I honestly believe that COVID is a real threat, especially to people who are already medically fragile. I am at somewhat higher risk as a diabetic, but I don’t think it is a high enough risk to warrant staying home from work.There are teachers who are not so lucky. I know of at least two who are at serious risk because they are immunocompromised due to things like leukemia.
My high school has 1600 or so students. Approximately 400 of them are attending classes virtually, just over 1000 of them are attending face to face classes, and another 200 have simply not shown up for classes of any sort. The teachers who are immunocompromised have requested to teach the virtual students, but schools are refusing to allow this. Instead, they are spreading the virtual students out. I have 5 classes of about 25 students each that are face to face, and another virtual class of 45 students that I teach on top of that. I feel that the teachers who are more at risk than I am should be given the virtual classes, but that isn’t happening. The school is refusing to do that.
Yesterday was the last day of the first week of school. My school district published a report by email to all staff and to the press, claiming that there were 6 students and 4 staff members who have tested positive for COVID 19. My school was not listed as one of the schools that has a positive case.
There were rumors that some of our students had COVID, but the school will not tell us which students are positive. I complained to my school administrators, telling them that I have a right to know. They said that I do not, citing HIPAA. I pointed out that I was once the HIPAA compliance officer for my employer when I was a paramedic, and told them that schools are not bound by HIPAA. They still said, “Notifying you if your students are positive is the Health Department’s job.”
They also made a bit of a clerical error and accidentally released attendance information that lists each student who is absent because they are presumed positive for COVID. One of the new attendance people accidentally put a file of attendance records in a network drive that could be seen by the entire school’s staff. Even worse, the official email sent out to staff says that none of our students have COVID. They lied to us and to the public.
As it turns out, three of my students are presumed to have COVID. Not one of my employers said shit. One of those students sits in the front row of my classroom. I cannot fathom why my employer would intentionally keep me in the dark about this. It is unconscionable.

