Richard Corcoran, the Florida Department of Education’s commissioner, issued an emergency order July 6 demanding all Florida public schools to be open for in-person learning by the end of August.
Corcoran’s emergency order echoed comments made by Gov. Ron DeSantis, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and President Donald Trump, all of whom want schools opened in the fall regardless of the growing numbers of positive coronavirus cases and the growing safety concerns from teachers.
The Florida Education Association (FEA), the state’s largest teachers union with more than 100,000 education workers represented, responded to Corcoran’s emergency order by filing a lawsuit July 20 against Corcoran, DeSantis, the Florida Board of Education, the Florida Department of Education and Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez.
“The state’s directive does not allow for adequate planning and does nothing to ensure that the necessary safety protocols will be in place when schools open,” the FEA stated on its website. “Learning should continue through online instruction until it is safe to return to the classroom and elected officials must comply with appropriate public health official guidelines every step of the way.”
Other lawsuits have been filed throughout the state by local unions and parents seeking to stop public schools from being forced to hold in-person classes. As of press time, schools are still being required to hold face-to-face classes by the end of August.
With unions, teachers and parents awaiting rulings from the courts and with the numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths continuing to climb in Florida, we checked in with a handful of LGBTQ teachers from six different counties to see how they are preparing to return to the classroom and how safe they really feel in doing so.
In Sarasota, Booker High School history and psychology teacher Gail Foreman is not only safeguarding her classroom but her home as well.
“We’re having an outside shower installed so that I don’t bring anything into the house from the school,” Foreman says. “I’m not so much concerned for myself but my wife didn’t sign up for me to bring home the coronavirus to her.”
Foreman says while she rates her personal risk as rather low, she says her wife falls into a moderate risk category.
“We’ve been together nearly 29 years,” she adds. “I’m not willing by any stretch of the imagination to put our home, our friends and our family in jeopardy because of my job.”
In her classroom, Foreman says wearing masks at all times will not even be a question and each student’s temperature will be checked as they enter into her room. Foreman has also purchased sprays that she can use to disinfect her classroom before the students come in.
“I will spray and then let the kids in,” she says. “There will be a hand sanitizing station in multiple spots in my room and the kids will be able to use hand sanitizers at their will.”
As she protects her classroom, Foreman says that school administrators are doing everything they can to make the faculty and students as safe as possible.
“Our administrator Rachel Shelley will make sure that her teachers stay safe,” Foreman says.
Just as in her class, Foreman says masks will be mandatory school wide. Students and faculty will also be required to socially distance, pathways throughout the school will be restricted and additional lunch periods will be added to allow students to space out and be able to remove their masks while eating.
The school is also offering to install sneeze shields in the classroom if the teacher wants them. Foreman says she passed on the barriers because of her teaching style.
“I elected to not have a sneeze shield put in my room because I’m a mobile teacher,” she says. “I don’t sit at my desk and I want to be engaged with my kids.”
Sarasota County Public School teachers officially returned to the classroom Aug. 17 for pre-planning and students who are opting to return face-to-face are expected in class Aug. 31.
Foreman, who has been teaching for 25 years and is on the executive board of her union, says the district is doing what they can but everyone’s hands are tied due to the state order.
“Unfortunately Gov. DeSantis, or Gov. DeathSantis as I call him, he doesn’t see the big picture,” she says. “His happy little behind needs to be in a classroom. If he and his staff are so confident that this is such a safe time for us to return to school then let them come with us, be in the room with us and stay in the room with us.”
In neighboring Manatee County, Braden River High School fine arts department chair Ricardo Robinson-Shinall is also frustrated with state officials for forcing in-person classes with coronavirus not under control in Florida.
“A school is a Petri dish and as much as we would like to think that kids are going to be able to keep to themselves,” Robinson-Shinall says, “they’re constantly touching each other and are close to each other. If one person gets a cold those kids come into contact with sometimes 300 people a day, so imagine how quickly that spreads … I for one am always patient zero when cold and flu season happens.”
Robinson-Shinall, who has taught drama and dance at Braden River for the last six years, says safeguarding his classroom leads to some interesting challenges since both of his subjects require a great deal of movement.
“I’m creating a grid system so each student has a box that is six feet away from the next student. That way each kid has their own personal dance or acting space while they’re in the studio,” he says. “A lot of what I’m going to be doing this year is so different. I’m not going to be doing as much physical activity because the students will have to wear masks 100% of the time. It is going to be more academic focused and they’re going to have projects at home to work on.”
