South Orange-Maplewood Education Association Rocio Lopez, President, Statement sent to the administration and board of education regarding building re-opening in pandemic conditions 01-25-2021

Following a reasonable effort in good faith to provide hybrid instruction to our students, I write
to advise you of the necessity of SOMEA to return to all- virtual instruction effective Wednesday,
January 27, 2021, given the unsafe conditions and ineffectiveness of the district’s current
operations. Please know this is not a decision SOMEA made lightly. Since the start of the
pandemic, SOMEA has worked tirelessly to bridge the obstacles to the delivery of instruction to our
students. For example, when the district sent staff home last spring without explicit guidelines
on how to transition to remote instruction, teachers took it upon themselves to find creative ways
to deliver curriculum. When the community asked for synchronous instruction come September and
despite still having little to no professional development, teachers rose to the occasion and
started the year with synchronous instruction. Indeed, despite being advised that live instruction
need only be a component of each period, many teachers have delivered synchronous instruction
rather than videos and asynchronous tasks from bell to bell. Further, when asked to switch to a
new instructional platform with no training prior to the start of school, teachers trained
themselves and subsequently students to be ready to deliver instruction via Canvas in September.

Throughout this period, which has necessitated countless additional hours of planning,
conferencing, and grading, teachers have not asked the district for anything other than regard for
their physical safety and that of their families.

Most recently, despite the rising cases of COVID-19 worldwide, in New Jersey, and Essex County in
particular, as well as reports of new variants which are so contagious and dangerous that our
President deemed it imperative to place immediate flight bans on entering the United States to stem
the tide of transmission, illness, and death, the district deemed it a fitting time to return to
our buildings sooner than wait for the imminent immunization of educators.

While SOMEA respectfully pointed out the ill-advised nature of this decision, it nonetheless in good faith returned to buildings as directed. Yet that same good faith has been
absent from our administration. By way of example, teachers, school staff, and students have been
asked to endure deplorable conditions, such as temperatures which average 35 to 60 degrees all day,
as windows need to be open in an attempt to offset the inefficient, antiquated ventilation systems
in our buildings. In fact, our Superintendent in his most recent FAQs acknowledged that windows
would be used by the district as alternative sources of ventilation in the absence of sufficient
building systems. Yet even with this admission, teachers have been admonished by administration
for having windows open, as the temperatures are freezing or near freezing in classrooms, and
ordered to close windows in danger to themselves and students in the classroom. Or in Marshall
School they were made to complete the day despite the building being without an operational boiler.

Teachers and staff are already suffering the ill-effects of these freezing conditions, complaining
of aches, chills and coughs, weakening their immune systems to attack by COVID-19.
Further, the lack of good faith by administration is evident in the discrepancies between the
architects’ report, who acknowledge that they are not experts in ventilation and filtration, and
SOMEA’s own walk throughs of the schools with our trained SOMEA Healthy and Safety Committee
members.

Similarly, administration has omitted reporting to teachers when workers have been sent into their
rooms, some of whom have reported to the rooms without masks and when teachers complained,
administration denied their presence despite video evidence. And then there are the occasions when
administration has ordered teachers to amalgamate students in classrooms despite its promise to use
cohorts to limit the spread of COVID-19 within the schools. Perhaps more disconcerting has been
the failure of the district to quarantine students and staff after having contact in their school
settings, with individuals who tested positive for the virus.

Additionally, administration’s reckless disregard for the well being of its employees and children
was evident in its intentional refusal to evacuate Clinton School or call the police or fire
department following a gas leak which rendered teachers and students sick, instead requiring
teachers to use sick time if their nausea, eye irritation, and dizziness didn’t subside. No
medical professionals were asked to screen students, and parents were not notified of this
hazardous condition. Equally disturbing is administration’s decision to reprimand a teacher for being
transparent with parents about the work orders she requested be completed in her room for the
wellbeing of her students but which the district repeatedly ignored. Note that she was not
reprimanded for requesting necessary work be completed, but for sharing with parents that such work
had not been completed.

And such risks to the health and safety of others are not limited to the classroom. Our bus
drivers and aides have reported students who dropped their masks so as not to cover their noses or
who took off their masks entirely, and despite requests to wear them properly, continually refused
during their ride.

Indeed, staff have likewise observed a lack of social distancing in hallways as well as the lack of
masks on students as they enter and exit buildings. Likewise, athletes on buses are not practicing
the social distancing deemed appropriate by other county districts, instead leaving no space
between students on buses, packing students to a bus. Given the COVID-10 deaths of two of our bus
drivers last year, this blatant disregard of protocols and caution on buses is simply indefensible.

