LA teachers’ union refuses to budge on school reopenings: ‘Structural racism’

The president of a Los Angeles teachers’ union said Monday that the state’s plan to return to in-person learning is “propagating structural racism.”

Her comments come after California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday reached a deal with state Democratic lawmakers that gives LA County schools $6.6 billion in incentives to reopen before April 1.

“If you condition funding on the reopening of schools, that money will only go to White and wealthier schools that don’t have the transmission rates that low-income, Black and Brown communities do,” UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz said in a Monday news conference. “This is a recipe for propagating structural racism, and it is deeply unfair to the students we serve.”

She added that minority communities are being “unfairly targeted by people who are not experiencing this disease in the same ways as students and families are in our communities.” The UTLA believes schools should only reopen once all teachers have been vaccinated or have access to vaccines.

“If this was a rich person’s disease, we would’ve seen a very different response. We would not have the high rates of infections and deaths,” she said. “Now, educators are asked instead to sacrifice ourselves, the safety of our students and the safety of our schools.”

CALIFORNIA ANNOUNCES SCHOOL REOPENING DEAL, OFFERS $6.6B TO DISTRICTS THAT REOPEN BY THIS DATE

While there are disparities between the number of minority California and LA residents contracting COVID-19 compared to white California and LA residents, studies also show that school closures are also disproportionately impacting the learning abilities of minority students and the work-life balance of minority parents.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that there are disparities between the percent of minority communities contracting and dying from COVID-19 and the percent of minority communities among the total U.S. population. Hispanic Americans, for example, are dying of COVID-19 at a rate that…