Consider This from NPR - Amid Covid Surge, Students And Teachers Want To Be Heard

Episode Date: January 22, 2022

In Florida and Virginia, Governors Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin are bolstering the right of parents to defy school mask mandates. While some parents are celebrating, others are filing lawsuits opposing the policies that make mask-wearing in schools optional.There are a lot of opinions about how schools should be run during the pandemic, but some key voices are often missing from the conversation – students and teachers. Over the last few weeks, amid a nationwide surge of coronavirus cases, students across the country have staged walkouts to emphasize various COVID mitigation measures they would like to see implemented. We'll hear from some of those students. And we'll speak to a teacher in Arizona who understands how difficult it is, as a parent, community member and school staffer, to find the right balance between physical health, mental health and educational priorities.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Good afternoon, everybody. Well, it's day one. Virginia got a new governor last week, Republican Glenn Youngkin, and he got right to work. I'm going to sign 11 executive actions, nine executive orders and two executive directives. One of those executive orders essentially overrides the authority of Virginia school districts when it comes to one key tool to control the COVID pandemic. As we battle COVID, it's parents that should decide the health measures taken for their children. That's why I signed an executive order that allows parents to opt out of mask mandates in schools. This is a matter of individual liberty. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis, also a Republican, signed a similar bill in November.

I don't know why the masks have politics around it. Let the parents make the decision that's best for their kids. If you want the masks, do it. If you don't, don't. That's fine. While some parents see this as a win for their children. They need to see their teachers' mouths move. They need to see their classmates' mouths move. Other parents see this very differently. In both states, parents have filed lawsuits opposing these policies that essentially make wearing masks optional. But in this debate over individual liberty and how much safe parents should have on COVID measures in schools, there are a few key voices being left out of the conversation. The parents who are generally complaining are not in the schools. We are. Every day we see this. We are the ones experiencing this. Whereas the parents only hear it secondhand, maybe thirdhand. Consider this. There are a lot of opinions about how school should be run during the pandemic.

But what about the people who actually have to show up in the classroom? What's it actually like in the hallways, the cafeterias, and classrooms for the students and teachers trying to protect their own health and their education and livelihoods? That's coming up. From NPR, I'm Michelle Martin. It's Saturday, January 22nd. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally,

and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. A familiar scenario is playing out in schools across the country, due in no small part to the latest COVID variant, Omicron. Researchers said it would be highly contagious, and they were right. And that scenario sounds like this.

Classes start up again after winter break. They meet in person. There's a rise in infections among students and staff. Then come the student absences and staff shortages. Meanwhile, school administrators are weighing whether closing schools to in-person learning hurts some students more than others. Those who depend on school for a warm meal, for example, or who don't have adequate access to the internet at home, or who have learning differences that make it hard to focus. It all plays into a familiar, often fierce, and sometimes ugly debate about what COVID protocols are necessary to ensure the safety of students, teachers, and staff. Over the past few weeks, students have started weighing in by walking out.

We are crossing into the schools, shoulder to shoulder, every day. We're here without proper ventilation. We're here with no social distancing in our classrooms. Students across the country are staging walkouts to draw attention to what they are seeing and experiencing in their classrooms. Haven Coleman is one of those students. She's a sophomore at Thomas Jefferson High School

in Denver, Colorado. Our goal has been trying to make in-person as safe as it can for everyone because everyone deserves to have the access to a good education. One of the arguments for keeping schools open is that in-person instruction is usually better. But Eliana Smith, a senior at Cedar Ridge High School in Round Rock, Texas, says that with so many school staff affected by COVID right now, this just isn't true in many classrooms. When a teacher's out for two weeks, we're just spending two weeks doing busy work, doing worksheets on our computers, not learning at all. And obviously that's not their fault, but we're not learning in our classes.

Haven Coleman is seeing these absences in her school in Colorado. Currently, we have so many teachers that are missing because of COVID, as well as students. I know at our school, we had 40 to 30 percent of our students at our school missing the first two weeks back from the semester. In light of these troubling absences, Eliana, Haven, and many of their peers walked out of school this week over a list of strikingly similar demands. Both want high-quality masks like N95s to be provided to every student. They want routine testing, better social distancing measures in the hallways, and access to outdoor spaces during lunchtime. In other words, they want to feel like their school districts are doing everything they can to protect their communities against the virus while providing a sound education.

But like everything having to do with the pandemic, there is no consensus among students over the best way to do that. Student protesters also come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and they're responding to different COVID protocols in different ways. In Montgomery County, Maryland, sophomore Daniel Pallacchi and his classmates staged a walkout on Friday to press their demands. We're trying to push MCPS to get us into virtual learning for about two weeks. The Montgomery County public school system has been moving to virtual learning if schools report positive COVID cases in more than five percent of unrelated students and staff members over a two-week period. But the policy has some loopholes,

and Daniel believes his school is over that 5% threshold. He says he doesn't feel safe. Ian McNeely attends a different high school in Montgomery County, but has the same concerns. They're not particularly transparent about what's going on, and that's been an issue raised not just by us, but by, I think, the administrators union and the teachers union as well. Ian and his classmates at Northwest High School in Germantown, Maryland, also want to return to remote learning, at least temporarily. We agree that virtual learning is not ideal. You know, grades go down, mental health is impacted.

