Schools Reopening: Teachers Fearful, Angry Over Pressure to Return

But after major pushback from educator groups, who felt there was too little attention on the health risks for adults who work in schools, the Academy joined with the two national teachers’ unions on Friday to release a statement saying, “Schools in areas with high levels of Covid-19 community spread should not be compelled to reopen against the judgment of local experts.”

In Arizona, Ms. Wysong, 30, said she was willing to return to her Tempe classroom; she is not in a high-risk category for complications from Covid-19 and her school caps classes at 15 students. But given the long-term teacher and substitute shortage in Arizona, which has some of the lowest educator salaries in the nation, she said she believed the overall system could not reopen safely with small enough class sizes.

Health and education experts who support reopening schools have sometimes questioned the need for strict physical distancing, pointing in recent weeks to emerging research suggesting that children may be not only less likely to contract Covid-19, but also less likely to transmit it to adults.

In interviews, many teachers said they were unaware of or skeptical of such studies, arguing that much about the virus remains unknown, and that even if teachers do not catch coronavirus in large numbers from children, it could be spread among adults working in a school building, or during commutes to and from schools via public transit.

The education systems in Germany and Denmark have successfully reopened, but generally only after local virus transmission rates were brought under control.

American schools currently have a variety of plans for welcoming students back to campuses, ranging from regular, five-day schedules with children using desk partitions to stay distanced, to hybrid approaches that seek to keep students physically distanced by having them attend school in-person only a few days per week, and spend the rest of their time learning online from home.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last week that the nation’s largest school system would reopen only part-time for students this fall, but teachers would most likely be back in classrooms five days a week.