Part III: COVID-19 in the Classroom
At the beginning of the 2020–2021 school year, teachers had to grapple with the inevitability that they would be exposed to COVID-19 at work. Children would come to school sick. They always did. Teachers did not expect this to change, even amid a raging pandemic. All of which begs the question, how would schools handle sick students? In my interviews with fifty teachers across the United States, they described COVID-19 protocols that ranged from meticulous and strict to shockingly lackadaisical and corrupt.
To begin with, I asked the teachers a few hypothetical questions: what would happen if a child came to school sick? Who would be considered a “close contact”? Who would be quarantined? The answers were across the board. However, one common theme emerged: students showing up to school sick was a serious and persistent problem, identified by nearly every teacher I interviewed.
Sixty-one percent of teachers reported that if they were exposed to a sick student they were required to quarantine. But what was considered exposure differed considerably, as well as the actual quarantine process. Let’s go back to the hypothetical scenario: a student in your classroom was sick. Were you, as the teacher, going to quarantine? Well, that depended on your school’s policies. For some teachers, they were quarantined if they were within six feet of a positive case for more than fifteen minutes. Others, it was twenty minutes. One teacher stated that they were only considered “exposed” to the virus if they were near a positive case for fifty-five minutes. Classes were only fifty minutes. Consequently, no one was ever considered exposed and no one was quarantined. I suppose that’s one way to avoid a shortage of substitute teachers.
In some schools, teachers were never quarantined after being exposed to COVID-19, only students. Masks were another variable. Several teachers explained that both the positive case and any potential exposures had to be without masks to actually be considered exposed. One teacher reported that teachers were given “ten days of quarantine time.” If you were exposed, more than once during the school year? Better hope you saved up your sick days or personal days to quarantine.
The quarantine process also varied drastically from school to school and state to state. Some teachers were required to quarantine for fourteen days, others as few as five: “If we were direct[ly] expose[d], we were quarantined for fourteen days, if we wanted to return with no COVID- 19 test. If we had a negative test, five days [after exposure] we could return after day seven.” It’s worth noting that the CDC initially said that the incubation period of COVID-19 was fourteen days before lowering it to ten last December. Moreover, without a test, there would be no way of knowing if a teacher developed an asymptomatic case of COVID-19.
Another concern for teachers was whether or not they would have access to a COVID-19 test. It’s easy to forget this now, but tests were scarce when the pandemic first began. Teachers would be inevitably exposed to COVID-19 in the classroom, but would they be able to get tested once exposed? Twenty-seven percent of respondents reported that they had guaranteed access to a test. Another twelve percent said that they initially had no access to a test, but that this improved throughout the year. However, an astounding sixty-one percent of respondents claimed that they had no guaranteed access to a COVID-19 test for the entirety of the 2020–2021 school year.
For many teachers, obtaining a test proved to be extremely difficult. One teacher claimed that she had no access to a test, in November 2020. This teacher developed a severe case of COVID-19, was hospitalized, and wasn’t tested until she was in the hospital. Another teacher explained that there was a testing shortage in their state. As a result, tests were being prioritized for individuals who were showing symptoms, not those who were exposed. Perhaps most disturbing, one teacher alleged that their school administration threatened teachers who wanted to receive a COVID-19 test.
Given that teachers were exposed to COVID-19 at work, it should come as little surprise that many also got sick with this virus. A staggering ninety percent of the teachers I interviewed became sick with COVID-19 during the school year or know other teachers who got sick. Maybe keep this in mind when politicians boast that school reopenings were “safe.”
Even before school buildings reopened their doors, teachers knew there was an inherent risk to their lives. One-third of American teachers are over the age of fifty. Because COVID-19 tends to more harshly affect older individuals and those with preexisting conditions, it’s understandable that some teachers needed to continue working from home for their own safety. In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, teachers who met these criteria should have been able to work from home. Unfortunately, this was not the reality for many American teachers.
Of the teachers interviewed, only thirty-nine percent were eligible to work from home through the Americans with Disabilities Act. Even among this group, the eligibility process was arduous. There were reports of lost and unprocessed paperwork. Many had to wait for months to find out if their application had been approved. Others had to consistently plead their case to their superiors. Several teachers speculated that this process was deliberately mismanaged, in an attempt to get them to forgo their ADA applications.
Sixty-one percent of teachers reported they were not eligible to work from home through the ADA. Although many teachers noted serious medical conditions like cancer, they were forced to go back into the classroom or leave the profession altogether. One teacher told me that as COVID-19 cases dramatically increased in her school, she requested to work from home. Two letters were sent from her doctor explaining her preexisting medical conditions, but the school’s administration refused and said she could only teach from an empty office in the building. It was a jarring experience that ultimately led this teacher to retire early: “Due to the disregard for my life and death, I elected to leave the profession (early retirement) that I had loved for thirty-three years.” The school administration apparently did not support her decision: “My principal at that time did not acknowledge me or my retirement.”
Allegations of nepotism were a common theme among teachers who sought to apply for ADA. One teacher alleged that their administrator only allowed teachers to work from home if he “liked” them. Other teachers were simply told that their districts did not allow anyone to work from home: “I was told our county is not a ‘teach from home’ district.” Several teachers noted that this was likely illegal and they could have sued, but they did not have the money for expensive and lengthy litigation.
The 2020–2021 school year was incredibly challenging for teachers. Not only did they have to contend with the uncertainty of not knowing how they would teach, but teachers also lived in constant fear that they would be exposed to a potentially deadly virus. After more than a year of the COVID-19 pandemic, one might think there would be universal COVID-19 standards for schools, but this is not true. Please visit my page next week to read the final part of this series, in which I discuss the public’s attitudes towards teachers and how schools will continue to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic in the upcoming school year.
