The National Education Association has endorsed Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination for president.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Joe Biden continued to consolidate support in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination today when he won the endorsement of the National Education Assn., the country’s largest labor union. With 3 million members, the union’s announcement will probably accelerate Biden’s effort to cement his standing as the Democratic front-runner.
The Washington Post published this cautionary story by Carolyn Y. Johnson and William Wan about the rules for dealing with a public health crisis. Above all: Be honest. Level with the public. Let the experts lead. Have a consistent message to develop public trust. Trump has broken all the rules.
Amid an outbreak where vaccines, drug treatments and even sufficient testing don’t yet exist, communication that is delivered early, accurately and credibly is the strongest medicine in the government’s arsenal.
But the Trump administration’s zigzagging, defensive, inconsistent messages about the novel coronavirus continued Friday, breaking almost every rule in the book and eroding the most powerful weapon officials possess: Public trust.
After disastrous communications during the 2001 anthrax attacks — when white powder in envelopes sparked widespread panic — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention created a 450-page manual outlining how U.S. leaders should talk to the public during crises.
Protecting vulnerable people from a virus that, according to some projections, could infect millions and kill hundreds of thousands, depends on U.S. leaders issuing clear public health instructions and the public’s trust to follow directions that could save their lives.
“Sometimes it seems like they have literally thrown out the book,” said Joshua Sharfstein, a former top FDA official and Johns Hopkins University professor who is using the CDC manual to teach a crisis communication class. “We’re studying what to do — and at times seeing what not to do — on the same day.”
Two weeks ago, Trump said the country would soon have zero cases. This week, there were more than 2,200 and 49 deaths. When asked at a news conference Friday why he disbanded the White House’s pandemic office, Trump denied doing so, saying, “I didn’t do it … I don’t know anything about it.” When asked if he bore any responsibility for disastrous delays in testing, Trump said no, blaming instead “circumstances” and “regulations” created by others. When asked if Americans should believe Trump or his top health official, Anthony S. Fauci — whom Trump has contradicted repeatedly — Trump sidestepped the question.
“For those of us in this field, this is profoundly and deeply distressing,” said Matthew Seeger, a risk communication expert at Wayne State University who developed the CDC guidebook alongside many top doctors, public health researchers, scientists, consultants and behavioral psychologists.
“It’s creating higher levels of anxiety, higher levels of uncertainty and higher levels of social disruption. … We spent decades training people and investing in developing this competency. We know how to do this.”
For three years, the Trump administration has often taken a hostile stance to science and its practitioners, but health crisis experts say it’s not too late and the fruits of their research — like the CDC’s 450-page manual — are waiting, untapped, to serve as a road map to help leaders navigate the growing pandemic.
The fundamental principles behind good public health communication are almost stunningly simple: Be consistent. Be accurate. Don’t withhold vital information, the CDC manual says. And above all, don’t let anyone onto the podium without the preparation, knowledge and discipline to deliver vital health messages.
Experts say that means not having multiple messengers jockeying for attention with completely different information. It means not overly reassuring people in the face of a threat that is likely to sicken many and kill some. It also means expressing empathy while also delivering information that may be scary. Tell people what they can and should do at an individual level to help those who are at greatest risk.
“It’s in the nature of leaders sometimes to want to tell everybody we have everything under control,” said Michael Palenchar, a crisis communications expert at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. “We know overwhelmingly that research suggests that’s detrimental to health and safety.”
Palenchar was one of more than 180 who contributed to the CDC manual, including experts from the CDC, American Red Cross, FBI and EPA as well as federal and state health departments.
They compiled a list of pitfalls to avoid — a list that has begun to look a lot like the administration’s playbook.
Nearly every day since the coronavirus landed in America, the White House has issued “mixed and conflicting messages from multiple sources,” the first guideline in the manual’s list of potentially harmful practices. “Overly reassuring and unrealistic communication” has come from the highest levels of government. The “perception that certain groups are gaining preferential treatment” has become a problem with health care workers complaining they can’t get tested while two asymptomatic Trump allies in Congress, Celine Dion and the members of the Utah Jazz basketball team were able to access tests.
