Open Letter to
BFT Executive Board Members
The letter of November 10, 2020 , signed “Your BFT Leaders” and made public without the name of a single BFT officer attached to it is false from beginning to end. It makes the BFT an uncritical partner in the District’s dangerous plan to reopen schools to face-to-face instruction during the pandemic by claiming that “BFT has been working closely with BUSD to ensure safe conditions for these early returning students.” And that, “Teachers are glad to see that our district has found a way to support the children who are most challenged by remote learning.”
In fact, teachers are not “glad to see” students being endangered and have not agreed to reopening. We know that the vast majority of students in Phase-1 are black and brown students. We all know that black and Latina/o children are hospitalized and die at rates many times that of white children, as do their parents. Reopening our schools while Covid is once again surging throughout the Bay Area, California, and spiking at catastrophic rates nationwide is not something we can possibly consider “safe conditions” for students or their families.
There has been no opportunity for BFT members to vote on the weak October 22st MOU that was signed by BFT Vice President Janine Waddell in a completely undemocratic manner and opened the door to this dangerous reopening of schools in the midst of a massive rise in COVID-19. The MOU that was signed behind our backs—allowing schools to open in-person, then claiming to ‘honor choice’ without even the minimum precaution of mandatory COVID testing for all students as well as staff – was a profound betrayal, a crime against our members and all of Berkeley and the Bay Area. To protect students, teachers, school support staff and families from the pandemic, BFT members must demand full membership votes on all COVID-19 related MOU’s.
There is no safe return to face-to-face instruction now. The rights and protections of teachers, students, and families which determine life and death are being handed-over to the District by current BFT President Matt Meyer, VP Janine Waddell, and other BFT Officers. While the Superintendent and Board cry crocodile tears about their concern for children falling behind academically, they endanger the lives of children and families by opening schools instead of dedicating the additional resources to Distance Learning that are needed to strengthen small-group instruction and services online. They refuse to protect the lives of children and families in the interest of “reopening” the economy and providing day-care so families – in particular of black and Latino families – are forced back into dangerous workplaces. The BFT must not go along with this.
The facts are not under dispute. The largest study of Covid transmission of over 500,000 people which included researchers from Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and UC Berkeley, found that children play an especially important role in transmitting COVID across all age groups, and that when children return to school, the opportunities for transmission are much greater. To protect our most vulnerable children we must stand on the truth. Our students deserve to be safe AND receive an equal quality education; they and their families must be provided with EVERY resource they need so children can learn safely at home. The vast majority of parents and students have chosen virtual learning – but the plan the Berkeley Superintendent Brent Stephens has for virtual learning is to undermine and weaken it.
The BFT must fight on our own independent program to defend human life and public education in the midst of this pandemic. We must demand mandatory and repeated testing and tracing of all students and staff to verify it is truly safe before there is any return to school by anyone at every phase. We must fight for bilingual education services and additional Distance Learning support for English Learners and students with special needs, including: technology, internet, technology support staff, increased teaching and instructional assistant staff, and smaller groups and smaller class-sizes. We need to fight for economic relief for families in need, including full paid leave, food payments, rent and/or mortgage payments or forgiveness, and medical and utility bill payments or forgiveness.
Our union is like a muscle – if we don’t use it we will lose it. If we don’t take back membership control of our union and continue to allow insane policies that literally put our lives and our students’ lives at risk to be imposed on us, not only will we not have a union, we will have utterly failed the youth of Berkeley. Now is not the time to allow cynical bureaucrats to put our democratic rights ‘on mute’ by signing MOU’s without membership input. EON/BAMN calls on all BFT members, students, and the communities of Berkeley to stand on the truth and put human life first.
Yvette Felarca
ELD, AVID Excel, and Humanities teacher at Martin Luther King Middle School
BFT Executive Board Member
Equal Opportunity Now/By Any Means Necessary Caucus (EON/BAMN)
