District 155 Teachers’ Union Email Considered “Threatening” by Board Member

I filed a Freedom of Information request to Crystal Lake High School District 155 as follows:

At the last Board meeting, it was mentioned that some letters were considering “threatening.”

Under the FOIA I request copies of those letters.

Here is what I received:

TO: Superintendent Steve Olson, D155 Board of Education Members

FROM: Education Association President Devin Hester

DATE: July 13, 2020

RE: D155 in-person education plan

At this week’s strategic plan committee meeting, Superintendent Steve Olson and the administration will share the district’s tentative plan for returning to in-person learning for the 2020-21 school year.

Devin Hester

They shared the details of this plan with the staff during a Zoom meeting last Thursday, so we have had some time to consider it.

The Association conducted a survey of its members regarding the plan, and I would like to share the results of that with you here.

It is clear from the feedback on the survey that 100% of our members would prefer to be working with students in person in a safe environment rather than teaching remotely.

However, based on what we know about the tentative plan right now, 61% of our members would prefer to teach remotely rather than return to our buildings.

Combined, those factors mean that 61% of our members feel that the district will not be able to provide an adequately safe working environment in the fall.

As the district firms up more details of its plan, it is likely that more of us will feel comfortable returning to in-person education; however, the plan is currently a long way from providing those assurances to the thousands of people it will impact.

Our members found the following concerns most pressing, though they raised many additional issues.

Before we elect to educate our students in person, we should be able to answer these questions:

● How will immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable staff and students be accommodated?
● How will we get substitutes during this time when there is already a shortage? Many of our subs are in the high-risk category due to age and may choose not to work for us this year.
● What is our plan for deep cleaning and routine cleaning of our spaces, most of which are unoccupied for no more than five minutes at a time throughout the day?
● Will we check students’ temperatures before we allow them into our buildings?
● Will we be able to supply adequate PPE for staff?
● How will we keep our students appropriately distanced in our classrooms, hallways, restrooms, lunchrooms, gymnasiums, etc.?
● Will we offer air conditioning to spaces that don’t currently have it to make wearing masks more tolerable?
● How will we successfully educate our normal number of students when some are present, some are learning remotely or are under self-isolation, and we have less time to plan because of safety and cleaning protocol?
● If otherwise healthy teachers are required to quarantine due to exposure to COVID at school, will they be required to use their sick days?
● Will regular COVID or antibody testing be provided to students or staff?

I want to be clear that we do not fault the district or administration for being unable to keep us safe during a pandemic.

Under these circumstances, it is difficult for any large school district to operate safely, and the recent guidance from ISBE has now made it impossible.

The dangers of COVID are well-documented, so I will not belabor them here.

What we ask you to keep in mind as you consider the district’s tentative reopening plan is what — under the current guidance from ISBE — you are actually trying to accomplish in practical terms.

You are faced with a difficult choice around reopening our school buildings, but you are not faced with the choice between traditional education and remote education.

Under the guidance from ISBE and IDPH, there will be no such thing as traditional education.

We want our students to be able to socialize with each other again, but they’ll have to do it from behind masks and from several feet away.

They won’t hug in the hallways or share laughter shoulder-to-shoulder in the lunchroom.

They likely won’t compete together on the field or perform in front of an audience.

If they collaborate on class projects, it will be through their devices rather than at a shared desk.

When we build rapport with our students, it will be from behind masks that will make it hard to recognize them in the hallways.

When we help them with their work, we won’t crouch next to them and look at their papers — we’ll walk over to our desks and have them share their documents with us through Canvas.

The choice you are making is between remote education from home and remote education in the same room.

Both are undesirable, but only one is likely to further this pandemic.

It seems that everyone making plans to return to school, including epidemiologists and our own administration, believes that we will need to go fully remote at some point this year (and probably this semester).

The argument for bringing students back in person is to get them as much of a traditional experience as possible before we need to shut our doors again.

What gets glossed over in that argument is that the inevitable closing will only happen after a spike in COVID cases.

We will march forward with in-person education that is a shadow of its normal self until — completely predictably — enough of us get sick.

