I really feel for all educators this year. They're getting hit from all sides. Ford and Lecce are numbskulls; who knows what the unions are doing with the contracts as they promote arbitration, and there's been lots of in-fighting online over what actually should be a teacher's responsibility in the classroom when it comes to protecting kids from Covid. To some extent, teachers must feel abandoned by the government and unions, and, at some level, they must know that their workplace is higher risk than most for the spread of Covid.
As a trustee, I advised that we should all (board, admin, and educators) encourage masks in class. That provoked some signage in the schools, and that's about the best I could get from my seat at the table. As just a random citizen now, I'm still getting frantic calls from parents about to send their kids to school without any precautions in place, and I still advocate that teachers encourage masks even just by wearing one. Now that masks are becoming increasingly rare, it makes it so much easier for kids to keep theirs on if at least their teacher has a mask on. I know of some teachers who ask students to remove masks, and heard similar stories from parents in the region, and that makes things even harder for parents who hope their kids can keep them on for the whole day. In parts of the US, masks are seen as a trend that must be stopped, and students need a medical note to be allowed to wear one!
So that's where we're at this as we start this school year.