Crucial messaging also appears to be failing to reach or convince many in America. Nearly 50 million in the country are 65 or older — the most vulnerable age group for severe symptoms and death. But many are shrugging off pleas for them to practice social distancing. At The Villages, a sprawling Florida retirement community, many seniors said the crisis is being overblown and talked of continuing their normal lives.
The CDC manual devotes an entire chapter to “choosing the right spokesperson,” someone who gives the government and its message “a human form.” But the government’s leading health experts have had to repeatedly cede the microphone to politicians — with the nation’s top health officials repeatedly canceling news conferences to make room for Vice President Pence or Trump or to avoid upstaging other White House announcements.
Last week, instead of holding CDC’s news conference focused on coronavirus, Trump toured the CDC in front of cameras, telling the public, “Anybody right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. And the tests are beautiful.” This Friday, CDC’s press call was canceled again so that Trump could hold his Rose Garden news conference.
In recent days, rather than having one voice, the spokesperson role has ping ponged among Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Fauci and Trump. Trump in particular checks off many of attributes the manual specifically warns against. The spokesperson must be “familiar with the subject matter” and have the “ability to talk about it clearly and with confidence.”
Since taking office, Trump has ousted scientists, muzzled researchers and suppressed basic information on climate change. Public health officials worry that his erosion of public trust of science, coupled with the ongoing conflicting messaging between experts and politicians, is making it unclear whom the public should listen to.
“I’m fearful we’ve continued to undermine our belief that subject matter experts are people we should listen to,” said Seeger, the Wayne State professor. “We’ve done a good job over the last couple decades of undermining science and telling people scientists aren’t to be believed.”
Class in Session
All semester long, Johns Hopkins professor Sharfstein has been drilling the principles of the CDC manual into the class he teaches at Johns Hopkins. On Thursday, as the White house issued more contradictory statements, his students — a mix of undergrad and graduate students — debated the Trump administration’s response, which has served as a real-time master class for what not to do in a crisis.
They compared it to historical blunders in health communications: the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, when officials gave overly optimistic timetables on vaccines, and bungled messaging by British leaders on mad cow disease in the 1990s, which led to millions in economic damage to the country’s beef industry.
Similarly, several students noted, the messaging disasters in recent weeks have muddled and overshadowed lifesaving health advice to the public.
Many of his students were especially puzzled by the Trump administration’s reluctance to admit fault on its dire problems in testing for the coronavirus.
“They have so much less credibility because of that,” said one student, noting how questions of what went wrong keep dominating congressional hearings and news conferences — making it hard to get instructions to the public on how to prepare and suppress the spreading virus.
Another empathized with Trump officials: “It’s a fine line between apologizing and putting yourself out there for attacks.”
Sharfstein — who served as Maryland’s health secretary and a top FDA official in the Obama administration — asked his students whether they thought the Trump administration would be willing to make a partial admission: “Obviously something has gone wrong. There will be time to assess what went wrong, but right now here’s what I’m focused on to fix the problem.”
Students began workshopping what the White House could do to right the ship:
— Tell Americans, “We made mistakes. Here’s how we’re going to fix them.”
— Stop pretending testing is fine. Explain what solutions are underway
— One student simply cited the cover of the CDC manual: “Be first. Be right. Be credible.”
I earlier quoted a story in the New York Times that said the CDC recommended that schools should close for eight weeks.
The story said:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised schools on Friday that closings for at least eight weeks might be the most effective way to contain the coronavirus. The Education Department released school districts from a slew of testing and accountability measures required by federal law.
This is accurate. The “most effective way” might be a closure of at least eight weeks.
But the CDC guidance also says that the length of closure depends on the circumstances in the community and the schools.
This is the actual guidance from the CDC.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/guidance-for-schools.html
Read the guidance with care.