Robinson-Shinall will also have hand sanitizer stations and will be thoroughly wiping down all surfaces in his class.
Manatee County schools are allowing students to choose whether they want full-time on campus learning, completely online classes or a hybrid of the two.
“My students opted for roughly 40% in class, 40% hybrid and 20% completely at home,” Robinson-Shinall says. “Because of that everything I teach this year is going to be recorded and put up online so that my students who are at home will still be a part of the lesson. Either they can be there live as I’m teaching it in the moment or they can go back later and watch it after it’s all done.”
Manatee County students returned to classes Aug. 17. Teachers have been back since Aug. 3.
Robinson-Shinall adds that “the mess of trying to keep kids socially distanced and reduce class sizes is causing many students to do without certain classes,” and the first place that always gets hit are the electives.
“My principal said it best: ‘When restaurants opened up, they opened up with limited menus.’ That’s kind of what we’re doing at schools. It’s not going to be school as we have known it before and it’s sad,” he says.
Dwayne Shepherd understands Robinson-Shinall’s pain and frustration. Shepard has taught visual arts at Pinellas County’s Osceola Middle School in Seminole for 19 years.
“To a lot of us teachers in Pinellas County it feels like nobody has a plan,” Shepherd says. “They probably do have a plan but they aren’t communicating it to us and that’s creating a lot of anxiety. Many teachers do not want to go back or do not feel like it’s safe at all to go back considering how bad Florida’s numbers are.”
Shepherd says a survey conducted in Pinellas County found only 40% of parents are comfortable sending their kids to face-to-face classes.
“I love teaching. I miss my students and I miss my art room,” he says. “I miss my co-teachers but I just do not feel like it’s safe at all. We’re going to have to teach the 40% of students that are there in the physical classroom and then we’re going to also have to teach the 60% online. It’s going to be a mess.”
The Pinellas County School Board has stated that everyone in the county’s schools will be required to socially distance and wear face masks. Osceola Middle will also expand the number of lunch hours they have and will stagger classes as they are dismissed at the end of the day.
Even with those safety measures in place, Shepherd says a lot of the questions teachers have haven’t been answered, and with students currently scheduled to return back to classes Aug. 24, he says time is short to get those answers.
“If I’ve touched a pencil and a student needs a pencil, can I loan them one I’ve already touched? I have a set of art supplies, but I use them for every class so can I use the same supplies for each class or does every marker, pencil and paint brush have to be sanitized in between?” he says. “I think there’s just going to be a huge amount of questions and problems when school does get started that a lot of people really haven’t thought about. These people making the rules have not been classroom teachers for a while.”
In Seminole County, Lake Howell High School English teacher Bobby Agagnina has been working closely with his district on the policies needed to be in place for his county’s schools re-opening. Along with being an English teacher for 11 years, Agagnina is also the vice president of Seminole County’s teachers union.
“We are going to give it our best go. I think instructionally and educationally for the students, we are teachers and we are going to make it work. The kids will learn, but health and safety are the biggest concerns right now,” he says. “I do feel awful because our county leadership would not have been put in this situation if Tallahassee had not intervened.”
According to Agagnina, one institution Seminole County’s superintendent is happy to have intervene is Florida’s Department of Health.
“The superintendent is being guided by the health department and science,” Agagnina says. “If the health department says it is best practice then we adopt it.”
Seminole County offered parents and students the option to do face-to-face classes, live online streaming classes or virtual work-at-your-own-pace classes.
“They sent this out to the teachers to see which option worked best for them and teachers will also be given the option, but of course this will all be based on student need,” Agagnina says. “Most teachers who were considered high risk or had a family member who is at high risk, they were given priority for one of the remote jobs.”
Just as with other school districts, Seminole County will be mandating masks and social distancing but even with safety measures in place, Agagnina thinks what should be happening is the state needs to put the brakes on re-opening Florida schools.
“As we are being forced to return by the governor and the commissioner of education, who are both clueless and reckless, we are going to rush back and people will get sick. Then we are going to have to shut down all over again,” he says. “For me, even if it is only one student who gets COVID that is one student too many.”
Teachers in Hillsborough County have had a harder go at it as students are set to return Aug. 24.
Married couple Lora Jane Riedas and Valerie Chuchman, both science teachers at Riverview High School, say the hardest part right now is they feel like they are in limbo. They say the county has yet to tell teachers if they will be teaching in-person or the virtual classes.
