CONTENTS ELECTION 2020: This analysis looks at where we stand, postelection and mid-pandemic

Analysis: Where We Stand, Post

By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor

MEA members’ hard work to elect friends of public education up and down the November 3 General Election ballot paid off in many ways, but one of the most significant and least ballyhooed wins came in the state Supreme Court race.

With much of the post-election news focused on President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede in his decisive loss to former Vice President Joe Biden, wins by two MEA-recommended Supreme Court candidates drew little media attention.

The re-election of Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack and the first-time election of Grand Rapidsarea employment law attorney Elizabeth Welch swung control of the court for the first time in a decade.

The current-events context is important to note.

One month before the election, a 4-3 conservative majority on the state’s highest court ruled in favor of Republican lawmakers who sought to strip Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of emergency powers to issue orders related to the coronavirus crisis.

The narrow ruling struck down Whitmer’s executive orders protecting public health amid the COVID-19 pandemic, including requirements for mask-wearing in public places. Within a week, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and local health departments began issuing orders under their own separate authorities.

However, the high court’s decision sowed confusion and stirred backlash by mask opponents, and many observers have said the change in authorizing of public health rules and requirements deepened partisan divides over common-sense tools for slowing the spread of the virus.

As of press time for this issue, the Legislature had done little to bridge the divide or step into the breach in public opinion regarding masking and social distancing rules.

The failure of lawmakers to act continued even as COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in Michigan began a precipitous rise in early to mid-November, as health officials had long warned could happen with the arrival of colder weather if public health measures were not followed.

In late October, MEA President Paula Herbart issued a statement and appeared in newspaper, radio and television interviews on the subject—joining a chorus of education, health, and business leaders calling for state lawmakers to take action.

“It is now a matter of life and death for the leaders of this state to work together to promote the use of masks and physical distancing, which we know reduce exposure and save thousands of lives,” Herbart said.

Sen. Dayna Polehanki called out GOP leaders in the Legislature for failing to act in the COVID-19 crisis after they sued to take away powers from the governor.

When the leadership of the House and Senate left for an extended hunting break on Nov. 12 without acting on a mask bill, Sen. Dayna Polehanki, (D-Livonia)—an English teacher and MEA member who first won her seat in 2018—called them out in a pointed floor speech.

“There appears to be no effort by the majority party to consider mask legislation or any other COVID legislation, for that matter,” Polehanki said. “To my colleagues across the aisle, you wanted this responsibility,

Where We Stand, Post-Election and Mid-Pandemic

so do something. Michiganders deserve better than this.”

Three days later, the Detroit Free Press editorial board similarly called for legislative action, noting in a Sunday, Nov. 15 commentary that “Whitmer’s proactive leadership kept Michigan’s pandemic numbers well below the national average throughout the summer, and GOP legislators who rejoiced at undercutting her authority have done precious little to exercise their own.”

That evening, with case and hospital numbers soaring to daily records in Michigan, Whitmer announced a return of COVID-related restrictions for high schools, athletics, and bars and restaurants, among other changes stemming from a new MDHHS order.

In response, as this issue went to press, MEA was advocating for temporary suspension of in-person learning for all grades. Herbart wrote in an open letter to members:

“We will redouble efforts to ensure everyone’s safety—including alerting MIOSHA (Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and public health authorities of issues as they are identified. We also call on districts to immediately cease requiring educators to show up in-person in schools to teach virtual classes, in light of the clearly stated goal of conducting work remotely if feasible.”

There is one other contextual backdrop that should be noted relative to schools, COVID-19, public safety and the Legislature’s failure to act—especially given consistent polling that shows the vast majority of Michiganders approve of Whitmer’s handling of the crisis.

In early October, following months of extremist vitriol and armed protests at the Capitol, the FBI arrested 14 right-wing terrorists accused of a detailed plot to kidnap the governor over pandemic mitigation measures she took in line with many other governors and big-city mayors.

We all know elections have consequences, but few have seemed as consequential as Election 2020, which not only shifts the makeup of our state’s high court but next month brings an NEA member to the White House in Dr. Jill Biden and ends the federal reign of Betsy DeVos.

MEA members did the work of creating change even amid the pandemic—making 339 state and local candidate recommendations and doing the texting, phone calling, postcard writing and door knocking to win 61 percent of those races.

Huge numbers voted from home and turned out to polling places to re-elect Sen. Gary Peters and swing our state blue for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Herbart told Michigan Advance she hoped a professional will replace DeVos at the Department of Education who is “deep in the work of education,” because after four years of emphasis on voucher

MEA President Paula Herbart poses with member paraeducators from Mason, April Switerberg and Maurene Barker, at a #CountEveryVote rally in Lansing.

schemes, charter schools and private schools, “There’s a lot of undoing to do.”

Although Herbart acknowledged the end of the DeVos era at the federal level will likely bring her failed policies back to Michigan, “we will work to defeat her every step of the way, because we know here in Michigan, that that’s not right for our students.”

