What Teachers' Unions Are Fighting For as Schools Plan a New Year

About 70 percent of American teachers were union members in 2016. Educators have enjoyed significant parental support in recent years during a series of walkouts, including in Republican-led states, in favor of higher wages and more school funding.

But now, with the economy sputtering and many parents struggling to balance work and child care while overseeing remote learning, teachers who resist demands to appear over video or to work in classrooms where it is considered safe risk fraying those hard-won bonds.

Some critics see teachers’ unions as trying to have it both ways: reluctant to return to classrooms, but also resistant in some districts to providing a full day of remote school via tools like live video — the kind of interactive, online instruction that many parents say their children need after watching them flounder in the spring.

Union leaders point out that many teachers went above and beyond the work hours laid out in emergency labor agreements that were quickly pulled together after schools closed in March. Their members provided technical support to families and answered emails and text messages from students and parents late into the night, leaders say.

Now, those representatives must balance the concerns of an often-feisty membership against the urgent needs of vulnerable children and the often-competing demands of local and federal officials. Complicating matters, parents disagree sharply on what they want from schools during the pandemic.

A July poll found that 60 percent of parents supported delaying school reopenings until the virus is under control. Polls show that Black and Latino families, who have suffered disproportionately from the pandemic, have expressed more concern about returning to school than white parents have, but are also more worried about the academic and social impacts of online learning.

In New York City, where the coronavirus caseload is now relatively low, a June parents’ survey found that most respondents were at least somewhat willing to send their children back to physical classrooms, despite teachers’ fears.