And of that number, some of us are likely to get very sick.

Some of us may die.

Seen from that perspective, there is simply not enough reward to counterbalance the huge risk that some of our students and staff will not survive this experiment.

This doesn’t mean that no school district can open during the pandemic.

Each district is unique and has its own strengths and vulnerabiliti

It is possible that enough measures can be put into place to make in-person learning in D155 a viable option.

But no district can honestly offer traditional education right now, and we ask that you keep that in mind when you decide what risks we should take on behalf of our community.

Speaking of our community, there are potential benefits for us were our students to learn remotely from home as opposed to remotely in school.

We understand the huge burden that remote learning puts on families, particularly when their children are young.

But as a high school district, many of our students provide child care for siblings in our feeder schools, and their presence at home will provide relief for many of our community’s families.

Remote learning is not ideal for any student, but know that what we did in the spring wasn’t remote learning — it was crisis learning.

We were given very little time to redesign our curricula, and we did it under circumstances dictated by ISBE that deprived students of incentives to participate in learning.

Given advance notice, we could have the time to prepare robust remote curricula that will challenge our students and hold them accountable for their learning.

Additionally, if most students are learning from home, more of our spaces can be used for our students who need to be in our buildings every day, such as those in the FCS, FLS and Strive programs.

The building spaces and buses that our D155 students don’t use could be available for our feeder districts to use to provide appropriate social distance for their students.

These are all just possibilities, but we are experiencing this pandemic as a community, so we should think about our response to it as a community.

We appreciate the enormous task that the administration is facing in developing a plan to keep us safe and in school this year.

In fact, we have worked together across committees throughout the summer to figure out a way to make this work.

We’ll continue to do so.

When the time comes for you to decide our path, we respectfully ask that you keep these considerations in mind so that you are deciding between the options that are truly in front of you, and not just the ones we all wish were there.

Sincerely,
Devin Hester
D155 Education Association President


Comments

District 155 Teachers’ Union Email Considered “Threatening” by Board Member — 38 Comments

  1. “Additionally, if most students are learning from home, more of our spaces can be used for our students who need to be in our buildings every day, such as those in the FCS, FLS and Strive programs.

    The building spaces and buses that our D155 students don’t use could be available for our feeder districts to use to provide appropriate social distance for their students.”

    So if this is true, why can’t the kids just be in school with teachers again?

    It’s OK for other districts to use our buildings or for students to just be there, but no way can the teachers be there.

    Just more proof, students are not the main concern.

  2. The school are just brainwashing centers anyway…. so the shutdowns are good.

    Teachers are lazy, you just figured it out!?

  3. Covid its TOTAL LIE. No one has EVER died from Covid. No will EVER die from Covid. Cartoon characters do NOT kill. But people surely will die from the WiFi that has been installed in all the public buildings. The fear of going back into the buildings is real because people now know what the REAL “sickness” will be caused by. The weaponized 5g is what the people DON’T want to deal with. Remove all the WiFI and the new 5G routers and you will have no problems with anyone getting “sick”.

  4. It’s interesting how secondary school students can’t use the building, but elementary school students can. 🤔

  5. No I didn’t just figure it out.

    I’m taking advantage of what they are doing to publicly call them out on it.

  6. Odd, since Central HS was packed with vehicles yesterday?

    and since they spent a ton of $$ re-doing the front of that HS already for what?

    no school?

    or was it just to piss away more TAX $$ since that HS was to close sometime ago, due to low attendance…

    all very interesting…

  7. Just another in a long list of reasons why public sector employees should never have
    been unionized.

    They are the enemy of the taxpayers.

  8. I’m with Tom.
    I found the letter to be surprisingly thoughtful for coming from the union.
    Where’s the threat?

  9. Seems that you might want to know the “who” before presenting a “story”.

  10. Re: Honest Abe at 8:27 AM

    Democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, back in the 1930’s felt that public sector employees should not be unionized. In later years, President George Meany of the union AFL-CIO also felt that public sector employees should not be unionized.

