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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. The CDC has recently concluded that schools are not big contributors to spreading COVID-19, something parents listening right now are probably very tuned in about. On Tuesday, health officials called for returning students to their classrooms as soon as possible, according to The New York Times, as long as mask-wearing and social distancing can be maintained. That's at the federal level.

Locally, at least in some progressive neighborhoods in New Jersey, like Montclair and South Orange-Maplewood, the debate rages on and it's being framed by some as a dilemma for progressives, especially white progressives, when teachers unions often want support for keeping safe by teaching remotely, especially in the upper grades, and families of color are more inclined to keep their kids home. Joining me now to report on the New Jersey version of that battle and what if anything, Governor Phil Murphy can do about it are Andrew Rice contributing editor at New York Magazine who has a big story on this, and Nancy Solomon WNYC reporter who covers New Jersey. Hi, Andrew. Hi, Nancy.

Andrew Rice: Hi.

Nancy Solomon: Hi, Brian.

Brian: We'll open up the phones right away for any of you in Montclair, or the South Orange-Maplewood School District. Parents, educators what's going on in your town? What do you think will need to happen in order to get students back into classrooms, or to take the right position for everybody's interests and safety and education and lives? Tweet @BrianLehrer or call 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Andrew, you want to talk about your article in New York Magazine? Maybe for listeners who are not familiar with South Orange-Maplewood or Montclair describe them a little bit in the context of this.

Andrew: These are neighborhoods, or these are communities that-- they say in the story the cliche is that people move their "for the schools." They're largely made up of younger families that have moved out of New York City, oftentimes from Brooklyn, bringing their New York City cosmopolitanism and values and progressive ideals with them when they come to the community. These are places where Joe Biden won 90% of the vote and the big question is, who were those 10% of people who voted for Trump?

What has happened is that, over the course of this year, it's been very divisive because the school reopening issue has created a wedge between groups of people that normally would agree about everything else but actually when it comes to the schools, one group of people says that just hunker down, be safe, keep the schools closed and prioritize the valid concerns of the teachers who are concerned about their welfare, and other group says, "Children are suffering."

Brian: Before we bring in Nancy, and you're both open about this, so I'll say that you yourself, Andrew, are in Montclair. You write in the article in New York magazine that like many parents, you moved to Montclair for the schools. Nancy, you're open about living in the South Orange-Maplewood School District and are a parent to kids who attend there. Andrew, relative to where you live, Montclair, I gather that the schools were supposed to reopen on Monday for the first time since March for in-person learning, but then they didn't. What happened in Montclair?

Andrew: What happened was that basically after many plans and deadlines had passed and been scrapped, finally, the district said that they were prepared, that they had a plan, they thought it was going to be safe or as safe as they could possibly make it. They were supposed to have some in-service days to train the teachers in how to teach in this new hybrid modality and the teachers did not show for those days of training.

They tweeted out or they put out on their Instagram page, pictures of themselves at home, wearing union t-shirts and a hashtag that said "Business as usual." To parents in the district, there were some, feeling that perhaps things were not operating as usual within the district in any way. The upshot of it all was that basically the superintendent, said on Friday, with great regret, we would not be going back to school on Monday. Now it's in court. Apparently, the district is suing the union, and consequently, it's going to be a while.

Brian: Nancy, how fair or unfair do you think it would be to characterize this as wealthy white parents battling the teachers union?

Nancy: I think it's unfair. I don't know. I'm on the fence on this one. I understand the concerns on both sides and I feel those concerns on both sides. I think parents are concerned about the health of teachers and want to support the union, and yet, when you've got a kid at home, who's struggling, and I'm not talking about-- Personally, and I think a lot of parents would say, it's not about losing academic achievement and academic skills over the course of the year. It's really about the mental health of these kids, our kids. That's what's driving this, is this feeling that other school districts are doing it.

The CDC just put out guidelines and new research showing that infection rates have been low overall from schools. Parents are reading that and meanwhile, have been sitting at home with their kids watching their kids basically devolve emotionally for, not every kid, but for a lot of kids over the last eight months. You have a community of people who are struggling and want to do the right thing.

They want to do the right thing by their kids. They want to do the right thing by the teachers and the community and community spread. Meanwhile, the governor basically kicked the can down the road or avoided having to take responsibility by allowing each local school district to make its own decision. That in itself is going to bring about a lot of conflict when you have parents on both sides of the issue.

Brian: Let's take a phone call. Here is Donnie, parent of a first-grader in Maplewood. Donnie, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Donnie: Hi, Brian. Hi, Nancy. Hi, Andrew. I interviewed Nancy recently for a local article here [crosstalk]

Nancy: Hi, Donnie.

