850 Austin district teachers pledge not to return to school buildings on Monday

Not only should the will and preference of 850 AISD teachers matter for re-opening policy, but we need look no further than the catastrophe that is unfolding before our very eyes at the White House to give us all pause about any form of school re-opening plan. And it all took place in what should have been the safest place in America to be...

-Angela Valenzuela

850 Austin district teachers pledge not to return to school buildings on Monday

October 1, 2020

About 850 Austin district teachers have pledged not to return to their campuses Monday when school buildings reopen for learning.

Concerned about the threat of the coronavirus to both their students and themselves, the educators said they remain committed to teaching their students, but will do so only in a virtual setting.

Of the 925 teachers who requested medical waivers and accommodations to work remotely, 66% had been approved so far, one was denied and the rest are still pending or have been marked inactive, according to district information released Thursday.

In total, 44% of the 1,485 staff members have received accommodations, according to information provided earlier this week.

District leaders said they are approving accommodations for those who medically are at high risk from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and have submitted medical documentation. However, such accommodations have not been extended to educators who have high-risk family members, leaving some teachers to refuse to return in person and others to quit.

"I will not return on Monday nor do I plan to under any circumstances,” said Patrick Stinson, who teaches chemistry and integrated physics and chemistry at Northeast Early College High School. The district two weeks ago denied his request for accommodations, which he sought because his wife has a chronic heart condition. Stinson said he might lose his teaching position with his stance, but he said he is unwilling to expose his wife to risk by being in the classroom setting, where teachers already are exposed to a variety of germs, as school-age children often are carriers.

“Lots of us can’t afford to make this choice and have to do the wrong thing in order to eat,” he said.

Kiker Elementary librarian Sonya Butler notified campus families she’s leaving her position.

“I do not qualify for the accommodations or family leave and due to family situations and health, I am not returning to face to face learning,” she wrote in a letter to the school community. “I am truly heartbroken to leave a job I love so much and people I care about so deeply. However my family must come first and there, since I cannot work remotely, I must resign.”

Safe to return?

The Texas Education Agency requires districts to reopen campuses to students who wish to learn in person, or the schools risk losing state education funding. The agency has allowed districts to delay their start dates, as Austin did, and gradually add students back to campuses within eight weeks of launching. Most Central Texas school districts already have reopened schools. The Austin school district reopens Monday at 25% capacity to its first set of children, including those with special needs, prekindergarten, kindergarten, sixth and ninth grades and to children of staff. Plans call for more students to be added each week thereafter until all who wish to return may do so.

Dr. Mark Escott, interim health authority for Austin-Travis County, told Austin school board members Monday night that he believed it is safe to reopen campuses next week. He said he already has sent his own children back to in-person learning and his wife, who is an educator, also has returned to her campus.

Local and national health experts have cautioned not to reopen schools until the area’s positivity rate — the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 among those tested — is less than 5%. Travis County’s positivity rate for three weeks has been under that threshold, though some pockets of Austin, including where high numbers of low-income, Black or Latino families live, have had double or triple those rates.

Escott told board members he’s seen no evidence of coronavirus spread within the classroom setting. He reiterated that the local schools’ cases are almost exclusively attributable to sports and other extracurricular activities, students who have been in congregant settings.

While some classrooms or grade levels could exceed 50%, the majority of district families say they won’t return to the classrooms. Of the 54,300 families who responded to the survey, 57% said they are sticking to virtual learning for their elementary students, while 73% of middle schoolers and 76% of high schoolers plan to remain remote. Among low-income families, 53% of elementary students and 65% of middle school students said they will remain remote, while 68% of high schoolers are choosing virtual instruction.

Calls for change

Education Austin, the district’s largest union, remains in negotiations with district leaders on reopening plans, union President Ken Zarifis said. The pledge among the teachers who won’t return in person is not a strike, he said, because they will continue delivering instruction.

The group held a virtual news conference Thursday and reiterated educators’ concerns, calling again for changes to the reopening plan. The group cites a code of ethics that says educators will not knowingly or recklessly endanger the health of a student. Campus site-specific plans have been fluid, some changing weekly, which some educators say has contributed to the feeling that returning is unsafe.

A caravan of about 150 educators last weekend went to the district’s headquarters and taped to the building signs and messages: “COVID is airborne,” “Put our teachers and students first,” “How is face to face ‘best practices’ during a pandemic?”

District plans continue to call for all staff members without a medical waiver to return to school buildings Monday, but Zarifis said he’s hopeful the district will reexamine its stance and provide more staff members the opportunity to keep working remotely. He said newly hired Superintendent Stephanie S. Elizalde spoke with a few dozen teachers on Wednesday and with him on Thursday about the reopening plans.

