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Significant
progress is being made in promoting the vaccinations of teachers
after the pushback of local, state, and national teacher union
leaders and rank-and-file teachers in recent weeks. In addition, the
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Dr. Fauci have changed their
original guidelines and recommendations to accommodate teacher
demands.
Current
data reveal that only 4 percent of America’s schoolchildren
live in counties where COVID-19 transmissions are low enough for
full-time in-person learning, which supports the ongoing teacher
advocacy for vaccinations prior to returning full-time to their
classrooms. President Biden is also joining this effort by
reaffirming his commitment to having every teacher and school staff
member receive at least one of the Pfizer or Moderna shots or the
single-dose Johnson & Johnson injection by March 31st and enough
inoculations for all adults by May 30th.
This
change in educational policy has come about because of the organized
efforts of teachers and other essential workers in K-12 education. It
is imperative that all school personnel - paraprofessionals, general
aides, custodians, secretaries, security guards, bus drivers, food
service workers, and nurses, teachers, counselors, administrative
staff, etc. - have access to the vaccines, personal protective
equipment (PPE), updated ventilation systems, and high-quality
disinfectants.
The
former group has the most frequent interaction with students in
poverty-stricken schools, frequently serving as parent substitutes
and mentors. These education support professionals (ESPs) are
immediate and/or extended family members and neighbors of the pupils
they serve. Thus, it is necessary that they have health protections
via the vaccine as dangerous and deadly variants of COVID-19 are
quickly evolving.
But
even as these vaccinations are being made available, we must be
mindful not to take our eyes off the larger anti-democratic forces
swirling across the nation in tandem with the school reopening
debates. Approximately 253 voter suppression initiatives targeting
people of color are being pushed through legislatures in over 40
states.
They
include more restrictive Voter ID laws, limiting or eliminating
Sunday voting (specifically aimed at ‘Souls to the Polls,’
a popular Black voter turnout strategy after church services),
erecting stringent barriers to voter registration, and new laws
allowing for aggressive purging of voter rolls in areas where voters
of color are increasing. These Jim Crow policies of yesteryear are
re-emerging with a racist vengeance.
They
coupled these proposals with the attempts to reduce and/or redirect
funding for public education, in urban areas, to for-profit charter
school chains and voucher schools. Betsy DeVos, Trump’s
Education Secretary, was masterful in sending money appropriated in
the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act)
for K-12 public education to her corporate- and religious-sector
friends for their private schools. She disbursed tens of millions of
dollars to them before the public was widely aware of it, and always
looked for ways to undermine funding for public education.
This
proliferating privatization and class segregation of the public
sector reflects the pressure on urban school districts to reopen
while the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage in the same counties
and cities where students of color predominate, where they and their
teachers are at the highest risk of COVID-19 infections, and where
their schools remain bereft of the fiscal resources necessary to
respond effectively to the coronavirus pandemic.
Their
middle-class, mostly White counterparts, parents and community
leaders, press for in-person instruction as they have the financial
and political support, along with modern facilities, to weather the
continuing virus epidemic, and they are using their poor colleagues
of color as battering rams to achieve their personal educational
objectives.
Republicans
(mostly White), who share this aim as individuals and as a party,
accept the fact that their numbers will not increase as a percentage
of the U.S. population going forward, and the only way for them to
keep power is to disenfranchise as many Democratic or likely
Democratic voters as possible.
Since
60 to nearly 90 percent of Asian American and Pacific Islanders
(AAPIs), Latinx Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans
voted for Democrats in 2020, this endeavor is essential for
Republicans to hold on to political power. They are using any
subterfuge at their disposal to render this fast-changing demographic
trend irrelevant.
The
reopening schools controversy is another tactic to create chaos in
the public education sector by presenting teachers in a negative
light and distracting the larger public from other issues at hand. We
must keep our eyes focused like laser beams on the complexities
surrounding all matters on the Republicans' political agenda.
A
connection exists. Last Tuesday’s argument against Section 2 of
the 1965 Voting Rights Act, regarding voting restrictions in Arizona,
is the most recent example of Republicans’ assault on the
rights of people of color. This case emanated from Biden’s win
of Arizona in the 2020 election, the first time a Democrat had
prevailed since 1996.
Republicans
are hell-bent on establishing an autocratic system of control of
every facet of American society - education, the economy, the
electoral system, and a feudal system of essential workers of all
kinds. Our institutions in every sphere of public life are teetering
on the brink of collapse as shown by the attempted coup on January 6,
2021.
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