unscientific, it is harmful to the public’s health.”
Articles stating that children have not been exposed to RSV since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic due to stay-at-home orders are inaccurate. Many children were already exposed to and infected with RSV in 2021. In fact, the positivity rates for RSV were higher in 2021 than they are now in the United States. Additionally, RSV infections only provide partial immunity, and individuals remain susceptible to repeat infections throughout their lives. [Note that the rate of infection is not the same as the rate of hospitalization previously referenced.]
Unfortunately, the CDC appears to be promoting this idea of “immunity debt” as the reason behind the current surge in respiratory viruses and hospitalization, especially among children. During the CDC’s Nov. 4 media advisory, the agency explicitly stated that because of a lack of immunity, “these children, if you will, need to become infected to move forward because it’s a disease [RSV] very common in children.” However, claiming that children need to become infected to clear their “immunity debt” provides little benefit to children, ignores individual risks for severe infections (particularly among immunocompromised children), and disregards the science about the virus.
Furthermore, as someone who worked in a school district last year with virtually no mitigation strategies in place to protect students, teachers, or their families, I can tell you that the school situation is not as simple as Jacques makes it sound. (Again, interesting to observe that the author “has written frequently on Michigan and national politics, with a focus on education and cultural issues,” but seems to have no actual experience as an
educator. Perhaps this is why, when she says “widespread school closures were one of the biggest mistakes in the country’s response to COVID,” she doesn’t mention any of the other failures that made them necessary for so long, which teachers and many parents watched helplessly and angrily. She doesn’t address how many people refused to wear masks, social distance, test, forgo large indoor gatherings, and get vaccinated, despite the fact that all these precautions would have lowered case numbers immensely and probably shortened school closures a great deal.) During the 21-22 school year, teachers in my district begged for a mask mandate as leadership and many in the community went back to business as usual. Class sizes were huge. Social distancing was not only non-existent, but impossible. Administrators and the superintendent walked school halls maskless, despite the district’s “recommendation” that everyone wear a mask. We had a fall pepfest with the entire faculty and student body present in one gymnasium. Teachers got Covid and the staff was often not officially informed. Teachers brought Covid home to their children and then had to take care of them instead of being at school. Unsurprisingly, Covid cases in the district ticked up and up.
On December 13, 2021, in desperation, I gave a speech to the school board about feeling like I couldn't do my job and keep myself and my family safe at the same time. It got a standing ovation from the dozens of other teachers present, but leadership did nothing. Then, in an emergency board meeting called on January 10, 2022–less than a month later–the board debated for hours (safely via Zoom, of course) on what to do about the out-of-control Covid numbers at the high school. The meeting was public, and I listened to it in seething frustration. The lamenting phrase I remember hearing over and over during that meeting was, “No one had a crystal ball. We couldn’t have seen this coming.” I guess even the few school board members who were actually looking at me during my speech the month before weren’t really listening. I was trying to be their crystal ball…and ironically, my overall message was simply to start listening to teachers.
Predictably, most of the board didn’t want to go to distance learning even temporarily, and the high school principal (my supervisor) had to explain that the immediate problem was a logistical one: so many staff members were out because of Covid that we didn’t have enough adults to even supervise students, much less actually teach them. One school board member wanted him to give a hard percentage of staff members the high school needs to function; she didn’t want to set a precedent of “arbitrarily” switching to remote school. It’s not that simple, he patiently explained. Some of our staff members are the only ones who are legally allowed to care for their special needs students because their jobs require such specific licenses and qualifications.*
Eventually, in the wee hours of the night, the board voted to move the high school into distance learning from January 13th to the 21st and to put the rest of the district under a temporary mask mandate to try to get Covid cases under control. Teachers received these details in an impromptu faculty meeting the next morning. We had students in-person that one day before not seeing them for a week and a half. We then had one non-student day to prepare to begin teaching remotely.+ Long story short: It wasn’t pretty, and by the time I saw my students again, many of them were so far behind that it took the rest of the trimester (another six weeks) to get them caught up. So yes, Ms. Jacques, of course school closures have negative effects. But you’re only telling half the story.
