For decades, the Republican Party has seemed to care more about labor unions than the Democratic Party has. Many Republican officials treat organized labor as their political enemy. When Republicans gain power in a state capital, they often try to pass “right to work” laws meant to shrink unions. And these laws have their intended effect: They reduce the number of workers who belong to unions, reduce Democrats’ share of the vote in elections and reduce the number of working-class candidates who run for office, academic research has found.
Modern Democratic politicians, on the other hand, have often sat out the political battle. Every Democratic president for decades, including Joe Biden, has said he favors a federal law to make it easier for workers to organize — and each of those presidents has failed to pass such a law. Democratic leaders in Congress also have not made labor law a priority. Nor have many Democratic governors. Jamelle Bouie, a Times Opinion columnist, captured this asymmetry when he wrote: “Republicans and other conservatives know who their enemies are — they know that organized labor is a key obstacle to dismantling the social safety net. The question is whether Democrats understand that their fortunes are also bound up in the fate of workers.”
But events in Michigan this week raise the question of whether Democrats are starting to change their approach and devote more attention to strengthening organized labor.


WHY MICHIGAN MATTERS

On Wednesday, Democrats in the Michigan House of Representatives passed a bill repealing the right-to-work law that Republicans enacted in 2012. For the new bill to become law, the State Senate, which Democrats also control, would need to pass it and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer would need to sign it, as she has signaled she will. Democrats gained control of the Michigan House and Senate in last year’s elections. If the bill did become law, it would be one of only a handful of repeals of any statewide right-to-work laws. “It’s a huge deal,” Jake Grumbach, a political scientist at the University of Washington who has studied the issue, told me. Currently, 27 states have such laws, including most of the South and the Great Plains, as well as Indiana and Wisconsin. Whenever Republicans control both the legislature and governorship in a state, they typically push for a right-to-work law. Yet when Democrats have taken control of a state government, they have sometimes left the law in place, as was the case in Virginia a few years ago, Grumbach noted. The details of the right-to-work debate can be technical, but they’re worth taking a minute to understand. Above all, the laws mandate that nonunionized workers cannot be required to pay the equivalent of union dues, even if the union is negotiating pay and benefits on the workers’ behalf. Many contracts call for a company’s management and union to agree on pay and benefits for all workers in a given job category, regardless of their union status.
Labor Organizing and Union Drives

• A New Inquiry?: A committee led by Senator Bernie Sanders will hold a vote to open an investigation into federal labor law violations by major corporations and subpoena Howard Schultz, the chief executive of Starbucks, as the first witness.
• Whitney Museum: After more than a year of bargaining, the cultural institution and its employees are moving forward with a deal that will significantly raise pay and improve job security.
• Mining Strike: Hundreds of coal miners in Alabama have been told by their union that they can start returning to work before a contract deal has been reached, bringing an end to one of the longest mining strikes in U.S. history.
• Gag Rules: The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that it is generally illegal for companies to offer severance agreements that require confidentiality and nondisparagement.

The central argument in favor of the laws is based on individual freedom: Why should workers have to pay dues to a union to which they don’t belong? The very term “right to work,” coined by a Dallas Morning News editorial writer in 1941, evokes freedom. The central argument against the laws is grounded in economics: They allow nonunionized workers to become free riders, receiving the advantages of collective bargaining without paying for it.

A 20 percent Raise

Wherever you fall on this debate, the laws clearly have an impact. They lead union membership to decline, as more workers choose not to pay dues and instead take home more money in the short term. Eventually, the laws do enough to weaken unions that they disappear from some workplaces. In the long term, the decline of unions tends to hurt workers: A large recent study, consistent with other research, found that union members made about 20 percent more on average than nonunionized workers who were otherwise similar. The additional wages often came out of corporate profits, which explains why the decline of unions has contributed to rising economic inequality. The shrinking of unions effectively redistributes income from low- and middle-income workers to affluent investors.
(In a new Times Magazine essay about American poverty, the sociologist Matthew Desmond writes: “With unions largely out of the picture, corporations have chipped away at the conventional midcentury work arrangement, which involved steady employment, opportunities for advancement and raises and decent pay with some benefits.”)
Then there are the political effects of unions. They help turn out voters and focus voters on economic issues. That focusing role is significant because of a fact that I’ve often covered in this newsletter: Many working-class Americans hold progressive economic views while also being religious, patriotic and socially moderate.
When a labor union talks to these voters about economic policy, they become more likely to vote for a Democrat. When they are not in a union, they may instead be swayed to vote Republican by their evangelical church or Fox News. A 2018 academic study, comparing counties on either side of a state border, found that the passage of a right-to-work law reduced the Democratic Party’s vote share by about three percentage points on average.
The bottom line
The repeal of Michigan’s right-to-work law would be significant on its own, given the size of the state’s economy and its importance in presidential elections. It would also highlight a larger trend: The Democratic Party again seems to be emphasizing organized labor, as it did in the mid-20th century.
Biden may have failed to pass a federal law making it easier for workers to join unions, but he has repeatedly talked about their importance and included pro-union provisions in other bills. “He is paying more authentic attention to the needs of working people to have unions than the last three Democratic presidents have,” Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., told me.

If you get a raise, you may not end up in a higher tax bracket. But more of your income may be subject to Social Security taxes. And you’ll probably pay more for health care.

