Such a bunch of ... bull
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The state begins the arduous job this week of vaccinating 99,000 teachers and school workers against COVID-19, opening the door for students to return to the classroom — but whether and when they will return remain open questions.
About half of the state’s school districts don’t currently offer full-time, in-person learning, so districts will need to be able to first change their learning models. But they will also have to convince wary parents and students that being in school in person every day is safe — and that students won’t bring COVID-19 home to parents, especially those who work in front-line jobs or have pre-existing conditions.
These two factors — family hesitancy and districts not offering a full return to in-person learning — are currently keeping 95 percent of students out of school full-time.
“We know that obviously kids do best in school,” said Karlyn Fitzpatrick, a high school social studies teacher in Waterbury. “We want our kids in school, but we’ve always asked for it to be done safely, and we have been waiting for vaccinations to really feel fully secure. And so I think that especially with our encouragement to the kids that we feel safe, and that we are fully ready for them to come back and be in person, I think we’ll get a lot more kids coming in person with their teacher saying to them, ‘I feel safe, you should feel safe. At this point, it’s time to come back.'”
But while educators like Fitzpatrick might feel more secure, others believe a full return might not occur until a greater percentage of the population is vaccinated.
“For communities like mine, if we do not vaccinate essential workers, we can’t send kids back to school,” said Rep. Antonio Filipe, a Democrat from Bridgeport. “Those are their parents. Those are their aunts that live with them, those are their grandparents that live with them, their brothers, their sisters. So until we vaccinate essential workers, we can’t safely send our urban kids back to school, because they won’t have somebody to go back home to, and they’ll just be spreading it among themselves, even though their teachers are already vaccinated.”
That’s right, it’s those pesky parents and scaredy cat students holding out for another year of school closures, not the noble members of the educational caste. This might have been a more inclusive article had it included interviews with ordinary parents instead of restricting itself to union flacks. But then, the storyline might have had to be adjusted.
