Associated Press
About 1,700 Broward County teachers who have been working remotely during the coronavirus pandemic have been ordered to return to their campuses when the spring semester begins next Monday.
Some teachers say they are living in fear as principals and Broward County school administrators each say it is the other’s responsibility to approve future remote work, the South Florida SunSentinel reported.
“Some of us have conditions that specifically state if we catch this virus, we’re dead,” said Anne Skurnick, a computer science teacher in Pembroke Pines, who has been teaching remotely due to the effects of medicine she takes for rheumatoid arthritis. “No one is taking responsibility for extending accommodations.”
The district wants to eliminate “overflow rooms,” where students sit in large areas with students from other classes and take online classes from a remotely working teacher.
“They’d rather us take a leave and have no certified teacher to teach,” Skurnick told the newspaper. “So it’s better to have a sub than a teacher from home?”
The issue could affect other districts. In Palm Beach County, there are 818 teachers working remotely, while Miami-Dade County has around 800 teachers working from home. South Florida has been especially hard-hit by COVID-19.
“Assignments are subject to change based upon the needs of the schools,” said Gonzalo La Cava, human resources chief for Palm Beach schools, told the newspaper. “There is no guarantee on the length of time an employee may be permitted to continue to work remotely.”
Miami-Dade Superintendent said the district is not currently “contemplating changing the process.”
All Broward County teachers worked remotely until October when schools reopened.
The district reviewed about 5,000 requests for remote work and approved about 2,000, 1,700 of whom are teachers. Priority was given to employees with certain health conditions such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease that could make the effects of COVID-19 more serious.
The teachers taught both students remotely learning and those who had returned to school.
“It was the expectation that if we continued e-learning, we would continue accommodations,” School Board member Debbi Hixon said.
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Republished with permission from The Associated Press.