“We are encouraged by the superintendent’s engagement around the issues we feel are important, and the safety and teachers of our students, and how we come back to school,” he said.

Elizalde has acknowledged the concerns among employees, but she has said, “Austin ISD starts with students in its decision-making process.”

Austin district administrators will be present at campuses Monday to help teachers and school staff, she said.

“We feel confident that teachers care about their students and will notify us before Monday if they don’t plan on returning. We have contingency plans in place to make adjustments as necessary,” Elizalde said. “This is why we are opening with a maximum of 25% of our students.”

When a Virus and Virulent Racial Supremacy Collide by Roberto Cintli Rodriguez

Recent harassment of, and prejudice toward, Asians in the U.S. in the context of the COVID pandemic is most definitely an artifact of the larger historical, ideological project of white supremacy.  Thanks, Dr. Cintli Rodriguez, for your insightful piece appearing in populist.com.

-Angela Valenzuela

When a Virus and Virulent Racial Supremacy Collide

By ROBERTO CINTLI RODRIGUEZ

Who would have ever imagined a US president intentionally stirring up racial hatred and animosity, especially in the middle of an extreme global pandemic?
Even more shocking has been the virtual silence from those literally in his midst, including medical professionals, emergency officials and appointed and elected officials, this while he has been stirring up anti-Chinese sentiment. Compared to those that are remaining silent, a few journalists have actually had the temerity to question the president about his intentional scapegoating, not only of an entire country, but entire peoples, which includes all Asian peoples, as white supremacists, historically, have rarely been able to differentiate between Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese peoples, etc.
Since he daily also blames the media for this crisis, one would also think that perhaps the White House press corps would all walk out during his press conferences that only serve to reinforce his ignorance, mendacity, ineptness, corruption of his administration. Minimally, we should all be expecting the medical professionals to vehemently object to this virulent racism as their guiding philosophy and principle is: do no harm.
But this is not happening, which is the epitome of normalization. The day he announced his candidacy, while disparaging Mexican peoples and migrants, that should have also been the last day of his campaign. The failure to check him permitted him to proceed to disparage and denigrate virtually every other group in this country, including women, Central Americans, African Americans, Arab and Muslim Americans, American Indians, the LGBT community, veterans, the disabled, and of course, the Asian American community via his constant hostility, especially toward “China.”
But fast forward to today, when leaders are warning us about not succumbing to fear and panic, yet nary a word about not also succumbing to white supremacy, xenophobia and misogyny.
Let’s return to the topic of “Do no harm.” I’m imagining that the reason very few of those mentioned above are stepping forward is because they are prioritizing the health of the people of this country. This is good. However, this is not a case of either-or. It should never be acceptable to promote any kind of hate, racial animosity or supremacy of any kind, but especially in the midst of a global crises.
In spite of the white supremacist occupying the White House, the nation is coming together. This also, despite the corruption of the administration, the greed of politicians and the hoarding by the scared masses. Amid this tragedy, people are looking out for each other, their family, friends and their neighbors, coming together in community.
If it is understood that we are also in the middle of a national crisis, why has this country not dealt with the nation’s white supremacy and rampant misogyny, especially that of this administration, before? Arguably, white supremacy is the root of all modern evil. And in the white house, we have exhibit A.
White supremacy is also a virulent disease and it has existed for hundreds of years, especially as brought to us via the extreme violence of colonialism imperialism and vulture capitalism. To have permitted it to exist all these years tells us about the value of the lives of primarily people of color. Who permitted it to resurface publicly virtually unchallenged, says much about this society. Truthfully, white supremacy has been even more deadly for people of color than this virus, though of course, we also know that the spread of diseases, intentional or otherwise, have actually been part of genocidal schemes against indigenous peoples and other peoples of color.
Thus, why the silence?
No, it is not less important to wipe out white supremacy and no, it is not acceptable to remain silent about it, especially when it is in front of us and especially when it is coming direct from the White House.
That it has existed unencumbered through all these years says much about this society. Throughout the history of white supremacist groups, this country has never even labeled them as terrorist organizations. What explains this? It is the federal government that does the labeling and apparently, if the targets are people of color, how then could they be terrorists?
The world and this country will recover from this pandemic and then eventually, we will return to the status quo. Unfortunately, that status quo includes treating all the above groups mentioned as less than human.
For many, it is unacceptable to leave anyone behind in this crisis due to the ineptness and corruption of this administration. Priority has to be bringing about a medical solution and at the same time, it will be difficult to return to a society that winks at or permits white supremacy to continue to be ensconced in this administration and specifically, in the White House. There may no longer be an option.
Update: Since the White House occupant made his statements about the "China virus," he has “taken back” his comments, but violence against Asians has skyrocketed and white supremacy continues to be his philosophical center.
Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez is associate professor at the University of Arizona and is the author of several books including “Our Sacred Maiz is Our Mother” (2014) and “Yolqui: A Warrior Summoned from the Spirit World” (2019). Email XColumn@gmail.com

