As more and more people recognize that shuttering schools has been one of the worst mistakes we could have made in our paranoid response to COVID19, and have been pushing to get kids back in school where they belong, as would be expected based on their sordid history, the way-too-powerful teachers' unions have been one of biggest - if not the biggest - impediment to doing what is best for our kids. This impediment was recently documented in an article in USA Today: Your kid might not return to a classroom this year. Are teachers unions to blame? (I believe it's a rhetorical question):

This was supposed to be the semester when America's largest school districts reopened.

COVID-19 vaccinations are rolling out. Studies have shown in-school transmission of the virus is low. Thousands of schools have successfully brought kids back in person, while kids who stayed home have struggled.

Yet many parents are realizing their children may never see their teachers in person this year. A growing number blame their local teachers union, even as President Joe Biden and his administration make in-person instruction a priority.

"It's so frustrating," said Adam Grandi, a father of two elementary students in San Francisco, where the district scrapped a Jan. 25 reopening date because the school board couldn't reach an agreement with the union. "Of course, we all feel for the teachers, and we appreciate the work they're doing, but it feels like the union is looking out for themselves, which is their job, but it’s at the expense of a whole lot of kids and families."

Almost three out of four urban districts offer only online instruction, according to a new report from the Center on Reinventing Education at the University of Washington. Some districts that got kids back to schools face major pushback from unions, predominantly around safety measures and the spike in COVID-19 infection rates in the community.

Per the CDC, here are current mortality rates for the "killer" COVID-19:

• 0-19 years: 0.003%
• 20-49 years: 0.02%
• 50-69 years: 0.5%
• 70+ years: 5.4%

Amd current OHA terrifying stats for Oregon:

• Test positivity rate: 4.48% (140063/3,122,704)
• Mortality rate: 1.37% (1924/140063)
• Percentage of OR population dead from COVID: 0.04%

And for that, teachers unions are living in fear, expecting us to do the same, and are willing to throw away our kids and their education. In the tradition of moving the goaldposts, their demand now is that everyone get vaccinated first. That should take just enough time to run out the school year, right?

In Chicago Public Schools, the nation's third-largest district, the teachers union voted to continue to work from home rather than report to school buildings Monday – a move that effectively defied the city's reopening plan after a slim majority of union members approved the resolution over the weekend.

Then there's Baltimore, who, unlike the unions, care more about the kids.

###Some reopen without union### Absent the money, time or consensus to give teachers what they want, some schools are forging ahead with reopening anyway.

Leaders of Baltimore City Public Schools announced a plan to open classrooms for the youngest children Feb. 16, followed by older elementary students as well as ninth and 12th graders March 1.

Baltimore schools CEO Sonja Santelises said more than half of third through 12th graders have failed a class during remote learning, and the district can't wait for all teachers to be vaccinated before opening buildings.

And what have they found in Baltimore in regards to the "deadly" COVID infections among students?

No instances of transmission of the virus between students or staff have occurred in the city schools since small groups of students were allowed back Sept. 28, Santelises said, adding that contract tracers have been working to detect sources of the virus. While there have been cases in schools, those individuals have contracted the virus in the community rather than the school.

There has been one case of transmission of the virus at a meal distribution site, she said.

And the science gets in the way of the unions complaints.

Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at Harvard University and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, said the thinking has shifted toward reopening schools because data shows younger grades are not typically the main source of transmission, at least when control measures are in place.

“The balance has changed, and there’s a sort of mantra now that schools should be the last to close and the first to open,” Lipsitch said at a Harvard event in mid-January.

And then there are the teachers in San Francisco. Boy, do they take the cake.

###A San Francisco showdown### Teachers union officials maintain that the health and safety of their members and the community are paramount.

They're really here to serve the kids first, right?

Susan Solomon, president of the San Francisco Teachers Union, said rates of transmission are too high to reopen and the district has not committed to enough testing for staff and students.

"Staff are doing all we can to provide instruction and social/emotional supports to our students and their families, and we want very much to return to in-person instruction with our students when it is safe," she said in a statement.

I'm still waiting for any of these union people to give a good answer to the question: is there anything in life that is "perfectly safe"?

District officials said the union is making new requests, such as holding off on returning until rates of virus transmission drop below what the school board and state and local health orders are willing to allow.

If they're like the LA Unified teachers' union, they want 14 days of 0 infections. In other words, never.

And, like me, the parents are stuck in the middle, between worthless bureaucrats and the unions.

Grandi, the father in San Francisco, works for the city's health department as a deputy director of a child mental health clinic. He frequently sees children who are struggling or not engaged in remote learning because they don't have stable resources or their families don't have the bandwidth to help them.

Those children would be better served by attending school in person, and their needs are getting overlooked, Grandi said.

