MICHIGAN, USA — The Vice President of Michigan's State Board of Education, Pamela Pugh, is calling on state leaders to ensure COVID-19 exposure risks are addressed before schools reopen for the upcoming year.
Those exposure risks include:
- Ventilation
- Indoor Air
- Plumbing
- Ongoing cleaning
- Monitoring
- Maintenance planning
- Racial disparities in Black and brown communities.
"Our school buildings have been neglected for so long," said Pugh, "and we’re not addressing the needs within those buildings. We don’t know if and how ventilation systems can support adequate airflow, how dormant plumbing will be an issue."
She and other education partners are pushing for Michigan to join a comprehensive School Infection Prevention and Control Plan.
Pugh also called for racial health disparities to not be deepened in Black and brown communities by addressing issues with school building's infrastructure before allowing kids back in class.
"Most of our schools in the areas hardest-hit," said Pugh, "are those where the buildings and infrastructure have receive the least amount of attention."
Karen Weaver, a clinical psychologist and the former mayor of Flint, said these infrastructure challenges, like poor ventilation, must be address to avoid an unhealthy environment for children. She said we "can't have another devastation for our children" due to appropriate precautions not put in place.
"We all want the same thing, we want school to start back," said Weaver. "I understand the social and emotional support that is so important kids receive in school. These things are important for childhood development. But, and it’s a big but, those environments have to be safe, have to be healthy."'
Teachers also joined a virtual panel event, talking about demands they have collected from fellow educators. Some of those include:
- 14 consecutive days of no new COVID-19 cases in order to meet face-to-face.
- Ongoing, regular testing.
- Infected students are quarantined.
- Daily temperature checks.
- Masks worn by all students and staff.
- Require class size to have 6 feet distancing.
- PPE for entire school year for staff and students.
- Independent agency inspect to determine building readiness.
- Plastic separators for teachers desks and students desk, if possible.
- Teachers' banked sick days to be unaffected if required to quarantine.
- Statewide hotline to report discrepancies in schools.
"I want to be clear, we want to go back to school," said Lacetia Walker, a Detroit-area teacher. "We want to be with our students and support them, but we want to do so without the risk of contracting COVID-19. We want what’s best for us all. We want to work, we don’t want to die."
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