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2020

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I found this to be a credible analysis.  In a nutshell:

 If scientists had deliberately engineered this virus, they wouldn't have chosen mutations that computer models suggest won't work. But it turns out, nature is smarter than scientists, and the novel coronavirus found a way to mutate that was better — and completely different— from anything scientists could have created, the study found.

Yep, nature is always smarter, as we know.

-Angela Valenzuela

The coronavirus did not escape from a lab. Here's how we know.

By Jeanna Bryner - Live Science Editor-in-Chief 17 days ago

The persistent myth can be put to bed.

As the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 spreads across the globe, with cases surpassing 284,000 worldwide today (March 20), misinformation is spreading almost as fast. 

One persistent myth is that this virus, called SARS-CoV-2, was made by scientists and escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began.

A new analysis of SARS-CoV-2 may finally put that latter idea to bed. A group of researchers compared the genome of this novel coronavirus with the seven other coronaviruses known to infect humans: SARS, MERS and SARS-CoV-2, which can cause severe disease; along with HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E, which typically cause just mild symptoms, the researchers wrote March 17 in the journal Nature Medicine.

"Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," they write in the journal article. 

Related: 13 coronavirus myths busted by science

Kristian Andersen, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, and his colleagues looked at the genetic template for the spike proteins that protrude from the surface of the virus. The coronavirus uses these spikes to grab the outer walls of its host's cells and then enter those cells. They specifically looked at the gene sequences responsible for two key features of these spike proteins: the grabber, called the receptor-binding domain, that hooks onto host cells; and the so-called cleavage site that allows the virus to open and enter those cells. 

That analysis showed that the "hook" part of the spike had evolved to target a receptor on the outside of human cells called ACE2, which is involved in blood pressure regulation. It is so effective at attaching to human cells that the researchers said the spike proteins were the result of natural selection and not genetic engineering.

Here's why: SARS-CoV-2 is very closely related to the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which fanned across the globe nearly 20 years ago. Scientists have studied how SARS-CoV differs from SARS-CoV-2 — with several key letter changes in the genetic code. Yet in computer simulations, the mutations in SARS-CoV-2 don't seem to work very well at helping the virus bind to human cells. If scientists had deliberately engineered this virus, they wouldn't have chosen mutations that computer models suggest won't work. But it turns out, nature is smarter than scientists, and the novel coronavirus found a way to mutate that was better — and completely different— from anything scientists could have created, the study found. 

Another nail in the "escaped from evil lab" theory?  The overall molecular structure of this virus is distinct from the known coronaviruses and instead most closely resembles viruses found in bats and pangolins that had been little studied and never known to cause humans any harm. 

"If someone were seeking to engineer a new coronavirus as a pathogen, they would have constructed it from the backbone of a virus known to cause illness," according to a statement from Scripps. 

Where did the virus come from? The research group came up with two possible scenarios for the origin of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. One scenario follows the origin stories for a few other recent coronaviruses that have wreaked havoc in human populations. In that scenario, we contracted the virus directly from an animal — civets in the case of SARS and camels in the case of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). In the case of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers suggest that animal was a bat, which transmitted the virus to another intermediate animal (possibly a pangolin, some scientists have said) that brought the virus to humans.

Related: 20 of the worst epidemics and pandemics in history

In that possible scenario, the genetic features that make the new coronavirus so effective at infecting human cells (its pathogenic powers) would have been in place before hopping to humans.

In the other scenario, those pathogenic features would have evolved only after the virus jumped from its animal host to humans. Some coronaviruses that originated in pangolins have a "hook structure" (that receptor binding domain) similar to that of SARS-CoV-2. In that way, a pangolin either directly or indirectly passed its virus onto a human host. Then, once inside a human host, the virus could have evolved to have its other stealth feature — the cleavage site that lets it easily break into human cells. Once it developed that capacity, the researchers said, the coronavirus would be even more capable of spreading between people.

All of this technical detail could help scientists forecast the future of this pandemic. If the virus did enter human cells in a pathogenic form, that raises the probability of future outbreaks. The virus could still be circulating in the animal population and might again jump to humans, ready to cause an outbreak. But the chances of such future outbreaks are lower if the virus must first enter the human population and then evolve the pathogenic properties, the researchers said.