Steve Hinnefeld reports that Indiana’s education leadership is showing real leadership by seeking to cancel the state tests. The time to do so is now, because children and families are under stress, and schools will be closed for an undetermined number of weeks. The last thing children should have to worry about is being tested the minute they return, if school re-opens this spring.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick and the Indiana Department of Education are calling for standardized tests to be canceled in response to the COVID-19 outbreak that is closing schools across the state. It’s not an easy call, but it’s the right one.
The department asked Friday for schools to be excused from state and federal requirements for standardized assessments for the 2019-20 school year. The requests go to Gov. Eric Holcomb and to the U.S. Department of Education.
The department also said it would postpone the third-grade reading exam IREAD-3, scheduled to start next week, and suspend 10th-grade ISTEP testing. ILEARN exams for grades 3-8 will be delayed if not canceled.
Under normal circumstances, I’d argue the assessments provide useful information for schools, parents and policymakers. But these aren’t normal times. Schools are closing for at least two or three weeks to help slow the spread of the new coronavirus. The disruption may be more serious than we realize.
“With the pressure our schools are already facing navigating the COVID-19 outbreak, the last thing our schools need is the undue burden of preparing and administering statewide assessments,” department spokesman Adam Baker said.
Actually, the tests are useless even in the best of times, because they have no diagnostic value. They are administered in the spring, and the results come back months later, with no guidance about the needs of individual students. This is akin to going to the doctor and being told that he will send you your test results in a few months, and the results will rank you compared to other patients but will not prescribe a course of treatment.
The state tests should be canceled in every state.
Children and families are under enough stress without having the tests hanging over their heads like the Sword of Damocles.
No one knows when school will re-open. Day by day, new closures are announced. It is only a matter of time until schooling is shut down, along with all other social functions in this country. We live in frightening times. Let’s face them with common sense and reason. And above all, protect the children from unnecessary stress and harm.
PLEASE SEE THE CDC GUIDANCE HERE.
Erica Green of the New York Times writes today that the federal government has finally offered directions for schools faced with the global pandemic:
WASHINGTON — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised schools on Friday that closings for at least eight weeks might be the most effective way to contain the coronavirus. The Education Department released school districts from a slew of testing and accountability measures required by federal law.
But schools across the country were far ahead of the Trump administration’s advice. A cascade of public school closings gained speed nationwide on Friday, with the largest school district in California, the Los Angeles Unified School District, announcing it was closing, along with the San Diego Unified School District. They joined other large cities like Washington, Miami and Seattle, and more than a dozen states like Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Oregon, New Mexico and Michigan.
At least 21,000 schools have been closed or are scheduled to close, according to Education Week, affecting at least 15 million students. A majority of closings announced by school districts range from two to six weeks, which the C.D.C. considered “short- to medium-term closures” that would “not impact” the huge wave of infections that are expected in the next few weeks.
Danny Carlson, the associate executive director of policy and advocacy for the National Association of Elementary School Principals, called the timing of the C.D.C. guidance “baffling.”
“Where was this a week ago?” he said.
The C.D.C. conceded that long-term closings could significantly affect academic outcomes for students, economic conditions for struggling families and health conditions for grandparents who care for students.
And while it had data that could help decide when to close schools, the C.D.C. said it did not have data on the right time to reopen them.
On Thursday, the Education Department announced that it would relieve school systems of some of their responsibilities under federal law. It will consider one-year waivers for state-administered tests or requirements that districts test 95 percent of their students. It would also allow waivers for certain measures of a school’s effectiveness ratings, such as chronic absenteeism, as required under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
The department also said schools were not obligated to provide special education while classes were canceled for all students, but they must resume services when they reopen or if they shift classes online.
This interview on KPCC-NPR in Southern California by Larry Mantle was conducted a few days ago.
Mantle made it clear–at least to me–that he favors charter schools, so I was constantly asked to defend my criticism of them. I later learned that Los Angelenos know Mantle as a charter champion. One of the hypothetical questions are posed was “what would be wrong with a district that was half public schools, half charter schools?” Another time, he praised Eli Broad and wondered why I didn’t regard him as a generous philanthropist. You get the drift.
When the callers were put on the air, all of them were charter parents who challenged me.
