US teachers protest over restart schedules

Teachers across the United States are staging mass protests against the reopening of public schools amid the coronavirus pandemic over fears that they won't be safe despite the federal government's push for in-person classes to resume.

In Arizona, Florida, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina and several other states, teachers plan to or already have walked out and are supported by major teachers unions.

The protests are in reaction to President Donald Trump's demand that states reopen public schools for in-person teaching and not just the distance-learning that has been announced by a raft of school districts.

Teachers nationwide are demanding that districts ramp up safety measures to defend against COVID-19 by making face masks mandatory and extra ventilation in classrooms a priority.

Dozens of teachers met on Saturday at Mill Creek Park in Kansas City, Missouri, to protest the reopening of schools in the fall.

Amanda Laws, a Missouri educator, told local TV station KSHB: "I don't think it's safe yet."

One teacher in Jacksonville, Florida, protested by holding a handwritten sign from her car window that read:"Lives over lessons."Her daughter held her own handwritten sign:"Keep my mom safe."

In Somerville, New Jersey, on Thursday, teachers from Somerset County walked up and down Main Street chanting:"Only when it's safe!"

Amy Six, a teacher from North Plainfield, said: "I don't want to die."

In states that have already reopened for in-person classes, students and teachers at schools in Mississippi and Georgia have been diagnosed with the coronavirus.

Last resort

The American Federation of Teachers, or AFT, the nation's second-largest teachers union with 1.7 million members, said last week that it would "support safety strikes" as a "last resort" if teachers believed that their school districts weren't taking enough precautions. Around 70 percent of teachers nationwide were members of a teaching union in 2016, according to The New York Times.

AFT President Randi Weingarten said at its recent convention: "If authorities don't protect the safety and health of those we represent and those we serve, nothing is off the table. Not advocacy or protests, negotiations, grievances, or lawsuits, or, if necessary and authorized by a local union as a last resort, safety strikes."

The union adopted a resolution that school districts must wait to reopen classrooms until the transmission rate of coronavirus in an area falls below 1 percent and the daily community infection rate is below 5 percent.

The country's largest teachers' union, the Florida Education Association, or FEA, sued that state's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, last month over his push to fully reopen schools as the number of cases in the state spiked.

The Sunshine State, the new epicenter of the virus in the US, confirmed 4,752 new cases of coronavirus on Monday, taking its total to 491,884, with a death toll of 7,157, according to the Florida Department of Health.

The country had reported 4,717,716 cases with 155,471 deaths as of Tuesday, according to a tally kept by the Johns Hopkins University.

FEA President Fedrick Ingram said of the lawsuit in a statement:"Governor DeSantis needs a reality check, and we are attempting to provide one. The governor needs to accept the reality of the situation here in Florida, where the virus is surging out of control."

On July 8, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding to schools that refused to fully reopen with in-person classes.

A poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation in July found that 60 percent of parents would prefer that schools wait to resume in-person teaching. Thirty-four percent want schools to reopen sooner so that they can go to work. The survey found that at least 76 percent of Democrats want to wait for schools to reopen.