ATLANTA – President Donald Trump’s new administration rules that say teachers are “critical infrastructure workers” can simply give the green tone to exempt teachers from quarantine needs after being exposed to COVID-19 and sending them back to class.
Keeping teachers symptom-free in the classroom, as a handful of school districts in Tennessee and Georgia have already said, increases the threat of respiratory illness spreading to academics and colleagues. days into an outbreak, which can stretch a district’s ability to continue to provide in-person commands.
South Carolina fitness officials also describe teachers as critical infrastructure workers, although it is unclear whether a district asks teachers to return for 14 days.
Greene County in eastern Tennessee, one of the first districts to designate instructors as critical infrastructure workers, where the school board awarded the appointment of instructor on July 13.
“It means that if we are exposed and we know we can be positive, we still have to get to school and we can be porters and spreaders at this point,” said Hillary Buckner, who teaches Spanish at Chuckey-Doak High School in Afton.
Buckner, secretary of the county-level branch of the National Education Association, said it is unethical for teachers to threaten infected students.Lately, only pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students take face-to-face categories in Greene County, which has 7,500 students, two days a week for two hours, and part of the day.Teachers are giving orders to others online from their classrooms, Buckner said, though he said the local school board could soon require a broader statement face-to-face.
Associated Press data show that coronavirus spreads faster according to the capita in Georgia than in any other state, while Tennessee has the seventh fastest spread.Gordon Central High School in the northwestern Georgia town of Calhoun switched to online education on Wednesday, resulting in a large number of quarantined teachers.
At least five other Tennessee school districts have granted the designation to their teachers to exempt them from quarantine orders.Gov. Bill Lee declared Tuesday the decision, and his administration said he would settle for the appointment, and mentioned cybersecurity.
The firm on Tuesday published its fourth edition of who counts as a critical infrastructure worker, saying for the first time that teachers will be on the list along with nurses, police officers and meat packers, who could possibly continue to operate after exposure to COVID.-19 “as long as they remain asymptomatic and more precautions are taken to protect them and the community,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
“The resolution belongs to the district,” Republican Lee said at a news convention on Tuesday.”If you make this resolution, we have recommended that you adhere if you decide on this critical infrastructure designation.”
In Georgia, Forsyth County, a suburb of Atlanta, has also designated teachers as critical infrastructure workers. Spokeswoman Jennifer Caracciolo said that means they can be told to go back to classrooms, but said the district of 50,000 scholars would do so on a case-by-case basis.
A spokesman for Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said his administration is evaluating whether it needs to incorporate federal rules into Georgia’s legal framework, which could get more districts to act.
“We asked some superintendents where the administration is on this issue,” said Candice Broce, a spokeswoman for Republican Kemp. “We are in application mode.”
A Kemp attorney wrote an email Wednesday informing the Floyd County district of Georgia that teachers remain subject to quarantine orders until Kemp or fitness officials incorporate the federal guidelines. Floyd County said Thursday it would revoke its teacher designation as critical infrastructure workers.
Critics in Georgia say the designation would forget about the new fitness rules issued to schools that exposed teachers will have to be quarantined for 14 days, even if they go through a negative test.
Craig Harper, director of the Georgia Professional Association of Educators, a non-unionized association, said it would be “reckless and categorically contradicts the Georgia Department of Public Health’s latest rules for the fitness of academics and educators and curb the spread of the virus.”
Teacher unions and national school administrators teams were unable to cite examples in other states on Wednesday.
NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia said in a statement that the appointment “has no legal merit and is more of a rhetorical gamble to give President Trump and governors who forget the recommendation and recommendation of public fitness experts an excuse to force educators to enter harmful schools.””
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten expressed similar sentiments and said that “the Trump administration will seek to replace regulations to threaten, intimidate, and coerce.”
“If the president really thought of us as indispensable, he would act like this,” Weingarten said in a statement.”Teachers are and have been a must-have staff, but not enough, apparently, for Trump’s leadership.to devote the mandatory resources to ensure their protection in the classroom.”