There were no questions or comments from public school parents.
The parents who called in do not believe that charters divert funding from public schools, where most of the state’s children are. I suggested that they google Gordon Lafer’s study, “The Breaking Point,” which documents the many millions that three California districts lose to charters. I also suggested that California has been underinvesting in its schools for many years and is now below the national average.
I think every parent has the right to make the choice they think is in the best interest of their child, but I think every policymaker is responsible to improve and prioritize the public schools that enroll 85-90% of all American children.
In AIRTALK’s tweet about the show, which appeared pretty quickly on March 11, the show’s tweet says that I consider the 2010s to be “banner years” for public schools. This is ridiculous. Whoever wrote that line obviously did not read the book. The 2010s were a time of budget cuts, teacher shortages, the combined negative effects of NCLB and Race to the Top, VAM, Common Core, and worship of mandated standardized testing. It was a horrible decade for schools, with the only bright spot being the rise of the #Red4Ed movement in 2018. I am assuming that no one at AIRTALK read the book. The topic of conversation was: How dare you dare to question the need for and value of charter schools?
The show takes about 20 minutes. Listen and tell me what you think.
Katherine Stewart is the author of a new book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. This article, which appeared as an opinion piece in the New York Times, is essential reading to understand the Trump-supported effort to eliminate the separation of church and state, to give religious organizations the right to discriminate against those they do not like, and to open government funding to religious groups. The U.S. Supreme Court will rule in a case called Espinoza v. Montana this spring, a crucial case that gives the conservative Court an opportunity to compel public funding of religious schools. It is a curious fact that libertarians like the DeVos family and the Koch family oppose almost every form of government funding (Social Security, Medicare) except for government money for religious schools.
She writes:
Many Americans know by now that when Christian nationalists talk about “religious freedom” they are really asking for the privilege to impose their religion on other people. What Americans may not yet understand is that they are also demanding money from taxpayers to do so.
Long before Donald Trump hitched his political fortunes to the Christian right, previous Republican administrations had primed the pumps that would send public money flowing toward religious organizations.
In 2002, the George W. Bush administration increased the flow of federal money to faith-based organizations providing services on behalf of the government. Mr. Bush himself insisted that these organizations would not be permitted to discriminate. But in fact the new method of faith-based funding invited the risk of discrimination and the erosion of church-state separation.
The Obama administration, responding to these concerns, put in place provisions to ensure that members of the public were not subject to discrimination on the basis of religious belief or unwanted proselytizing. The provisions also required that users of church-sponsored social programs be made aware of nonsectarian options.
The Trump administration is now proposing to eliminate these Obama-era safeguards. And true to form, they did so earlier this year, on the increasingly Orwellian-sounding annual Religious Freedom Day in January.
One purpose of the new proposed regulations is to make sure that organizations receiving taxpayer money are exempt from the kinds of anti-discrimination law by which nonreligious organizations must abide. If that sounds like a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, that’s because it is — or at least it should be.
Under the proposed regulations, faith-based aid organizations that receive public money are free to hire and fire their workers and subcontractors on account of their religion, sexual orientation, or any other behavior or characteristic that the organization finds religiously appealing or objectionable. Aid-providing organizations will no longer have any obligation to let members of the public receiving their services know if there are available nonsectarian options. Organizations that receive their money through vouchers and other forms of indirect aid can now proselytize, require that recipients participate in religious activities or ask that recipients pledge their loyalty to Jesus. And the government itself is no longer required to offer a nonsectarian option for those whose beliefs or conscience make it impossible for them to accept aid on these terms.
“The proposed rules would strip away religious freedom protections from people, often the most vulnerable and marginalized, and even allow faith-based organizations to discriminate in government-funded programs,” Rachel Laser, president and chief executive of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told me. She added that this puts the interests of these organizations “ahead of the needs of the people seeking critical services.”
Why is the Trump administration so determined to tear down the wall of separation between church and state? The long game is clear: because that’s the way you “take back America” and make it a Christian nation.