What if school leadership had listened to me, the other teachers who spoke at school board meetings, and the countless others who reached out to their supervisors, union representatives, and school board members individually? What if they hadn’t looked away uncomfortably when I started to choke up talking about trying to protect my unvaccinated children and also do my job? What if they had assumed that those of us who are in the trenches every day actually know what they’re talking about and have students’ best interests at heart? What if uninformed people who look at schools from the outside and judge teachers so incredibly harshly–journalists included–did the same? What if anyone who says education matters–whether they have school-age children or not–would prioritize children staying in school over their own personal whims and convenience? Does Jacques do that, or is she simply an armchair quarterback who declines to make any actual sacrifices despite her supposed concern for the future of this generation of school children?
And what if people like Jacques tried harder to understand where unions are coming from and what they’re trying to accomplish? I wasn’t a member of the American Federation of Teachers of which Randi Weingarten is president; I wish my union had done as much to try to protect me and other teachers who felt unsafe. There’s a good chance that if they or the people in positions of power had, I wouldn’t have left teaching. (You want to talk about an epidemic? The stats on the spike in teacher dissatisfaction and attrition should terrify everyone who cares about the institution of public education.)
If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m not just a former teacher, I’m also a parent. My oldest is in pre-k through our school district and set to start kindergarten in the fall. I don’t want schools to close if it’s not absolutely necessary. And I DO something about that. Our whole family wears masks when any of us is sick, and any time we’re in crowded public spaces since respiratory disease is spiking again. My five-year-old wears a mask to school every day, and he stays home if we know he’s sick. How many parents and people without kids are being this responsible? I’d venture to say it’s a pretty low number, based anecdotally on my trip to the Mall of America a few days ago. I saw hardly anyone else wearing masks, and it was as busy as you’d expect on a Saturday close to the holidays. Even though my family is careful, this still makes me nervous for my own children, especially in light of the email I received from our pediatrician recently saying they had no available appointments and that parents with very sick children should take them to urgent care.
Jacques said of Dr. Fauci’s admission that school closures might still be a possibility in some districts, “I think I heard the collective gasp from parents–and students–who are still reeling from the consequences of school closures during the pandemic.” Personally, I wish she would not presume to speak for me and other parents. Those of us with school-age children are dealing with "the viral load of disease in [our] region" on a daily basis. We’re the ones who are up with them at night when they’ve coughed themselves awake or can’t breathe through their noses (those “sniffles” Jacques so cutely refers to) and, all too often, waiting hours in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms trying to get help for them. Any parent who is truly shocked by Fauci’s statement of the obvious is as deluded as Jacques.
The obvious truth is that just as before, we could have much lower case numbers if more people would practice day-to-day precautions. Then maybe we wouldn’t even need to discuss the possibility of closing schools again. So, to echo Jacques’s question: “Didn't we learn anything the past three years?” It seems not, but for largely different reasons than she posits.
Footnotes:
*We had already received an update/clarification from our union chapter president back in October stating, “the sub shortage [...] is a nationwide problem that doesn't seem to have a near term solution. Secondary teachers will likely continue to be asked almost every day to cover a class during your prep [which is the student-free time teachers are allotted to lesson-plan; grade and give student feedback; communicate with individual students, parents, guidance counselors, special ed teachers, and administrators about concerns; collaborate with colleagues; complete professional development and evaluations; and all the other duties behind-the-scenes work educators do when their classrooms are supposedly empty]. The position of the WEA is that this is still a viable VOLUNTEER opportunity for teachers who want to take it. [...] You SHOULD be paid for any additional duties you pick up during your prep time, whether those are for a teacher or for a para. The [union] does have a position on teachers being asked to double up if no sub is found for a specific hour. This is not a viable option. There is no way to effectively teach 60+ kids a lesson so rather than just one class missing an hour of instruction now there are two. If you are teaching during that period and asked to take on an uncovered class, you can and should say no to that request.” Hopefully this also makes it a little clearer why teacher unions are necessary, for those who question their purposes and motives.
+To give you an idea what this entails, at least for high school English teachers: one lesson often takes hours to write. Not only does the teacher have to plan out how she and her students will spend the class period, she also has to create and gather materials like visual aids (think Google Slide decks), student activities (graphic organizers, guided notes, educational games, etc.), and any other pertinent texts (a novel, article, short story, poem, etc.). Now consider the fact that most English teacher teach two, three, sometimes four or five different classes (e.g. English 9, Pre-AP English 9, and Speech), and you’re talking about roughly 18 lessons that teachers have to either update all in one day or spend time updating as they also teach students remotely (which, let me tell you, involves a LOT of emailing and Zooming with students and parents individually, on top of teaching synchronous group classes).
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