My brother is a 3rd grade teacher at Title I school serving a low-income community of color in a red state. Many of his students have serious pre-existing conditions. As do their parents. So does his wife. The notion that districts like his will be able to open safely is B.S....

Many state guidelines are suggested rather than required. Why only suggested? Because states facing severe deficits due to covid don’t have the budget to fund proper safety protocols. This would require MORE money at a time when they are cutting education budgets...

Without proper safety protocols in place, exposure risks the health of students and parents, particularly in communities of color which disproportionately suffer from pre-existing conditions, and which disproportionately are infected by killed by covid...

Set aside the fact that we still know so little about the virus, claiming that kids are “resilient” and can survive covid doesn’t take into account at-risk children or the parents and older family members they may infect. Nor does it take into account the safety of teachers...

My brother’s wife is immune-compromised. If he is ordered back to work in an unsafe environment, he must decide whether it is worth risking exposure & infecting his spouse. If he decides not to return, he loses income, could lose retirement benefits, could even lose his job...

Like hundreds of thousands of teachers, my brother works in a right-to-work state, which means he has no union to fight on his behalf. In his state, pay raises are infrequent & lag behind inflation. Despite over 15 yrs as a teacher, he is essentially taking pay cuts each year...

Returning to work at a school where there is no proper funding for safety protocols means placing himself, his wife, his students & their families at risk to keep a job for which he is getting paid less & less. This is the awful position Trump & DeVos are putting teachers in...

The threat of withholding federal funding is even more nefarious because it endangers Title I schools that need such funding most. It’s targeting the poor and it’s targeting people of color. These are communities that are MOST at risk during the pandemic...

If the Trump administration and state governments are serious about a safe return to schools, there need to be far more comprehensive federally REQUIRED guidelines. Then the DOE and Congress need to help FUND states so they can implement these protocols...

Where do they get this funding? State and county governments could shift resources from law enforcement to schools for a start. The federal government could send more money to states by reducing defense spending and giving less bailout money to large corporations...

Alas, the Trump administration and federal/state GOP have no intention of doing so. Instead they simply want to toss underpaid teachers and underserved communities into a Petri dish of risk and pretend everything will be fine...

They want everything to seem “normal” when the election happens in November. They want to sacrifice poor people and people of color to keep the economy humming along. Safety means nothing to them. Power is all they care about...

I’m enraged that teachers and the families they serve are being put in this position. Trump goes out of its way to save confederate statues for the sake of “history.” But the price of teaching and learning history shouldn’t be having to risk one’s life or the lives of others.