But the short game is more relevant now. There is a pile of public money on the other side of the wall that separates church and state, and Christian nationalists are determined to grab it (and to hold on to what they have already grabbed).
These kinds of pro-discrimination rules are bound to cause harm. There may be a woman who loses her job at a faith-based service provider because she is “living in sin” with her partner. There may be people seeking counseling services who will forgo the help they need because it is offered only in conservative Christian health care settings and is staffed with Christian-only providers, all of whom claim to be living in conformity with a “Bible lifestyle.”
There will be some minority-religion providers — a Jewish soup kitchen here, a Muslim job-training initiative there — that will defend the new rules and claim to benefit from them. But they will serve, in effect, as strategic cover, lending the appearance of diversity to a movement that ties the idea of America to specific conservative religious and cultural identities.
Legitimizing these forms of discrimination is itself a grotesque violation of whatever it is that we actually mean by religious freedom. But that’s the point, as far as Mr. Trump and his Christian nationalist allies are concerned. The religious rights of the larger American public are collateral damage in a war of conquest aimed squarely at the public coffers.
To grasp the motivation for the Trump administration in promulgating “religious freedom,” it helps to review a little Supreme Court history. In 2017, the Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Mo., brought a case in which the church claimed that it had an equal claim to government grants for purchasing materials to upgrade its playground.
At the time, many commentators raised a concern that the case was really just a device for eliminating Establishment Clause concerns from decisions affecting the public funding of religious institutions and activities. Lawyers from conservative Christian legal organizations, including the Alliance Defending Freedom, argued that refusing to allocate public money to religious institutions amounted to discrimination against religion. This theory, if it takes hold in law, significantly weakens the Establishment Clause. If withholding taxpayer money from religious institutions amounts to discrimination, then the taxpayer has no choice but to fund religion.
Some important things to know about today’s Christian nationalist movement: It doesn’t believe in the First Amendment as we usually understand it and as our founders intended it. It doesn’t believe that the government should make no law respecting an establishment of religion. It also takes a dim view of government assistance — unless the money passes through churches first. Politically connected religious leaders like Ralph Drollinger of Capitol Ministries, whose White House Bible study has been attended by at least 10 current and former members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet, maintains that social welfare programs have no basis in scripture. “The responsibility to meet the needs of the poor lies first with the husband in a marriage, secondly with the family (if the husband is absent), and thirdly with the church,” Mr. Drollinger has written. “Again, nowhere does God command the institutions of government or commerce to fully support those with genuine needs.”
These ideas are shared by David Barton, a historical revisionist who sits on the boards of an array of Christian nationalist legislative and data initiatives, pastoral networks and other influential groups. Mr. Barton has argued that the Bible and God himself oppose progressive income taxes, capital gains taxes and minimum wage laws. “Since sinful man tends to live in bondage, different forms of slavery have replaced the more obvious system of past centuries,” according to an essay posted to Mr. Barton’s WallBuilders website titled “The Bible, Slavery and America’s Founders.” “The state has assumed the role of master for many, providing aid and assistance, and with it more and more control, to those unable to provide for themselves. The only solution to slavery is the liberty of the Gospel.”
While these activists rail against direct government aid to the poor, they are eager to increase the flow of government handouts to churches and religious groups who may then provide the aid themselves, but without adherence to nondiscrimination law. As a further bonus, when the money gets funneled to religious organizations, some of it then can then be pumped back into the right-wing political machine through religious organizations and the policy groups they support, which act as de facto partisan political cells.
In order to understand the game that Christian nationalists are playing, it’s important to remember that the First Amendment has two clauses concerning religion: one that guarantees the freedom to exercise religion and one that prohibits the government from establishing any religion. What the framers understood is that these two come as a pair; they are necessarily connected. We are free to exercise religion precisely because the government refrains from establishing religion.
At present, the Christian nationalist movement has substantial sources of support in the form of access to wealthy donors and robust donor-advised charities. It also has a large base of supporters who make large numbers of small contributions. But leaders of the movement know that their bread will have a lot more butter if it comes from the government. They already receive significant funding indirectly from taxpayers in the form of deductions and exemptions. They are determined to secure these extra funds, and they are immensely fearful of losing them, especially if a pluralistic society decides to do something about the fact that its tax dollars are being used to fund groups that actively promote discrimination against many citizens and support radical political agendas.
