SF Mayor London Breed Shamelessly Sues SFUSD For Indoor Classes

San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera have shamelessly launched a lawsuit against San Francisco Unified School District to try and force schools in San Francisco to reopen classes indoors. She said in a Tweet,

"I'm joining with City Attorney @DennisHerrera in support of this lawsuit today. This is not the path we would have preferred, but nothing matters more right now than getting our kids back in school."

This lawsuit comes as the new CDC Director for the Biden Administration says that “vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safe reopening of schools" and Democrats increasingly entire difficult negotiations as they try to force schools to reopen.

Teachers are close to striking in Chicago, where talks have broken down between Chicago Mayor Lightfoot, Chicago Public Schools, and Chicago Teachers Union. Yesterday former Presidential Candidate Michael Bloomberg lambasted teachers in a MSNBC television interview:

EXCLUSIVE: @MikeBloomberg tells @SRuhle "It's time for Joe Biden to stand up and say the kids are the most important things...and teachers just are going to have to suck it up and stand up and provide an education. Otherwise these kids have no chance whatsoever."@MSNBC pic.twitter.com/UYSSvQeh6W — MSNBC Live with Stephanie Ruhle (@RuhleOnMSNBC) February 3, 2021

Embattled California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is currently facing a recall effort, seems to have also flip-flopped on this issue now as well saying yesterday:

"We can safely open schools as we process a prioritization to our teachers of vaccinations and still keep our teachers, our paraprofessionals -- which means bus drivers, our cafeteria workers, janitors that are essential workers to keep our schools safe -- and keep our kids safe at the same time."

Ironically, California is still in a dire situation with COVID-19, slow vaccine distribution, and with new virus variants that spread up to 70% more there is a continuing threat. The rush to re-open restaurants and schools seems driven by business interests rather than science, although Newsom continues to claim the science is there to reopen schools and the CDC is certainly backing him up.

Yesterday the United States of America crossed 450,000 deaths reported from COVID-19. California has reported over 40,000 deaths statewide and continues to have a large number of people hospitalized with the virus with over 14,000 hospitalized and over 3,700 in the ICU.

San Francisco has led a science-driven response so far in the pandemic that has kept deaths in the San Francisco Bay Area lower than what is found around much of the country and in Southern California, but as the last California reopening showed, small missteps can have big consequences.

When Governor Newsom last opened bars it had a disastrous impact on the state COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Both San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Governor Newsom were busted at French Laundry dining despite closing indoor dining on separate occasions leading to much ridicule and scorn from the public.

Lost in all of this is our "essential workers" that seem to now be in a difficult situation where neither political party is defending them as election year fades away. Whether politicians recognize their importance or not, teachers are essential and they are heroes. Teachers have died around the nation due to the pandemic, especially in states that forced them back to indoor classrooms.

In total, over 700 active and retired K-12 teachers and personnel have been reported dead from COVID-19, according to EducationWeek. The CDC is attempting to explain that transmission does not occur in schools because contact tracing has not shown much evidence in classrooms, however many people do not respond to contact tracers at all.

A study from the CDC last summer found that "despite aggressive efforts by health departments, many COVID-19 patients do not report contacts, and many contacts cannot be reached."

"When it’s done by phone, maybe half of the people don’t even want to talk to one who they think is a government representative," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, in a June press conference.

It seems ridiculous to ask teachers to go and die for in-person classrooms when there is a COVID-19 vaccine now readily available despite federal and state mismanagement. The Democratic Party who now has a trifecta in the House, Senate, and White House seems to be increasingly changing their tone with teachers and teachers union though in what could be a disaster for educators who are already underpaid and underappreciated.

San Francisco Labor Council released a statement responding to the lawsuit filed by the San Francisco Mayor and City Attorney:

"At a time when collaboration and leadership are needed to keep our community safe, we are incredibly disheartened and frustrated to see an attack from the San Francisco Mayor and City Attorney, who have chosen to further politicize this difficult moment and attempt to redirect our energy to a frivolous and distracting lawsuit. Political grandstanding and pointing fingers does nothing to safely return our educators and students back to the classroom.

There were multiple missed opportunities for the City and Mayor to truly partner and collaborate with us from the beginning of this crisis. Instead of wasting our time on a lawsuit, the City and Mayor could have done what we have been calling for all along, which is to bring all of us together to finalize and implement safety standards and protocols. Our calls for support with two of the most important safety standards, testing and contact tracing, have gone largely unmet, and instead our educators, students, and District have been left to secure those through an outside bidding process and through collaboration with the Latino Task Force.

Comparing SFUSD to smaller districts or private schools denies the reality that all large urban school districts in California are facing. Private schools or smaller Districts tend to have more resources and smaller schools, and the populations and communities they serve are not experiencing the same rates of COVID as our student and family populations.

It’s also worth noting that San Jose, the largest school district in Santa Clara County, has not been able to return to in-person learning. Just like this lawsuit, these examples about what others are doing only distract from the reality of what is happening in urban areas and seek to shame us into unsafe environments. Instead, we should be talking about what is happening in San Francisco and how the City is working to get our cases down in ALL communities and how we are going to improve our vaccination process. This is what our communities need to see from City leaders right now.

We will not allow this shameful lawsuit to distract us from continuing to show up for our students and families during this crisis. We are making steady progress at the negotiations table and will continue to stay focused on finalizing our labor agreements so that we can safely return to the classrooms and to the students whom we greatly miss.

We are living in extraordinarily challenging times. As Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond has said, “Let's be clear where we are right now; we are literally trying to preserve life. With over 400,000 Americans having lost their lives to Covid, safety has to be paramount.” While we work hard to return students to school buildings safely, we continue to provide and improve instruction and support through distance instruction, as well as distribute food, technology devices, and school supplies to our students and their families."