TEACHERS: We stand with you!
STRIKE TO WIN!

Keep the Schools Closed to Protect our Children from COVID19

We, the undersigned, oppose the in-person school reopening plan of Superintendent Vitti and the Detroit Board of Education. This plan is backed by Mayor Duggan and Governor Whitmer, and is part of Trump’s ongoing deadly policy of reopening the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The full reopening of schools is the fastest way to spread COVID-19 throughout a community. As schools and summer camps reopen across the country, COVID-19 cases among children are surging. Trump and Pence must resign or be removed NOW.

Stop the Racist Attacks on Detroit Students! We will not allow Detroit’s children to be guinea pigs to test the state’s ability to open schools on a larger scale. Despite misleading information we are given by media and so-called experts, we know that children and teenagers can get sick from COVID and can die, or can be left with long-term damage and trauma. Black children have been hospitalized with COVID-19 at a rate 5 times higher, and Latino children 8 times higher than white children. Since March Detroit has been an epicenter for COVID-19 outbreak. We suffered 23% of COVID-19 deaths in Michigan despite being home to only 6.7% of the state’s population. Almost every other school district in Metro Detroit are already planning to go 100% virtual this fall because they know it is not safe to return.

Superintendent Vitti and Mayor Duggan Must Resign Now so Detroit can live. Detroit has been called “ground zero” for the racist attacks on our students and on public education. Through student walkouts, teacher sickouts and strikes, mass community mobilizations, and relentless organizing, we have successfully driven out emergency managers, defeated the state takeover, winning back our democratic right to vote for a school board that is accountable to us. Superintendent Vitti is acting like another emergency manager. If he does not resign, our elected school board must do their job and fire him to protect our children. Vitti, Duggan and Whitmer have all acted with reckless disregard for our children’s lives by opening face-to-face summer school during this pandemic. Just yesterday, these politicians were posturing with the words “black lives matter.” Actions speak louder than words. If Governor Whitmer means what she said when she declared that racism is a public health crisis, she must use her executive power to close Detroit schools and all schools in Michigan.

The politicians and public health experts have utterly failed us. But Minneapolis has shown that we can stand for ourselves and our communities against racist inequality and attacks when we take matters into our own hands. We took matters into our own hands to shut down face-to-face summer school to prevent massive spread of COVID-19 to children and their families. The politicians and public health officials have utterly failed us. The new civil rights movement in Detroit and across the nation is the only force willing and able to take on this pandemic based on science and with the priority protecting of human life over profit.

We pledge to stand with our teachers in collective actions, including strikes and sickouts to protect our children and defend public education. We support the teachers demands for a quality contract before returning to work, including: pay parity with suburban districts, 20% raise for every teacher on every step, no merit pay; protections against harassment and retaliation from administrators; reduced class sizes and caseloads, hard caps on class sizes for online learning; No early return for special education students and teachers. Nobody returns to district buildings until it is safe for everyone to return!