For the teachers of the Concord School District, the unknowns about a return to in-person classes at a time of a pandemic can get overwhelming.
There’s the question of space in the building – how do hundreds of kids keep their distance all day? There’s concern over the adequacy of cleaning measures as well as the state of the schools’ HVAC systems, some of which are “woefully inadequate.”
That’s Michael Macri’s assessment, anyway.
“You’re looking at 400 to 500 kids and staff members in one building at a time when the restaurants and bars in New Hampshire are far more stringent in terms of what would happen in a typical public school,” said Macri, the president of the Concord Education Association, a local teachers’ union.
“Regardless of whether you have masks or not, or try to make distancing real, and have custodians able to sanitize surfaces, it just doesn’t seem like we are going to be able to accomplish that level of protection in the next six to seven weeks.”
Those concerns appear to be shared by Concord teachers.
Out of 326 respondents to a teacher survey sent out by the Concord union this month, only 43% said they would be comfortable returning to school, Macri says. The other 57% said they would not be comfortable.
The survey represents a near-total census of the 340 teachers in the district.
Now, with reopening plans forging ahead across the state, teacher unions are pushing for a voice at the table. Well before the state Department of Education released a 54-page guidance for how to reopen Tuesday, many school districts had been hammering out their own policies.
The state did not issue mandates or impose specific structures onto school districts to handle COVID-19. Instead, the districts have been left wide latitude to set their own rules, including how they accommodate their staff.
But as districts set those policies, they have to contend with a demographic reality: there are around 7,000 members of the New Hampshire National Education Association over 50 years old – and more than 3,000 who are over 60, according to the NEA.
“It’s an important issue,” said Doug Ley, who serves as president of the New Hampshire chapter of the American Federation of Teachers and also as Democratic Majority Leader in the state House of Representatives.
“We have a lot of educators who are deeply concerned. They may fear for their own health, for the health and safety of those they live with, loved ones they live with.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has suggested that older adults, including those in their 60s and 70s, limit interaction with others as much as possible during the time of COVID-19.
To address the competing concerns, unions such as the CEA, the New Hampshire branch of the National Education Association, and the American Federation of Teachers are divvying up districts among their negotiators in order to push for protections for teachers and staff.
The NEA has sent out nine different “UniServ directors” to help local chapters guide negotiations with schools. The goal is to get each district to draft a memorandum of understanding laying out specific COVID-19 work protections for staff. If an MOU is not practical, the unions are pushing for the district to include them in the specific plans.
“We want in-person instruction, but we want it safe,” said Megan Tuttle, president of the New Hampshire NEA, in an interview Tuesday.
Lorri Hayes has been at the front of that effort. As a UniServ director at the SEA for southern New Hampshire – and a representative of 29 individual collective bargaining units – she’s been in communication with superintendents since June to bring teachers’ safety concerns forward.
Among Hayes’s priorities: getting districts to enforce a mask requirement; securing personal protective equipment; boosting custodial staff to handle additional learning needs; and pushing for investments in the HVAC air circulation efforts.
But job security for teachers is also a top concern.
“The one thing you don’t want to do is lose a third of your district because they’re over the age of 60 or 65 and they can retire,” she said. “Because they offer a lot of districts.”
So far, signs are positive, representatives on both sides have said. District officials are generally open to accommodating staff members who feel at risk from COVID-19 and are looking for additional support.
But with weeks until the start of the school year, some of the big decisions have yet to be made by the school districts. And the decisions they make are likely to differ from area to area.
“There’s no one-size-fits-all – we don’t think there is,” Ley said. “We’re urging that each local work with their district, try to craft something that is workable.”
For now, union officials like Hayes are trying to head off a potential wave of retirements from older teachers by convincing them to push for different work arrangements instead. Some have already done so, Hayes says, though the number is relatively small so far.
To stop more, unions are leaning on a provision of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 that provides an application process for at-risk teachers to seek accommodations.
The ADA requires that schools provide accommodations for teachers with health conditions that make them vulnerable, according to Hayes. That should allow those teachers with conditions that make them vulnerable to the coronavirus to receive tailored provisions.
Not allowing those accommodations could put districts at legal liability – a strong incentive to comply, Hayes says.
It’s a system teachers’ representatives hope will work. Right now, districts appear willing to honor the ADA requests, or at least try to. “They’ve gone out of their way if there’s an underlying condition,” Hayes said.
That attitude has helped unions encourage teachers to apply through the ADA rather than retire early.
But there are still caveats – and unknowns. This school year will have an abnormally high number of applications, which could tax school districts financially and potentially force tough decisions on resources for accommodations.
The ADA protections only apply to teachers who have high-risk profiles themselves, not to teachers who live with others who are at-risk, Hayes says.
And the ADA accommodations aren’t guaranteed; if they prove too burdensome they may not be compulsory.
“The district has to make an accommodation, but the question is to what extent does the district have to make accommodations that would be unwieldy for them,” Hayes said.
What is clear is that the overarching decisions have been left to districts.
At a press conference unveiling the state’s reopening guidelines Tuesday, Gov. Chris Sununu said that the state could not guarantee that layoffs might not happen if accommodations can’t be made. But he said it was not up to the state to decide.
“We believe the guidance document that we put together allows for the social distancing, the mask wearing, and it can allow the schools for the flexibility to meet the needs of those individuals,” Sununu said. “Of course if the school can’t for some reason – if the physical confines of the school don’t allow it or the job responsibilities of that teacher don’t allow it, then the school would have to make other accommodations.”
Carl Ladd, executive director of the New Hampshire School Administrators Association, said that remote instruction for at-risk teachers is an option for some schools but not all. “I think in small districts, that is incredibly difficult to do,” he said.
Moreover, Ladd said, the burden should be on the state to look out for at-risk teachers.
“There’s an expectation now that teachers are going to step up and do all this medical screening and work, but they’re not being treated like frontline workers,” he said.
“I do think that there’s some basic protections for these folks that should be put in place at a statewide level, because this is a statewide issue. If we’ve got immunocompromised teachers who fear coming back, or their doctors are saying flat out ‘you’re not going in,’ and they’d like to exercise an early retirement, that shouldn’t be borne by the district. It should be treated like any other frontline worker.”
Regardless of the uncertainty, union representatives said that the across the state, negotiations appear to be going well. Losing older teachers is not on anyone’s wishlist.
“We’re advocating for the same thing,” Tuttle said.
When it comes to teacher morale, though, educators’ policy efforts can only go so far.
“The fear is still there,” Tuttle said. “I’m still hearing a lot of anxiety from my members about going back in.”
Ladd said planning has its limits, too.
“Once again, we’re going to feel like we’re building the plane while we’re flying it,” he said.
Monitor staff writer Eileen O’Grady contributed to this report.