Speakers: Melanie Ho and Meredith McNeil
With COVID flare-ups across the country, teachers and unions are forcefully voicing health and safety concerns about returning to the classroom. K-12 leaders fear some extremely challenging staffing scenarios: what if 20%+ of my teachers can’t or won’t come back? How can we meet student:teacher ratios and social distancing targets if many teachers stay home? How do we find productive roles for stay-at-home teachers, when many aren’t proficient at distance instruction pedagogy? How can we find substitutes if large numbers of teachers fall ill or suddenly decide to opt out?
This session will present EAB research on this rapidly evolving issue, helping participants understand:
- Important health and safety concerns and positions of teacher advocacy groups and unions across the country
- Best-available public health research about teacher health risks from around the world
- Good-faith communications strategies for addressing teacher concerns and collaborating with unions
- Flexible daily and weekly schedule models and software tools to accommodate staffing volatility
- Creating new distance learning roles for op-out teachers, with fair quality and workload expectations
- Innovative team-teaching, classroom assistant and substitute models
- Pilots across the country for fast-track alternative credentialing and hiring models
- Top concerns for HR and finance