Facing a chronic shortage of teachers and staff due to the spread of COVID-19 infections, Moore Public Schools in Oklahoma has called in police to oversee classes at three elementary schools. The Moore Police Department announced their involvement in a social media post.
“Moore PD is a proud community partner of Moore Public Schools. This week, several duty officers are in the classroom as schools continue to face teacher and staff shortages. Today Officers Stromski and Lewis covered the 6th grade classrooms at Apple Creek Elementary. Additional officers serve Houchin and Broadmoore. We are grateful to be able to help our community in these difficult times. »
In the attached photos from the post, unmasked officers in uniform can be seen presiding over students doing virtual homework at their desks. In one of the images, an unmasked officer is seated at a desk with a cup with a large ‘Q’ on it, a symbol associated with the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, although some posters say it was of the missing teacher’s initial. Either way, parents and teachers overwhelmingly commented on the inappropriate and irresponsible decision to bring police into schools.
“To protect and to serve? Scandalous and infuriating. How dare you! Unmasked and armed to teach small children. Not physically or emotionally safe. No appropriate. And a horrible role model for children during a pandemic. Not only that, but these cops are literally putting human lives at risk, including their own. Absolutely disgusting,” one parent said.
“What are you going to do when all the police have COVID? Because unless the teachers attended some very intimate parties during their off hours that no one knows anything about, I think the whole ‘teaching in close proximity to students’ might be the reason they’re all sick first,” another parent commented.
“As a teacher who caught Covid at school and was sick last week, I am appalled to see these agents being unmasked in the classroom,” a teacher said.
With more teachers off duty due to the highly contagious variant of Omicron, school districts across the country have resorted to extraordinary measures to maintain in-person classes.
Earlier this week, Cincinnati Public School administrators tried to keep 11 schools from closing by sending more than 60 district central office staff into classrooms. However, that move was not enough to keep schools open, and the district was forced to move to virtual learning.
Just outside Austin, Texas, the Hays Consolidated Independent School District sent emails to parents encouraging them to become substitute teachers. A potential candidate would only have to pass a criminal background check, and the principal could waive the 30-hour college credit requirement. In a statement, the district explained “having someone in the classroom…is better than the alternative of having to close schools.”
In upstate New York, the West Genesee Central School District posted on Facebook asking young people to take open jobs. “Are you home on college vacation and want to help out at your alma mater? Come be a substitute teacher or teaching assistant while you’re home and earn some pocket money before you go back to school,” the district said in the post.
In Bullock County, Alabama, parents reported that their children stayed in the cafeteria for hours due to a lack of cafeteria workers and teachers in the school district. WSFA 12 News said its office was “bombarded” with calls from parents at Union Springs Elementary School saying many teachers and staff were not showing up for work.
In a photo sent to the news agency, dozens of students were gathered in the cafeteria with their coats and backpacks. Javan Avery told reporters she immediately picked up her child and nieces from elementary school after seeing the photo on social media. Avery said he was told there were no staff in the cafeteria and that students had to sit in the cafeteria because their teacher was away.
Avery expressed her frustration to WSFA 12 News and said she didn’t understand why the school was refusing to move to virtual learning due to staffing issues. “I can’t explain the fire that burns inside me. If we don’t send them to school and they miss so many days, we get a yellow slip. But we send them to school for you to take care of them. If you didn’t have staff, you would just have to call the parents to pick them up or put them back on the bus and send them home instead of keeping them in school,” Avery said.
She continued: “It is very concerning. They didn’t update us on anything. They have to respond, and they have to stop being stubborn. I want to see the school closed and go virtual.
Late last month, Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a bipartisan bill allowing school bus drivers, cafeteria workers or any other school district employee in the state to serve as substitute teacher until the end of this school year in June 2022.
All of these measures explode the lies, repeated by politicians from both big business parties, that schools are kept open to meet the academic and emotional needs of children, which distance learning has supposedly failed to achieve. to do. Cops are now being used to keep children in infected classrooms so their parents can be sent back to equally dangerous workplaces to generate corporate profits.
The absurd, desperate and downright criminal means employed to keep schools open during the pandemic reflect the sociopathy of the capitalist ruling class. The Biden administration, unions and the media are touting the “safe schools” lies, but soaring infections and hospitalizations across the United States have been a social disaster for American families. According to the American Academy of Pediatricians, nearly one million American children were infected with COVID-19 in the past week alone.
At the same time, educators, parents and students have increasingly demanded the closure of unsafe schools. Students in schools from New York to Chicago to Florida to California have staged walkouts, demanding action be taken to save the lives of members of their communities. This followed the four-day action by 25,000 Chicago teachers to stop in-person learning. While that struggle was halted by a miserable deal the Chicago Teachers Union signed with Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the struggle in the nation’s third-largest district continues.
The struggle to close schools and save lives is inseparable from the growing class struggle in the United States and around the world. Stopping the spread of infections and deaths requires a globally coordinated movement to close schools and non-essential production and use all available public health measures to eliminate the deadly pandemic once and for all. This requires the expansion of rank-and-file safety committees in every school and workplace to connect growing global opposition to the pandemic.
We urge educators, parents and young people to contact the WSWS for more information on forming Base Safety Committees and to send information about conditions in your school district.
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