Calls for nationwide sickout as Arizona school district cancels reopening | US news

An Arizona public school district was forced to cancel its plans to reopen on Monday after more than 100 teachers and other staff members called in sick.“We have received an overwhelming response from staff indicating that they do not feel safe returning to classrooms with students,” Gregory Wyman, district superintendent, said in a statement on Friday. Now some activists in Arizona, which saw a high-profile teachers’ strike in 2018, said they hope teachers across America will adopt a similar strategy to keep educators safe, as some parents and politicians continue to push for schools in the US to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic.“I’d love to see a nationwide sickout,” Kelley Fisher, an Arizona kindergarten teacher who has led protests in the state, told Reuters on Friday. In San Tan Valley, a suburb of Phoenix, the JO Combs unified school district’s board of governors had voted to resume in-person classes on Monday. Another school district nearby had made a similar choice, pressured by some parents who argued that reopening schools would be best for their children. The president of the Arizona Education Association, a teacher’s union, told the Arizona Republic that the two districts both decided to reopen despite not meeting the health metrics as recommended by Arizona’s department of public health. Not a single district in Arizona currently meets all three metrics for a safe resumption of mixed in-person and online learning, the Arizona Republic reported, citing the most recently available state public health data. By late Friday afternoon, 109 teachers and other staff members from JO Combs had already called in sick, a district spokeswoman said.


All data is taken from the source: https://www.theguardian.com/
Article Link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/15/us-schools-reopening-teachers-sickout-arizona


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