In the future, if the Trump administration has its way, the current flow of taxpayer money to religious organizations may well look like the trickle before the flood. Religious nationalists dream of a time when most or all social welfare services pass through the hands of religious entities. They imagine a future in which a young woman seeking advice on reproductive health care will have nowhere to turn but a state-funded, church-operated network of “counseling” centers that will tell her she will go to hell if she doesn’t have the baby.
The discrimination against individuals and the misuse of public money that the Trump administration’s proposed regulations would allow is bad enough. But these are far from the worst consequences of this kind of assault on the separation of church and state. The most profound danger here is to the deep structure of American society and politics.
In 1786, when Thomas Jefferson and James Madison pushed through the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom that Religious Freedom Day commemorates, the issue that motivated them and that brought evangelical Christians at the time over to their side was a detested tax imposed on all Virginians to pay for the church services demanded by the established church. “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical,” Jefferson wrote. “No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.”
It is ironic, then, that the Trump administration’s religious freedom initiative seeks to fund religious organizations with taxpayer money. But what makes this particularly dangerous is that the same money in many cases goes to churches and religious organizations that are increasingly and aggressively asserting themselves in partisan politics, and that happen to support Mr. Trump. As Jefferson and Madison understood, the destruction of the wall that separates church and state corrupts politics just as surely as it corrupts religion.
I will not post any more notices about school closings, because there are so many of them. Every day brings news of another district or city or state that is closing its public schools in response to the coronavirus, in an effort to reduce exposure to the virus. Some of these closures are limited to a few weeks; some are indefinite. In every case, I hope that district officials have given serious thought to supplying meals to children who depend upon them. As reader Chiara pointed out, the closures remind us of how important our schools are in the lives of children–the social interactions, the opportunity to learn, the library, the clubs, the musical groups, the sports, the peer relationships, access to social services, and exchanges with human teachers. Being online just isn’t enough of a substitute for human relationships.
This story appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles school officials on Friday voted to shut down the nation’s second-largest school system effective Monday, citing concerns over the rapid spread of the coronavirus. The district has about 900 campuses serving more than 670,000 children and adult students.
Schools will be closed for two weeks while the situation is evaluated, said L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner. There will be 40 centers where students and families can receive services, including meals, starting on Wednesday.
The “family resource centers” will be open weekdays from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and will offer childcare and hot meals. The district hopes to have a list of locations soon.
Los Angeles district officials said that they will also offer televised and online lessons in an attempt to help families.
School district employees will continue to be paid, even if not directly involved in working with students.
San Diego Unified School District will also shut down on Monday. Neither district said when schools would reopen.
Rev./Dr. Anika Whitfield of Grassroots Arkansas issued this stern complaint against school board member Chad Pekron:
In case any of you reading this post for one minute thinks/thought that Gov. @AsaHutchinson is not working the plan of the billionaire Walton family, the Stephens, Hussman and other millionaires to profit off the backs of African American/Black and Latinx American children and families by destroying the LRSD and public schools in Arkansas, think again.
Atty @ChadPekron was appointed to the AR State Board of Education in July 2019, the same time the State Board of Education should have been preparing the LRSD community for a November 2019 school board election.
***We still don’t have an elected school board five years after the state stole the LRSD from our community.***
What unfolded in his short time as a State Board of Education director/member was a planned distraction. Pekron appeared to be one of the few board members who realized that the LRSD community was being attacked unfairly. But, just when you thought he might have a heart for justice (considering he is an attorney), he was the one, in the end, who pulled out the dagger and bludgeoned the hope for local control to be restored to the LRSD and justice to be realized civilly.
Not sure how this parent of five children can rest any night knowing he has caused so much trauma and destruction in the lives of tens of thousands of children, their families, their educators, and their neighborhoods?
