SAN ANTONIO – The Texas State Teachers Association announced Tuesday that they are demanding to start the school year by utilizing remote learning models.
Leaders from several San Antonio-area teacher unions released the following statement on Tuesday:
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“For the sake of our health and the health of our students and communities, we demand that our school districts provide only remote instruction for the first nine weeks of the new school year and that the state not penalize the districts with funding cuts.
We are in the middle of a deadly COVID-19 pandemic that we fear is getting worse. It is not right to require teachers and other school employees to endanger their health and even their lives by returning to campuses when it is too dangerous to do so.
Under current Texas Education Agency guidelines, districts will be required to offer on-campus classes or lose state funding. Teachers want to teach. But we didn’t sign up – and neither did our support staff – to put our lives at risk when that can be avoided by common-sense precautions, such as an extended period of virtual learning.
Districts are being blackmailed by the state – the loss of funding – into reopening before it is safe for students and school employees to do so. We call on the state to fully fund all school districts, including those that choose to emphasize safety and provide only remote learning for the first nine weeks of the semester.”
Additionally, TSTA released standards for safe students, schools and communities; it can be read in full below.
Tsta Standards for Safe Schools by Jakob Rodriguez on Scribd