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SCCOE: Put Health Before Wealth & Commit to Equity

Protect All Workers

Send an email to Superintendent Mary Ann Dewan and the Board Members. Simply edit and send the email below. It’s best if you add or edit to relate your own personal experience. Ask your friends and family members to send an email too!

Here is an example:

My name is Sarah Gianocaro, and I’ve been an occupational therapist with COE for 13 years and I’m also the SEIU chapter president.  I appreciate that COE is recognizing the significant challenges every worker at COE has been experiencing and in October will receive a one time “2020 is a challenge” stipend. I appreciate the board members  publicly supporting our ongoing request to offset worker expenses. COE needs to do more for workers.

As a direct service provider, it’s quite clear that resuming in-person learning is important for our special education and low income early learning students. However, PPE and social distancing are not enough to ensure everyone’s safety and a gradual approach to re-opening is crucial for the health and safety of students and staff. Even though public health orders allow up to 12 students, most general education pre-school programs have opened their classrooms with fewer students and COE should follow their lead. Twenty is too many. Opening our classrooms with half the students initially gives classroom staff time to provide intensive small group instruction in social distancing and handwashing before bringing the other half of the students in two weeks later and doing the same. One of my students, even with a chewy for sensory input, regularly licks the floor, the swing support stand, the wall, the communication board, and my arm during therapy sessions.  Many of my students put their fingers in their mouths and noses and then wipe their fingers on the table or the clothing or arm of the person next to them. There need to be limits for itinerant therapists providing in-person therapy so they don’t become vectors, carrying COVID-19 from one class to another. My current assignment is seven classrooms at five different school sites. An unknown exposure in one classroom means I could be carrying the virus to 90 people within a week. Our swallowing specialist visits at least two different classrooms per day, every day of the month. Even with the highest levels of PPE, do we really want one person visiting 40 classrooms, with up to 15 to 20 people each, a month?

Additionally, in order to provide robust distance learning as the state has mandated, COE needs to re-hire the laid off paraeducators to fill the vacant positions. Their support is crucial to giving students feedback, assisting with small groups, documenting student engagement and attendance, and interpreting for families. Don’t just pass a resolution, address systemic racism within our education system by providing more interpretation services via our paraeducators that enable families to participate and support their children’s education and by ensuring that our students and staff have the devices they need. We’re almost 6 months into shelter-in-place and three weeks into the new school year and we still have students and staff without devices or using cell phones so they can Zoom. Paraeducators are spending up to half their monthly income to purchase iPads or laptops so they can provide the support students need while they work from home. In 26 hours, we had 75 people respond that they had purchased devices to do their job and 72 people respond that they still need a device and/or hotspot.

Board of trustees, we know the money is there and you support our workers. Now it’s time to put the money where your mouths are and make the rest happen. First, recognize the essential workers that have been working on site every day, like our custodians, having increased exposure risk since day 1. Second, fill all of our 75 vacant positions with our laid off workers so we can provide a robust distance learning program and enable them to continue having affordable health insurance which ended on Monday. Third, make funds available to open our classrooms initially with smaller cohorts to help ensure student and staff safety. Thank you for your support.