Donnie: Hi, Nancy, how are you?

Nancy: Good.

Donnie: I really am wearing my parent hat when I speak with you today. I have a first-grader who has been doing virtual and we help as much as we can. I want to talk about the experience that he has had and the communications he's had with his class and speaking, specifically what happens day by day. Now, I know, at least on three occasions, our teacher has said to the class, "We can't wait to see you in school again. We're really looking forward to this," or, "When we get back--" That creates a sense of hope for my son.

We've had to have these conversations about that because, the big word in our family has been "tentative". "Wait a second, I know this might happen but then things are going to change." I think the hardest thing that I experienced is when he was assigned to write a persuasion. They do this, of course, persuasion exercise, "Write it to Dr. Taylor, the superintendent about the importance of going into school." Here I'm looking at his, "Online learning could be better if we didn't have to do it. We can not lose internet or get knocked off. There's no [unintelligible 00:09:24]" That's my son in first grade.

It's very hard, on one hand, my son is writing a persuasive letter to the superintendent and given a sense of hope, and then having to have, especially now, a ton of conversations about, "This is going to happen, but there are changes," and of course, speak respectfully of his teachers. There are a lot of parents that are putting up that Facebook profile, "I stand with teachers." I've never met a parent, ever, that doesn't stand with a teacher, but I feel that there is not a voice happening for the children. Also, these very hyper-specific moments happening in class, those are not being articulated. I find that very problematic.

Brian: Donnie, thank you very much for your call. I'm going to go right on to another caller and then our guests will discuss, the both of you or maybe even three in a row. Montserrat in Montclair. You're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in. Hi.

Montserrat: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I love your show. I'm calling because I have a daughter who went into middle school this year and she's an only child, so she spends a lot of time on her own, doing homework or just going to class and doing homework all day on the computer. I lost my mom from COVID earlier in the year.

Brian: Oh, I'm sorry.

Montserrat: No. It's many thousands of other people and I feel that this push to open the schools really by parents who are working from home, who as far as I can see when I look at Facebook posts and protests that they organize for a couple of these weekends most of this parents are white. They are, I'm assuming people who have the flexibility to go to a protest in the middle of the day. Even though we all wanted the kids to go back to school, that's really putting too much of a burden on teachers. Who knows what they have at home? Family members, vulnerable friends or whatever.

I think it is really misguided. The push should be on the district doing something to adjust to this virtual schooling, for example, getting rid of homework or lessening the amount of homework, which is ridiculous, at least at the middle school level which just makes the kids be on the computer hours more than they have to be, or having shorter school days or fewer school days or something else that doesn't put the teachers at risk. That puts everything into the perspective that people are dying and that going back to school, while we all want to do that, may not be the safest thing for teachers, especially who are exposed to dozens of kids while parents are sitting at home, not having to go into work.

I'm one of those parents. I don't have to go into work, but I wouldn't want to make the teachers go in when I don't have to. That's my perspective on this.

Brian: What's your thinking, Montserrat, about this paradox that some people point out or at least is described sometimes as a paradox that it's lower-income, minority students, Black and brown students who are the most likely to suffer the worst educational and mental health impacts of long-term remote schooling and yet it's those families who are much more likely to keep their kids home when they're given a choice? Because of what you say, they are also more likely to see in their own personal lives, people who've got sick and died.

Montserrat: I think it's misguided to think that going back to school is the way that it's going to fix this because those kids already are at a disadvantage, even when schools are in person. The resources and the thinking should be how to help those kids given the situation perhaps having tutoring programs, or working specifically with those kids in some way to make sure that they have the resources they need, as opposed to just handing them a computer, and then expecting them to do all this work that a kid who has his own room at home or whatever can do.

Channeling those resources in ways that truly helps those kids, not only during the pandemic but afterwards because those kids are still going to be at a disadvantage even when school starts again. Making this sort of a solution is just [unintelligible 00:13:56]

Brian: Montserrat, thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it. Let's do one more in a row here. Now we're going to get a teacher's perspective here. Cindy, a teacher in Montclair. Cindy, are on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in.

Cindy: Thank you. I'm actually working on my report cards right now, so that's why I'm not in my classroom. I teach at a very small independent school in Montclair, and we did reopen in September in-person. We created outdoor learning spaces. Some of our teachers opted to teach remotely, so we had to come up and some of our students opted to stay home. We are in a very challenging-

Brian: The teachers were given the choice, Cindy?

Cindy: Yes. Some of us because of individual considerations or teaching via Zoom. Believe me, this is very hard but we've created a structure where we have teachers Zooming in. We have students Zooming in. We have students in-person, and teachers in-person. We are an independent school and we also have an independent faculty bargaining unit. We negotiated it over the summer to-- Trust me, it's a tiny school, but we did negotiate over the summer how we could make it happen.