“Hillsborough County did the letter of intent to parents and students asking are you doing e-learning or are you going to do in-person classes and then they asked the teachers the same thing. So right now it’s like Harry Potter’s sorting group — sorting out e-learning teachers with e-learning students and in-person teachers with in-person students — but nobody has been given a definite answer,” Chuchman says.
Riedas and Chuchman say that as far as safe guarding the school and their classrooms, all they have been given so far is a 50-pack of disinfecting wipes and a face mask. While no detailed safety measures have been communicated, Chuchman says that teachers who wanted to purchase their own Plexiglas to protect their classrooms were told they couldn’t do so.
“The school board said absolutely not, because if some teachers have that in their classroom then you have to buy it for every classroom. So they’re not even allowing us to do our own sort of protections,” she says.
What they have told them is that department meetings and teacher gatherings will be limited.
“They want less than 10 people in a room together for department meetings and things like that,” Chuchman says. “So as of right now it’s keep your mask on around people, stay socially distanced and here are your wipes.”
While the school is limiting how many teachers can be gathered in a room, they are not limiting the amount of students who will be in class.
“What we have been told is if/when we return for in-person instruction, we’re going to have our normal class sizes. Normally I have 24 to 28 students per class, so I usually have about 150 students per day,” Chuchman says. “I guess the idea is that you’re limiting interactions in the hallways but you cannot social distance in the class. If I set my chairs up in rows I’m going to have maybe a foot and a half in between each student to get 28 desks in my room. I don’t know what the point is.”
Not having their schedules solidified is causing extra anxiety for the couple because Riedas is considered high risk due to a health issue and the school has yet to verify if she will be able to be a virtual teacher when classes start.
“We have been told, because of our circumstances and health risks, that the two of us are most likely going to be e-learning and that gives us a great relief,” Riedas says, “but if we are not able to e-learn we are going to have to take leaves of absence because we just don’t feel that it would be safe.”
“I mean in Hillsborough here we have a real debacle happening,” Chuchman says. “We know when we are starting, Aug. 24, but who is teaching what and how we are teaching, nobody knows that.”
While high schools and middle schools are working to figure out how to open schools safely, elementary schools offer up a whole new set of challenges because of the students’ young ages.
Kevin Hanna is a second grade teacher at Citrus Elementary School in Orange County. Much like other counties have done, Orange County provided parents and students the option to attend face-to-face classes, live streaming classes or virtual learning classes.
“I got lucky and I am only doing virtual,” Hanna says, “but I will still have to teach from the classroom. I am still coming into the school and the kids will all have to follow the regular schedule. It’s not a work-at-your-own pace where I’m posting things online. I’m going to be live on the screen with the kids.”
While Hanna will be teaching remotely, he still has prepared his classroom in the event he needs to have any of his kids come in or has any visitors throughout the day.
“I have hand sanitizer that I’m putting right by the door and I have my mask, so that’s always ready to go as soon as I need it,” he says.
School wide, Hanna says that administrators have made traffic in the hallways and stairways flow one way so there will be no crossing paths. The recess schedule will also be rotated so only one class is outside at a time.
“They are trying to reduce class sizes,” Hanna says. “So I know in second grade here, three teachers have blended classes — both face-to-face and virtual — so those teachers have eight to 12 in-person kids instead of the usual 18. They’ve also tried to take out extra furniture so that we have as much space as possible to spread the desks. They’re still not six feet apart though.”
Hanna says that while the school is doing everything it can do to keep the kids safe, it is going to be a challenge to get elementary-aged kids to follow a set path in the hallways when they are used to going in whatever direction they wanted to.
“Like the stairwell that’s right next to my room is only going to be an upstairs well. So training myself not to go down those stairs is going to be hard,” he says. “If I had kids I imagine getting them to follow the one ways is going to be difficult, but that’s why it is going to be so important getting those routines in place so that it becomes second nature to do things in a safe way. I think that’s probably going to be one of the biggest challenges.”
Kevin Hanna teaches the second grade at Citrus Elementary School in Orange County. (Photo Courtesy Kevin Hanna)
While Hanna says he is relatively young and healthy, he is still nervous about schools coming back into session.
“There is a part of me that thinks that it won’t be safe for the whole year because the state is such a mess,” he says. “But I would be afraid to commit to that, especially as a second grade teacher. It is really important for relationship building and those interactions with the kids that you can’t really do virtually.”
Regardless of the outcome of pending lawsuits and if or when all Florida schools will be up and running, Hanna says he will just keep going how he has been going.
“I’ve been as cautious as I can be,” he says. “It’s been a boring life, but you know, I have to keep myself safe and try to keep myself healthy for my kids.”
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