    Per:

    https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-public-sector-unions

    “F.D.R. believed that “[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable.” Roosevelt was hardly alone in holding these views, even among the champions of organized labor. Indeed, the first president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, believed it was “impossible to bargain collectively with the government.””

    The China Virus pandemic may contribute to a paradigm shift in how education is delivered K-12 and colleges. Everything about the present system needs to be rethought with the twin goals of LOWERED COSTS per student and better outcomes.

  11. The archdiocese must open Catholic Schools, because the lost money from closing schools and pedo priests payouts. 🤔☹️

    The article mentions Catholic, Christian and Islamic schools, but not Lutheran and Jewish schools. 🤔☹️

  12. Jewish schools, like Catholic & Muslim schools are open.

    Have no knowledge of the Lutherans, but probably most privates are open.

    ✌️😎

  13. This was probably not one of the letters considered threatening.

    This was probably the only actual “letter” that could be released.

    Probably a lot of other communications that are more entertaining, but would have to be redacted thus:

    https://youtu.be/A34tKMBoiyU

    ✌️😎

  14. @Bread Winner:

    All true and previously known to me – but not to others, the uneducated pubic in general.

    A big hat tip of the hat for educating those here who were not properly educated, and keep
    up the good work.

  15. So this is supposed to be threatening?

    Agree or disagree with the content, but there is absolutely nothing threatening about this letter.

  16. Usually, threatening letters contain threats, fighting words and cussing. 😮

  17. “Some of us may die.”

    “This doesn’t mean that no school district can open during the pandemic. ”

    “Additionally, if most students are learning from home, more of our spaces can be used for our students who need to be in our buildings every day, such as those in the FCS, FLS and Strive programs.”

    Make up your mind, melodramatic nitwit. These goofballs are teaching kids?

  18. Eddie said: “It’s interesting how secondary school students can’t use the building, but elementary school students can. 🤔”

    Private schools, like Montini, seem to be open for business.

    Also, no trans history curriculum.

  19. What teachers seem to be saying is that their lives are more valuable than nurses, doctors, grocery store workerss, amazon fulfillment center workers, etc..

    Public employees need fear no interruption of pay, insurance, or guaranteed early pension benefits if they decide they do not want to work under conditions required by the job.

    Compare and contrast to nearly everyone else (and that includes everyone paying for teachers to demand special treatment upon their whim):

    Nurses doctors and others must decide whether to work, or quit.

    Quitting means no pay, no insurance, (and early retirement benefits were never part of their compensation packages).

    Teachers could have identical ppe to ed med pros, without the risks of exposure, yet teachers demand to have even more.

    That indicates that they hpld their personal safety as mpre previous than all others, and yet they demand all others be kept working despite even higher risks.

    I do not agree that teachers’ lives are more valuable than other members of society.

    For one example, if medical professionals die from COVID-19, it takes longer to replace one who is qualified to perform skilled medical functions than to replace the functions performed by a teacher.

  20. Only one letter was released, from the some threatening letters. 🤔

  21. SUSAN! NO ONE HAS DIED from any FAKE VIRUS! and no one WIll! Turn off your teevee. The cartoon virus goes away when you do that (along with your trauma-based mind-control).

  22. The district should just call their bluff.

    Let them strike.

    Hopefully we don’t still have to pay them if they are on strike.

  23. Ultimately, it’s the parent(s) or guardian(s) who decide on whether or not, to enroll their child(ren) in public, private or home school, for whatever reason(s). 😁

  24. It sure is.

    And I’m sure there will be quite a few who decide to keep home schooling with all the garbage the schools have been teaching our kids out in the open.

  25. I’m loving the Coronavirus and getting paid for posting a lesson plan from my dinning room table then going back to sleep, then the gym etc…..

    And I’m getting paid!!!!!

  26. What the heck guys common jus go back to freaking school it’s your god damn job do it right.

  27. FIRE THE ENTIRE UNION!!

    THEY HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE!!

    THERE ARE NO OTHER JOBS!!

    THIS IS THE OPPORTUNITY OF OUR LIFETIME!!

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