Perhaps most disingenuous is the administration’s suggestion that it values the safety of SOMEA
members while the Director of Human Resources first issued a blanket refusal to consider any
teacher’s request for accommodation due to risk factors associated with COVID-19. Following
SOMEA’s request that the district comply with the law, the district then engaged in a practice of
ignoring requests for accommodations, many of which were made months prior to the scheduled return
date of January 13ᵗʰ, instead advising staff that they would need to take sick days until such time
as the district decided to review their application and in complete disregard for the cost of
instruction to students, as SOMEA members were ready and willing to teach remotely and most
students were not even in the building to warrant requiring teachers to be physically present.

Rather it has been through the combined advocacy of community members on behalf of our teachers,
for which SOMEA is extremely grateful, as well as the cost of legal representation that some –
though not nearly all – of these requests by our high- risk members have been addressed to some
degree.

The district’s protestations of the safety of the buildings is equally
evidenced in the Board of Education’s unwillingness to grant SOMEA’s request that the Board of
Education hold its next meeting in person to address the questions and concerns of staff and
community stakeholders using the same protocols it deems sufficient to mandate staff return to
buildings, or that each Member attend school for full days so that they can answer questions and
concerns based on first-hand experience with the conditions under which hybrid learning is actually
functioning. As has been typical, SOMEA’s pleas to its Board went unanswered.

Again, notwithstanding these clear indications of the failure of the district to make paramount the
well being of its staff and students, SOMEA returned to these buildings to deliver instruction in
good faith. But a return to virtual learning on just one day this past Friday made clear that
there is absolutely no instructional benefit to returning to our buildings. Students and staff
spoke ubiquitously to the inability to access the WIFI, the lack of devices and non- functioning
devices in classrooms, the lack of charging stations for students, the incessant buffering and
connectivity issues throughout lessons. Further, at the elementary schools, teachers were forced
to break social distancing as so many of their students had technical difficulties which could not
be addressed from six feet away. By comparison, teachers reported accomplishing more instruction
in a single day on Friday from home than they did in three days within the district buildings.

In sum, while SOMEA has tried to make hybrid learning work in good faith, it has not been met with
good faith by the district. Instead, the district has placed its desire for hybrid instruction,
the efficacy of which has been proven subpar compared to the remote, synchronous instruction
provided since September, as more important than the health and safety of all. While it has
suggested that teachers should be willing to work under such intolerable conditions as newly coined
essential workers, the reality is that educators trained to provide instruction to students. We
are not emergency workers. (Indeed, the fact that the federal government has prioritized vaccines
for medical personnel, police, and firefighters is evidence that we are not one and the same.)

Further, while we appreciate the concerns raised about the mental health of our students, know that
we care for our students but we are not mental health professionals and consider it unreasonable to ask teachers to return to an unhealthy environment under the
thinly-veiled disguise of promoting the well being of students. Social engagement is simply not
possible in school right now. Moreover, the district should consider the mental anguish students
would suffer to learn that a peer or adult contracted and died from COVID-19 as a result of hybrid
learning.

Furthermore, one of the areas for concern in this issue is the public perception of the hybrid
model and that it may mean less screen time. By returning to in-person instruction right now, it
doesn’t mean a return to classroom instruction pre- pandemic. Students in a hybrid situation still
remain on their computers so that they may interact with their remote classmates. In fact, they
have more social interaction right now while fully remote, then they would in a hybrid situation.
Once the Chromebook is closed, that student has lost her connection with her other classmates, and
while she may be sitting in front of her teacher, the socialization opportunities are slim with
physical distancing requirements.

We will continue to educate passionately but will do so from our homes until such time as
temperatures are moderate enough to avoid bone-chilling working conditions in violation of minimum
temperature standards and vaccines are made available to educators. We are nearing February and
already vaccines are available to high-risk individuals, so a return to school is on the horizon.
But to do so as numbers climb, variant strains are spreading, and under conditions which render
actual instruction less effective, is not just fatuous but reckless. We will continue to do what
we do best – provide passionate instruction — from the safety of our homes. Please note that we
delayed this decision until Wednesday, January 27ᵗʰ not only to provide parents an opportunity to
make necessary plans for their children at home and to allow teachers to retrieve the materials
they need to teach effectively, but also to permit eleventh graders to sit for the PSATs tomorrow
at Columbia High School*. As always, SOMEA operates in the best interests of its students while
safeguarding the health of its members.

*Please note this statement was written and sent to administration before the district’s
cancellation of testing due to inclement weather posted on district website 01-26-2021