D202 Teachers Rally For Remote Learning, Raise Safety Concerns

PLAINFIELD, IL — Teachers in Plainfield School District 202 participated Thursday in a demonstration against returning to classrooms this fall amid the pandemic.

The teachers stood 6 feet apart, wore masks and held signs in front of the Plainfield School District office on Howard Street, with questions they wanted the Plainfield Board of Education to answer about safety guidelines related to COVID-19 and the new school year.

"There are far too many unanswered questions for us to resume in-person learning at this point. We know COVID-19 cases are rising both here at home and all across the country," said Association of Plainfield Teachers President Dawn Bullock in an Illinois Education Association release. "We don’t have all the proper resources, like PPE and masks, in stock yet. And, quite frankly, after the board rejected the return-to-school plan, we don’t even have a plan in place to begin working on."

The demonstration was organized after a proposal — supported by the APT — for district students to start the 2020-21 school year with remote learning failed by a 3-3 vote at Monday's regular school board meeting.

The APT polled its membership, and 76 percent of those who responded want to start the year remotely, the release said. The plan would have instituted remote learning at the beginning of the school year and continued through the end of the first quarter, with the possibility of returning to in-person learning during the second quarter of the fall if coronavirus conditions allow.

"We want to start the year in remote learning, so we can give the district valuable time to make sure we have the safest possible environment for staff and students," Bullock said. "If we begin remotely and staff chooses to work from their classrooms, custodial staff will have the opportunity to run the safety plan and see where changes need to be implemented."

During the demonstration, educators stood for 31 minutes representing the 31 schools in their district. Bullock spoke at the rally and said the board does not understand that the "social distancing and mask requirement will change the dynamic of our student interactions."

"Not being able to share supplies means no classroom libraries, science experiments, cooking classes, no hanging out at the lockers, talking to friends ... even with half the student population," she said. "I don't know about you, but I have never seen a line of students walk without turning around to talk to each other, let alone be 6 feet apart."

She also said group sports cannot take place, and teachers cannot work with smaller groups around one table. The new situation will also create difficulties for ESL students who cannot grasp what the teachers are expressing because two-thirds of their faces will be covered with a mask.

"Students will not be returning to the school they left in March," she said.

Another speaker on Thursday, Plainfield South High School junior Delaney O'Sullivan, said that like everyone else, she also misses going to school.

"I really just miss normal, to be honest," she said. "But, you know, these are unprecedented times, and we can't have normal right now. We have to adapt. And a new normal that includes remote learning."

She said that on March 17, the first day of the shutdown and school closures, there were a total of one 160 cases in Illinois, and as of July 21, there are over 160,000 cases.

"If it wasn't safe in March for us to attend school, how will it be safe in August?" she said. "I love my school, but I do not want to see my friends or my teachers get sick or even die, knowing it could be easily avoided if we had been remote learning."

Delaney started a petition against the board's decision and has already received over 2,000 signatures. She urged everyone at the demonstration to take out their phones and sign the petition.

"There is nothing that the district can do to keep us safe. There's no face mask, there's no hand sanitizer. There's no special precautions that can keep every single person, every janitor, every teacher, every student safe," she said. "The only choices is about learning. So as long as the Board of Education makes their decision, I simply ask them to remember that the lives of everyone in the school district are in their hands."

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