Atty #ChadPekron, would you ever stand for any attorney, Governor or billionaires denying your children, family and community their human rights, Democracy and justice as you participated in so ruthlessly doing to innocent children and families in Little Rock?
Shame on you. SHAME on you!
Local activists who fight to return democratic control refuse to bow to the powerful Walton family, who own the governor and the legislature.
Randi Weingarten writes on behalf of the American Federation of Teachers:
This is a confusing and scary time for many of us.
Since January, in response to the coronavirus, the AFT’s attention has been focused on how to ensure the health and safety of our families and communities, particularly those on the frontline of this crisis. Now, since the World Health Organization has labeled the coronavirus a global pandemic, our attention must be on everything: prevention and precaution, treatment, and the short- and long-term economic impact of COVID-19 on families and communities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautions that the spread of the new coronavirus will get worse in the United States before it gets better. But we’ve seen that the comprehensive response to COVID-19 in both China and South Korea—where they have used widespread testing and quarantines—appears to have stemmed the spread of the virus and is a very good sign.
The difference in the United States is that we are not fighting COVID-19 with all the tools we need because, unlike China and South Korea, the federal government has cut public health infrastructure and does not have enough tests for the coronavirus to use them preventively, as opposed to when a cluster erupts. Nonetheless, we wanted you to know what the AFT is doing related to preventing, treating and dealing with the long-term impacts of COVID-19 to protect people, prevent the spread and limit the ravages to our economy:
We are focused on the health and safety of frontline healthcare providers. This means fighting for proper safety equipment, including N95 masks. It also means pushing for high standards for workplace safety, even as the CDC attempts to roll back safety standards, potentially putting healthcare workers at risk.
We are equally focused on the health and safety of children, families and communities, and maintaining as much normalcy as possible. We know that social distancing, limiting who can be in schools beyond students and staff, and closing schools when necessary flattens the curve of exposure to the virus. But we also need to ensure that if (and when) schools close, distance and online learning is done in a positive, equitable and beneficial way—and that children who rely on schools for meals and a safe and welcoming environment have access to those supports.
We are supporting efforts to reduce the economic impacts of the pandemic. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has proposed a multibillion-dollar package of policies and programs to fight the spread of COVID-19 and help ensure that our economy and working people and their families are protected. It includes emergency paid sick leave, free coronavirus testing, provisions to protect frontline healthcare workers, and food assistance for seniors and vulnerable children and families. This bill, combined with the initial $8.3 billion in emergency funding to fight the coronavirus, is exactly what’s needed.
The AFT has done numerous information sessions since the coronavirus emerged, and we’ll do the largest telephone town hall to date this Saturday at 2 p.m. Eastern. We will highlight what we know, provide our recommendations and answer your questions. You can sign up for the town hall here.
And right now, you can help by sending a letter to your senators telling them to pass the vital comprehensive package that I mentioned above to protect the health of our families and communities, as well as to address the short- and long-term impacts to their economic well-being. You can send the letter by clicking here.
And I want to make sure you have all the resources we’ve created. We have been working with experts for months on preparing resources and fact sheets for all our divisions. This includes step-by-step guidance on what you should be asking your employers—as individuals and as a union—everything from their pandemic preparedness plan and their infectious disease cleaning protocols, to their teleworking and leave policies. All of those can be found here.
I hope you can make it to the telephone town hall on Saturday. There will be plenty of space for questions from members. I know that things are scary right now, and we’re all disappointed at how unprepared this administration was for this crisis. But I know that if we care about each other and show up for each other and fight for what’s needed, we can get through this together.
In unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT President
PS : Here’s a list of our resources and a few of the many things we’ve done to prepare and protect ourselves during this crisis.
Resources for all divisions.
Share My Lesson and Colorín Colorado resources for educators and parents.
An educator checklist to prepare for potential remote learning.
We joined with UNITE HERE to call for paid sick days.
We joined the Association of Flight Attendants to call for a coordinated federal response plan to the virus.
We joined with other healthcare unions to call on the CDC to maintain safety standards for frontline workers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 