In First Person: By Todd Bloch

I teach science, so I’ve been trained to make observations. From what I observed in the fall, I’ve drawn some conclusions about why in-person teaching and learning in a pandemic is difficult to sustain— and not necessarily for the most obvious reasons.

In Warren Woods Public Schools in Macomb County, where I teach middle school science, we developed and implemented some reasonable safety rules and procedures to return students who chose it for face-to-face learning in late September following a remote start.

Nothing looks or feels like it did before.

From the outset we offered a virtual academy, and half of our students chose that mode of learning. Our reopening involved K-12 students five days a week. The high school did an A-day and a B-day, so three classes daily.

Our middle school ran a full schedule every day for the students who returned with about 20 kids per in-person class, so distancing was possible. In normal times our lunchroom tables sat 30 people, which changed to eight with restrictions.

All of our virtual academy teachers were required to teach from school buildings except for people with health conditions. When students came back, I was teaching virtual classes to start and end my day with in-person classes in between.

Our staff is stretched incredibly thin to make what we’re doing work. I don’t know where we will place virtual students if they want to come back to in-person learning in coming months because every room is full and every teacher maxed out to accomplish distancing.

Educator burn-out is a big concern.

Worry about students, colleagues, friends, and family becoming infected with a potentially fatal airborne virus is stressful—especially when community spread is rampant. There is risk involved in gathering people indoors for several hours a day, even with safety procedures in place.

Within that challenging context, teachers are struggling to manage their workload. It’s hard to hear while teaching in a room with 20 spaced-apart kids while wearing a mask and face shield. It’s awkward, and the students are reluctant to participate.

The kids have been pretty good but not perfect with the masks. They want to hang out with their friends and pull the mask down below their nose, which may be understandable but all of us in the school setting must continually push back on it.

Meanwhile, it’s difficult to engage kids when we are asking them to sit still and apart, wearing a mask, behind a plastic shield. The ways we’ve transformed our teaching over the past many years to encourage

Todd Bloch

active learning, group work and collaboration is not possible to do right now.

In addition, we don’t have enough staff to maintain a reduced-capacity face-to-face school and a virtual school, so educators are doing double-duty. Most teachers were not trained to teach virtually, and students aren’t used to it either, so the learning curve is large. And technology issues are a regular struggle.

This winter as regular cold and flu season melds with COVID-19 and more school employees get sick, we simply won’t have the staff to move forward. Not enough substitutes are available in jobs that require them.

Let’s Use Our Outside Voices

Throughout the pandemic, MEA has been helping to lift member voices with the media and public, including just a few examples listed below. If you are interested in sharing your story or viewpoint with a wider audience, contact Voice Editor Brenda Ortega at bortega@mea.org.

Schools Must Require Masks for All Grades by Kathleen Dillon-Dowd, Montrose Community Schools teacher: MEA Voice Online, August 14, 2020

Give me the resources to get back into the classroom by Dawn Levey, Ovid-Elsie Area Schools teacher: Detroit Free Press, Aug. 25, 2020

As others try and fail, are Lansing schools ready for in-person learning?

by Randi Trumble, Lansing School District nurse: Lansing State Journal, Oct. 3, 2020

Dear Betsy DeVos and Michigan lawmakers: Here’s what educators need

by Chris Thomas, Ann Arbor Public Schools teacher: Bridge Magazine, Oct. 24, 2020

Read these member opinion pieces and more at mea.org/member-voices-for-safety.

There is a limit to the extra duties that educators can take on.

With everything else going on, state- and federal-mandated test requirements hang over us.

Some kids learn well virtually. Some need face-to-face but can’t physically go to school because of family health concerns. Some learning translates easily in a digital realm, and some gets tossed out when students can’t be in a room with their educators.

It’s clear we will need to continue with masks and physical distancing through the rest of this school year, and we will likely be moving back and forth between face-to-face and remote teaching as COVID-19 infection rates dictate.

Yet we continue to shift time and resources toward mandated testing and away from our best efforts to help students learn and cope. In the balance are high-stakes teacher evaluations, which last we heard are moving forward as if nothing has changed.

I wonder how an administrator who’s never before taught online can evaluate a teacher who’s also never taught online. How can they evaluate a teacher who’s doing online and face-to-face at the same time?

What about the added stress of performing duties during a pandemic? I worry about getting sick or bringing the virus home to a vulnerable family member who’s had a heart bypass and liver transplant. We have all suffered different traumas as this pandemic has played out.

We need support to get through this the best that we can.

I’ve taught for 20 years, and this is hands down the hardest stretch of my career. I talk with educators all over the country, and everyone is in the same situation: They go home at night paralyzed by a combination of fatigue and anxiety from all that is on their plate.

I worry about a brain drain if we start losing educators who can retire anytime but so far have chosen not to.

I miss what used to be. One in-person eighth-grade class of mine that began with our delayed reopening was a group of kids I taught last year. When I walked in and saw them—even behind their masks and plexiglass shields—I felt a moment of relief, though they couldn’t see my smile.

We all miss normalcy, but what we need to focus on developing right now is consistency, compassion, and cooperation.

We need our communities to mask up and our leaders to listen to us on the frontlines.