By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews.com
A tense stalemate between the Lincoln County School District and its teachers’ union over a district requirement that staff report to their classrooms and teach from there appears likely to drag on for at least another week.
A 90-minute negotiating session Wednesday evening ended with no breakthroughs. The two sides are not scheduled to meet again until Thursday, just days before the district’s school year gets underway.
At issue is district Superintendent Karen Gray’s stipulation that district’s 300-plus teachers not teach remotely from their homes, as many did after the coronavirus outbreak closed schools in March. Instead, in a recent letter to teachers, Gray said she expects all on-line instruction to be carried out by teachers working alone in their classrooms.
“While I absolutely agree we must provide quality distance learning,” she wrote, “as an organization, this is not best delivered from teachers’ homes. Working in our classrooms, accessing school resources, and following organized and uninterrupted schedules maximizes our ability to provide quality distance education to our students.”
The Lincoln County Education Association is equally as adamant that teachers can provide high-quality instruction via computers in their own houses, says union president Peter Lohonyay.
While a number of teachers are ready and willing to report to their classrooms, many others are facing either a severe shortage of childcare for their own kids or are living with medically vulnerable family members who could be endangered by teachers having to leave their house for hours every day, he said.
“Teachers really care about their mission and they are extremely professional in their approach to educating children,” Lohonyay said. “And, for many of us, the way we think we can do that is from home.”
He noted that at least 26 other Oregon school districts have already given their teachers the option of coming into their buildings to provide online instruction or doing so remotely in their own homes.
Since the current contract between the district and the union runs through next June, what’s on the table right now are terms of a memorandum of understanding. The primary sticking point is Gray’s teach-at-school requirement.
In her letter, Gray noted that the majority of instructional staff will be working in a “vacant 900 square foot classroom with a fully effective air flow exchange HVAC system and no students.”
“You have been able to keep yourself safe at Safeway, Fred Meyer and Walmart, so at school, the same rules apply,” she wrote. “And our classrooms are safer and cleaner.”
Gray declined further comment to YachatsNews on the issue, saying that the letter to teachers covers everything she has to say publicly.
The union has released its own letter to the public, setting up a situation where public sentiment may ultimately decide which side prevails.
Time, however, is running out. Students and their parents are set to begin one-on-one meetings with their respective teachers starting Monday, Sept. 14.
For students who have opted to enroll in the district’s comprehensive distance learning regimen, attendance will start being taken Sept. 28. They will spend hours each day at their homes, receiving lessons from their teachers and interacting with each other by computer.
The district’s other option, Edmentum, is a fully online, self-paced program that does not have a connection with a district teacher. Edmentum is scheduled to start Sept. 14.
Complicating matters in Lincoln County is that a large number of families have not yet enrolled in either program, said Kristin Bigler, the district’s communications specialist. She urged families to visit the district’s website as soon as possible to get that done.
No in-person classroom instruction can begin until Lincoln County and Oregon residents reduce their coronavirus infection rates enough to meet state-mandated requirements.
To get the green light, the statewide weekly “positivity rate” must be 5 percent or lower, and weekly cases must be 10 per 100,000 population or less. For the week ending Aug. 22, the Oregon positivity rate was 5.1 percent, and about 40 cases per 100,000 people.
Lincoln County must meet those same numbers, according to the Oregon Health Authority. Across the state, only 15 counties meet the metric and Lincoln County is not one of them.