I think part of what's so difficult is scaleability of what's involved and instituting protocols that everyone has to obey and abide by in terms of the kinds of things that we do in order to keep us-

Brian: PPEs, [crosstalk], and things.

Cindy: Yes, all of that. In our classrooms right now are very cold. Tomorrow we're going to be all remote because of the anticipated cold weather. We have had to be really nimble and really creative, but I have to say that given all of that it's very hard. I sympathize with both parents and teachers because it's really, really hard to make that choice to potentially expose yourself to the illness.

Brian: Right because the trade-offs have such downsides on both sides. Cindy, thank you so, so much for your call. We heard three callers in a row there with different perspectives, and coming from different places relative to these situations in Maplewood, South Orange, and Montclair, with Andrew Rice who wrote about this for New York Magazine and WNYC New Jersey reporter, Nancy Solomon.

Nancy, the point that the last call or the teacher was just making in a way, this is the tragedy of it, that every school can't be like hers. She's coming from a private school that's small. They can give both teachers and students their choice as to whether to go in or whether to do it remotely. They can, more or less, easily outfit the physical school to be as safe as possible. She mentioned the difficulty of scaling, scaling it up when you're dealing with a whole public school system. What's your reaction to that or any of it?

Nancy: I think it's a great point. It really speaks to the frustration that any parent has ever had in their public school system, which is that there is always a lack of thinking outside the box. Obviously this has been a huge endeavor for schools to teach kids virtually or come up with these hybrid systems, but I've been frustrated since last March about, why aren't the kids going to school outside and at least meeting in groups with masks on outside their schools, with their teachers, when the weather allows? That doesn't get talked about. It doesn't happen.

I did a story earlier or late in the fall of last year about pods, and that parents were putting their kids together in the small pods to give them social peer interaction that they were desperate for, but you don't see the school organizing it. I talked to people in private education and independent schools who were doing that very thing, having schools organize these pods, "Why are parents doing it?" Then you have all kinds of issues that come up around, who's doing it and who isn't doing it. There's been a frustration also among many people that the gyms and other kinds of stores and businesses have been open but we haven't prioritized the schools.

Brian: Or that smokers get higher priority than teachers as a group in New Jersey for the vaccine.

Nancy: Yes, that's an explosive one, but go ahead, Andrew.

Brian: Andre,w jump in, man. We've only got about two and a half minutes [crosstalk]

Andrew: You just brought up something that we should really emphasize here, which is that we have the capacity to solve at least part of this problem, that Montserrat was talking about, which is the problem for asking another adult to go in and expose themselves to great risk by teaching in-person. We now have the vaccine, we now have technology, and it's a matter of delivering the vaccine and deciding who's prioritized for the vaccine. If we decide as a society, that we want to have schools, that we think in-person school is important, we need to lobby our leaders to get the vaccine to teachers.

Teachers want it. They're not prioritized in New Jersey currently and that's something that we can do. That's something that I think parents and the union can agree on should be an absolute high priority to try to get the vaccine into the arms of as many teachers, especially because many, many teachers are currently in the classroom in New Jersey. Outside of these districts that we're talking about many, many, many teachers are even full time in-person. We need to get them the vaccine.

Nancy: I asked the governor about this last night.

Brain: You know what? Let me play this 44-second clip of the governor and then you'll get 20 seconds to have the last word about it. Here's Governor Murphy.

Governor Murphy: There are teachers with chronic medical conditions who are getting vaccinated. They're not jumping the line, they've got some comorbidity and they're eligible. In the broader sense, particularly given the Biden administration has sent us a bump up and we know we'll have that for a number of weeks, I hope sooner than later, I'd say within a few weeks, we're going to get to the next group and that will most certainly be and include educators. I think it's sooner than later, but we got a little bit of this first wave of supply-demand, yet a little bit more imbalanced with that increased supply. Our educators are doing an extraordinary job, and their next up to bat.

Brian: That's from Nancy's excellent monthly, has Governor Murphy call in from last night. Nancy, we have 12 seconds for you. Wrap it up.

Nancy: All right. Again, I don't understand why there can't be some middle ground. What about teachers over the age of 50? Could you vaccinate them? They're the ones most at risk. He had a good answer about the fact that they need to get older people vaccinated. They're the ones who are dying in New Jersey, but I just feel like there isn't enough middle ground.

Brian: WNYC's Nancy Solomon and Andrew Rice, who wrote a long article about this in New York Magazine, thank you both.

Nancy: Thanks, Brian.

Andrew: Thanks.

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