Andrew Reeder, a San Francisco parent with a 9-year-old daughter, said it's frustrating to see other cities with higher rates of virus transmission send kids back to school.

I think at this point they should just say, we’re not going back," he said. "It feels like there's no recourse for us as parents.

And finally, there are the teachers themselves - the people that the unions theoretically serve.

Teachers who wish to return to classrooms said the union isn't representing their views.

David Moisl teaches kindergarten in San Francisco and has a child in first grade. He learned through media reports that his union doesn't believe moving teachers to the front of the vaccine line is, on its own, enough to reopen schools.

"I was under the impression that's what would end this pandemic," Moisl said. "It feels like the light at the end of the tunnel has been extinguished."

The three left coast governors - Gavin Newsom, Kate Brown, and Jay Inslee - have all been absolutely awful in their handling of this "pandemic", but of the three, Inslee is the one who seems to be waking up the quickest to reality, and understands the idea that the snowflake teachers need to be "safe" before they can return to the classroom is cowardly and unreasonable. He had the following to say at a recent press conference

First, he doesn't think teachers should be moved to the head of the line for vaccinations for logical reasons.

The governor was asked if his office had given thought to declaring a school employee vaccination day as a means of getting students back to the classroom faster, and letting all teachers, regardless of age, get the COVID-19 vaccine.

“No, we have not given consideration to that,” Gov. Inslee said, for a couple of reasons.

The first reason he gave is there’s a “mathematical equation” that must be faced, which is a “very difficult reality.” As he explained, if you vaccinate a 25-year-old teacher, then an older person doesn’t get a dose.

“The reality is if you give [a 25-year-old teacher] that vaccine, her 80-year-old grandmother doesn’t get it. And her … mother doesn’t get it,” Inslee said.

“So every teacher that is vaccinated today means one less 80, 90, 100, 70, 65-year-old person gets the vaccine,” he added. “And we don’t have enough vaccine for those folks. There’s 1.7 million people in that category of over 65, or over 50 in multigenerational housing, … and we’re only getting about 116,000 doses a week.”

Makes perfect sense to me.

“So while we have limited doses, we simply can’t do that today,” he said about vaccinating all teachers. “We hope to do that as soon as we can, and as I’ve indicated, we’re making real progress to accelerate the day when we can do that. And educators are in the tranche after we get through the folks of a certain age.”

“It’s a decision that we’re doing to save lives, and the way to save lives is to vaccinate the people whose lives actually are in danger,” he continued. “Nine out of 10 of the deceased are over 60 years of age. We are vaccinating teachers who are over 65, and those over 50 in multigenerational households today, but that’s the people who die. And it seems to me, I think the educators I know, think that we ought to vaccinate the people whose lives are at risk today, and that’s these people.”

Next he addressed the myth from the unions that schools can't be opened "safely":

“Second thing: I believe that we can open up our schools safely, now, as long as we use proper hygiene and good systems,” Gov. Inslee continued. “We have proven this. We have proven this because there’s over 100,000 pupils in the state of Washington who have been doing this safely for months now. This is not an academic exercise — all you have to do is go to the schools around the state who are doing this successfully with minimal, very minimal, in-school transmission.”

“And so the fear of this is understandable, but it’s not backed up by our experience,” he said. “Because our experience is showing you can operate schools safely, we’re doing it all over the state of Washington today. And the reason we’re doing it is because educators are extremely smart, and very disciplined, and we have discovered ways to do this in a very safe way — spreading out the students, using masking, having cohorts, not allowing them to mix at recess. So the proof is in the pudding.”

In other words, reality trumps data models, lab studies, and any other excuse that doesn't match real life.

The best part of the news conference, however, was where he addressed the unions and their utopian fantasy that 1) they are much more important than anyone else in the world, and 2) that they deserve special protection.

The third point the governor made is that there is no way to completely remove transmission risk.

"Now the third thing I will say is that there’s no zero risk,” Gov. Inslee said. “Anytime you step out of your living room, … there’s some risk, right? There’s no zero risk environment.

To have educators go back to the classroom, Inslee said, is not asking anything more than what’s been asked of grocery clerks.

We’ve asked our grocery clerks to go on site, and do their job, and as a result we have food to eat. We’re not asking any more than we ask of bus drivers, who have now gone into buses to make sure that we can commute,” he said. “It’s not anything more than we’ve asked from our child care providers, and they’ve stepped up to the plate, or the firefighters, or the police officers. So to the extent that communities do make the decision to go back to onsite learning, they’re asking educators no more than they have asked for the other parts of our community that keep us safe, and help our community thrive.

Yet for these teachers and their unions, for some reason they are extra special and supposedly deserve more protection, and are perfectly willing hold our kids and their education hostage for their unreasonable fantasy.