But really, it's the only option when the alternative is the virus. For me personally, and I can really only talk about my own perspective, I am not doing so well. And I can tie that directly to the COVID situation. Physical as well as mental health, child care for faculty and staff, educational benchmarks, meal support, Internet access, transportation.

School administrators have a lot to consider when deciding how to best educate and protect students during the pandemic, all while navigating the external pressures of parents and local governments. I spoke to someone who understands how messy this all is. That's Diane Lundholm. She is a veteran teacher, and she's also a parent of two high school students. They're all just trying to get through the year. I am surviving like everyone else, showing up. Lundhall teaches Spanish in Chandler, Arizona, at Hamilton High School. In Arizona, around 58 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. That's lower than the national

vaccination rate. Not to mention her school has an optional masking policy. So I asked her how this latest COVID surge is affecting how her school is operating this semester. Unfortunately, there have not been many changes in the way the school is operating, and we're seeing more absences among students. We're also seeing a severe shortage of teachers that are showing up. I was one of them myself. I tested positive on the 5th of January and school started for us on the 4th. So I didn't present the entire first week of school and two days out of the second week of school I didn't see my students either. How are you feeling by the way you just kind of dropped that little bomb in there that yeah you yourself got COVID how are you doing? I'm tired that that

post-COVID fatigue is real but other than that I'm doing well thanks for asking. So I understand the school has it remains open for in-person learning. And I understand that your school has an optional masking policy. Do most staff and students wear masks or not? No, I would say not most. And it's kind of shocking to me, especially returning, that more are not wearing masks in reaction to the surge. You know, we like to think that parents and schools and students are generally on the same page about things that affect kids. But this seems to be a situation where people are not all on the same page. And so I just wanted to ask, because you're a parent.

Yes. Your kids attend the school. Correct. And you're a teacher. And so I want to ask you, because you embody all of these identities in your household, are teachers generally of accord here about whether they would like to be in person or teaching virtually? What is your sense of that? I think there's a general consensus that our students do better in the classroom. I don't think anybody would argue that, but the logic should be that we need to try and contain this

so that we can teach longer in person for the remainder of the school year. What about as a parent? I can tell you as a parent that I like having my children in school. You know, it's their senior year, but I'm never going to put the social importance of going to school and seeing their friends ahead of the health of a community, right? I really think it's really important to look at the effect that it has on the community versus just my individual child. And I'm going to stress the longest we ever went virtual was only for a quarter here,

which is about 10 weeks. And so again, as a parent, we want them to be in person because we believe it's better for them socially, but also because better teaching is taking place. Or we feel that if they're kept at home, let's say when they're quarantined or sick and other students are there in person, we don't want to put our students in a situation where they're going to fall behind in comparison to another student. What we're really seeing, the reality of having everybody come back in person is that that quality of education, it's just not a reality. Because we have so many teachers that are out absent currently,

and we don't have the substitutes necessary to be manning those classrooms, a lot of students are really just sitting in classrooms right now without real teaching taking place because that teacher isn't there. Or teachers that are there present are so stressed right now covering for their peers and giving up their prep periods. We're kind of in crisis mode ourselves and you're spread so thin and the stress from being in this environment also affects the quality of your teaching and the quality of your planning. And when we're in a situation like we are right now, we're in a surge that's sending us into crisis mode, nobody can be at their best. The teachers aren't at their best, administration's not at their best, students aren't at their best, they're stressed out because

they see the same thing. You know, my students live that this week, and my daughters, who are seniors at the high school, are also experiencing it in their other classes, you know, when their teachers aren't able to be there or their teachers don't have the time to prepare correctly because we're being spread so thin. That sounds really, really frustrating. It's discouraging, and we're seeing the effects of it with many teachers going in for retirement earlier than they were planning or just questioning how much longer they can do this. It's been very difficult. I really, really honestly believe that this second year of COVID has been much more difficult than last year.

And I've seen many, many more teachers just continuing with that mantra, like, how much longer can I do this? It's deep breathing and going back in. Do you feel like it's a safe environment for your kids and for you? I do not. I do not feel safe going in there. And the reason, again, I don't feel safe is because a lot of the mitigation measures are optional. And when you have optional mitigation measures that not everybody's on the same page about, then you really end up with no mitigation measures. These mitigation measures should be layered. We're talking about social distancing, masking.

We're talking about the vaccinations. You know, without layered mitigation, there is no true mitigation. And because of that, I don't feel safe. That was Diane Lundholm. She teaches Spanish at Hamilton High School in Chandler, Arizona. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Michelle Martin.