Unsanitized: Randi Weingarten On What It Would Take to Make Schools Safe

Plus, Congressional maneuvering. This is The COVID-19 Daily Report for August 5, 2020.

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First Response

In many parts of the country, the school year has already begun, either for teachers setting up classrooms, or in a few cases, for students. They are returning to a patchwork of different procedures, ranging from in-person schooling (in close to 20 states) to online-only learning to hybrid models. Parents report frayed nerves having to deal with managing work and children at home, and desperately want schools to reopen. Student learning is also sacrificed, especially with the digital divide, without in-person instruction. It’s a terrible situation.

Fortunately it’s being planned for in the most chaotic, unprofessional way. While relative safety in childcare shows that in theory you could execute schooling safely, the experience of some summer camps and schools in Israel show that dangers exist, not just for kids in school but the entire surrounding community. But the planning has been haphazard, and runs up against an immutable fact: just about everything associated with school safety costs money.

If the classroom is half the size you have to hire more teachers. HVAC systems have to be overhauled to prevent recirculated air. Everyone needs PPE, from masks to plexiglass shields. You need mass testing capacity and hand-washing stations. Some schools have no on-site nurses, so you have to add those. You might need to double school bus routes to maintain distancing on transportation. Remote learning has ongoing costs attached, especially if students need to be outfitted with technology. None of that money has been authorized yet at the federal level, and state budgets are completely strapped.

How much are we talking? The American Federation of Teachers did the math on this a couple weeks ago. “We figured out you needed $116 billion” for the extra safety measures, said AFT President Randi Weingarten in an interview. That’s on top of $93 billion to deal with reduced state support for schools.

Read all of our Unsanitized reports

The Democratic plans approach that level. Nancy Pelosi added $100 billion for schools in the Heroes Act, but it included a “maintenance of effort” clause, which would have required states taking the school money to backfill K-12 shortfalls with part of the $1 trillion reserved for state fiscal aid. Patty Murray’s Senate plan included $175 billion for K-12 schools, plus another $100 billion for childcare.

AFT also looked at what amounted to a full reopening. “Let’s say you were trying to do safely what Trump wants,” Weingarten said. “You’d have to add 47 percent more teachers and 47 percent more space.” It comes to $500 to $600 billion. What Republicans have offered is less than $100 billion, with some headed to private schools. “They’re doing it so close to the start of school that there’s no time to get the money,” Weingarten added.

A bigger looming problem is whether insurance companies will cover school districts if there’s a COVID-19 outbreak. If someone dies from contracting the virus in school, a wrongful death suit would threaten ongoing operations without insurance protection. This was what eventually sunk the “arming teachers” concept after the school shootings in Florida. And it’s why schools are among the entities seeking liability protection in the next legislation.

If they get it, administrators may have far less incentive to institute full safety standards. And even now, teachers have had to fight. Weingarten’s AFT, along with the NEA and teachers in Florida, sued the state last month over premature reopening in the midst of its outbreak. Since then, 80 percent of schools supposed to open August 10 have pushed back the start date. The teachers are filing an amended complaint this week to seek an injunction. “You’re starting to see more level-headedness as opposed to pretend toughness,” Weingarten said.

Some places are trying to do it right. In particular Weingarten praised Montana, where schools reopened in June, although they had little community spread at the time. She said Newark, New Jersey, where mayor Ras Baraka is a former high school principal, has been realistic, with a hybrid model and no more than 25 percent of students in the classroom at any one time.

Elsewhere, there are likely to be clashes. Teachers and students in 35 cities marched on Monday for safe schools. Weingarten held out the possibility of what she termed “safety strikes,” particularly if there’s an outbreak and a school district doesn’t do anything about it. She cited Chicago as one district where there’s a “real gulf” between teachers and the school district on safety standards. Many state constitutions require safe schools, giving teachers an avenue to strike.

Weingarten told me that at the end of June, 76 percent of her members said they would be comfortable returning to classrooms if measures were taken to protect them. But that was before President Trump made “Reopen the Schools!” a rallying cry, forcing an on-the-fly scramble nationwide before the funding was secured and plans were made.

“The thing that makes our membership so angry about this, how dare they who have never said a word about poor kids now speak about poor kids,” Weingarten said. “Now they all of a sudden care about schools.”  

Odds and Sods

Here’s some Monopolized news: Kelly Candaele interviewed me for Capital and Main about the book. Read here.

Here’s a nice review at Inside Higher Ed.

I was on Jacobin Radio talking about the next coronavirus legislation. Listen here.

At the Prospect, Bailey Berg has the interesting story of Alaska and Hawaii, which have enacted almost exactly the same systems for quarantining visitors. Hawaii has engaged in aggressive enforcement, while Alaska is working the honor system. The results are… predictable. Read it here.

You can read all of our coronavirus coverage at prospect.org/coronavirus. And reach out via email with tips, comments, and perspectives.

Deal Or No Deal

There’s a great deal of optimism based on essentially nothing. Congressional negotiators and the White House set a deadline of Friday to reach agreement on a package, but there hasn’t been progress on any one aspect of what that agreement would be. It’s an “agree to try” as the Post puts it. It seems like the unemployment extension and eviction protection are either the main part of the deal or the only part. But Democrats have been consistent that a narrow deal is insufficient. Without state and local fiscal aid, we would be back to the incoherent framework of the CARES Act, which led to resurgent outbreaks.

The one positive, I guess, is Mitch McConnell essentially giving up and saying he’ll stay out of the negotiations and support whatever emerges. His caucus robbed him of any leverage, preventing him from passing a partisan bill. So Democrats will provide the majority of votes in both houses of Congress, and just need the White House to sign off. That may signal the end of the corporate immunity piece, a McConnell priority.

Earlier yesterday the Trump administration was floating the idea of executive orders to extend enhanced unemployment, stop collecting the payroll tax, and restore the eviction moratorium. Of those, the first one seems impossible (the idea is to use $81 billion in unused money previously authorized, but not for that), the second highly unlikely to be legal, and the third, somewhat plausible. (That Republicans are embracing tenant protections is something.) But given the pain on the horizon, with mass evictions and suffering, you have to wonder whether questions about the power of the purse would take a back seat to executive action. Who would challenge this? Turns out the presidency has a lot of tools; Joe Biden should remember that for his Day One Agenda.

Days Without a Bailout Oversight Chair

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Today I Learned

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