SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio — In a letter to parents and administration, the Shaker Heights Teachers' Association has recommended that the upcoming school year be done remotely to mitigate the risks associated with sending students back to school amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The association recommended that students continue remote learning until at least January 2021. The recommendation was posted on the assocation's Facebook page.
"We got to a tipping point this month that we had to say what we believe was on a lot of our members and families' minds," said SHTA President John Morris. "We don’t know enough about the virus. We don’t have enough assurances about safety protocols. The numbers are rising. How can we go to the largest congregate setting really in the county which is our schools and say that we’re going to open safely face-to-face?"
Morris has taught English at Shaker Heights High School for 23 years and for the first time, he says he doesn't feel safe going back to his classroom. Not to mention, he's also a parent of two Shaker Heights students.
"I just can’t say to my high school senior that you were going to be safe going back to a school with 800 kids without testing, tracing, or really strict PPE."
A portion of the district's proposed plan, notes a hybrid option could be considered depending on the status of the state's color-coded county alert system. Under that option, that means kindergarten through fourth-grade students would be allowed inside classrooms with an assigned homeroom teacher. Fifth through eighth graders would alternate weeks and grades 9 through 12 would go to school three days a week for four hours at a time on a rotating basis.
"There’s nothing then I want more my colleagues want more is to return in August with a cup of coffee in front of a room of 24 kids, but we can't do that at the cost of their health," Morris said.
Sebastien Glinzler, a father of four, says he isn't sure what he thinks about the district's reopening plan.
"They’re definitely not getting quite as good quality education as they had been prior to COVID-19," he said. "Whether it’s safe or not that’s not for me to decide. What I would like to see honestly is the kids to go back to school, but I definitely don’t want to put them in any type of harm's way."
Mei Zhang has a three-year-old son who was accepted into Shaker Heights pre-school program. She says her son needs interaction with other kids.
"We just have one kid so he feels lonely and he’s starting to watch TV all day because we have to work. We have lots of zoom meetings," she said. "He’s becoming a YouTube zombie now, you know? I said we can’t do this anymore. He needs to get an education he needs to be with people with other kids. I think that’s important."
Zhnag also fears the challenges her family could face if schools remain closed.
"For us, it will be very hard if schools were not reopened because we work full-time."
SHTA executive board members made the following recommendations:
- We continue to see the spread of COVID-19 at the local county, state and national levels rise at an alarming rate.
- Although we appreciate the district's diligence, and specifically the work of the Re-Opening Committee, in making the school environment as safe as possible, there remain too many unknowns about the spread and impact of the virus.
- The district is not mandating, nor can it afford, testing for either students or staff when they return to the buildings, meaning that we do not know who does and does not have COVID-19. Likewise, only self-screening will be utilized for both students and staff. We fine these precautionary measures insufficient.
- We will begin entering flu season at the end of October. Student and teacher self-screening feature nearly identical symptoms for flu and COVID-19. This will reduce our class and teacher sizes dramatically during the late fall and early winter as students and teachers rightfully opt to stay home.
- The inability at the elementary level to maintain 6-feet distance between students and teachers due to class size demands is problematic given what we do not know about the spread of the virus to and from younger children and older adults.
- There is insufficient time, especially within the elementary schedule, for sufficient deep cleaning of learning spaces.
- Should we start in January, we will have missed the worst onset of flu and will have established online learning as the norm, making hybridized classes and a virtual academy manageable and of high quality.
In response to the group's recommendations, a spokesperson for the school district sent the following statement:
“We appreciate the recommendation from the Shaker Heights Teacher Association. It is part of the continuing and constructive dialogue we’ve had with our teachers and other employee groups. As a district, we’ll be making a decision on this issue by the first week of August if not sooner.”
RELATED: Local districts formulate COVID-19 fall school reopening plans
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