You already know that inflation is taking a bigger and bigger bite out of your wallet. Now, it’s going to affect the size of your paycheck in 2023.

Even if you get a sizable raise next year, you won’t necessarily take home more money. Many ingredients are baked into the recipe that produces your take-home pay, like deductions for taxes and health care benefits, and your contributions to retirement accounts.
Whether you’ll see more money in your paycheck, less or about the same will depend on your circumstances. Here’s a preview of what is changing next year.

EARNINGSEmployers, eager to attract and keep workers, are planning salary increases of 4 percent or more next year, according to several employer surveys. Salary.com found that a quarter of employers plan to give bigger increases of 5 to 7 percent.

“That’s a dramatic change,” said David Turetsky, the company’s vice president of consulting, adding that raises of 2.5 to 3 percent have been typical for years.

Even so, the increases may fall short of the rising rate of inflation, which was 8.2 percent in September. So while your pay may increase, your paycheck won’t stretch as far.
“Pay is still not keeping up with inflation,” Nela Richardson, chief economist at the payroll company ADP, said in a company video.

Income Taxes

The government tries to shield taxpayers from inflation by annually adjusting the boundaries of federal tax brackets, the income thresholds that determine where higher tax rates apply. If the boundaries weren’t adjusted, more of your income would move into a higher bracket even if your real income hadn’t kept pace with inflation. Adjustments for next year, which the Internal Revenue Service announced on Tuesday, are significant because inflation has soared. (But note: Some states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, do not adjust their own tax brackets for inflation.)
A married couple with income of $200,000 in both 2022 and 2023 would see its tax bill fall by almost $900, while a couple with income of $500,000 would see a reduction of more than $3,700, said Tim Steffen, director of tax planning at the wealth management firm Baird.

Tax rates range from 10 percent to 37 percent. For next year, the top rate applies to income over $578,125 for single filers, up from $539,900 this year, and $693,750 for couples, up from $647,850 this year.

Here, in descending order, are the next four brackets for 2023, compared with this year:

• 35 percent: Begins at income over $231,250 for single filers, up from $215,950, and over $462,500 for married couples, up from $431,900.
• 32 percent: Begins at income over $182,100 for single filers, up from $170,050, and over $364,200 for couples, up from $340,100.
• 24 percent: Begins at income over $95,375 for single filers, up from $89,075, and at $190,750 for couples, up from $178,150.
• 22 percent: Begins at incomes over $44,725 for single filers, up from $41,775, and at $89,450 for couples, up from $83,550.

In addition, the standard deduction, which reduces your taxable income without your having to itemize deductions, will rise to $27,700 for married couples and $13,850 for single filers.

Payroll Taxes
The good news for retirees receiving Social Security benefits is that their monthly checks will rise 8.7 percent next year because of inflation. But increases in the payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare, the federal health program for older Americans, could affect the paychecks of higher earners in 2023.

Employees contribute to Social Security via a payroll tax of 6.2 percent of their income, up to a limit. (Employers pay an equal share.) That limit adjusts each year based on increases in average wages. For 2023, the maximum earnings subject to the tax will rise almost 9 percent, to $160,200 from $147,000 this year, so more income will be taxed. The maximum Social Security tax next year will be $9,932, up from $9,114 this year.

The Medicare portion of the payroll tax is 1.45 percent of income; unlike the Social Security portion of the payroll tax, the Medicare portion is not subject to a cap on income. (Again, employers pay an equal share.) But individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning over $250,000 have to pay an extra Medicare tax of 0.9 percent on income earned over that threshold. The thresholds for that added Medicare tax are not adjusted for inflation, so more people pay the extra tax each year.

Health insuranceRising health benefit costs could also offset higher pay, said Jeff Levin-Scherz, population health leader with the benefits consultant WTW (formerly known as Willis Towers Watson). The reasons for the higher costs, he said, include rising labor costs, the expected end of government coverage for Covid care, more severe illness stemming from delayed screenings during the pandemic, rising prescription drug prices and deteriorating mental health.

Employers surveyed by WTW expect health benefit costs to rise at least 6 percent next year, and to continue going up for several years because health care providers typically sign multiyear contracts with health insurers.

“It’s not over after this year,” Dr. Levin-Scherz said.

More than half of Americans get health coverage through an employer. Workers on average pay more than a quarter of the total premium for family health coverage, while employers pay the rest. Employers may shift more of that cost to workers — but probably not all of it, since recruiting and retaining staff remain challenging.

“I’m advising my employer clients to eat the health care costs,” said Allen J. Reynolds, a tax adviser in Sioux City, Iowa. Workers are already struggling to manage costs, he said, including higher mortgage rates, which make it difficult to buy a home: “The employee is getting hit from all different angles.”

Contributions to 401(k)sThe contribution limit for 401(k)s will increase next year to $22,500 from $20,500 this year, the I.R.S. announced on Friday. (Extra contributions for workers 50 and older will also increase, to $7,500 from $6,500 this year.) These contributions are deducted from your paycheck — but they go into accounts to help you fund your retirement, and employers often match them to encourage saving.

Contributions to health spending accountsInflation has increased those amounts as well. If you have a flexible health spending account, which employees contribute to pretax to help cover medical costs, you can contribute an extra $200 next year. The limit for 2023 rose to $3,050 from $2,850 this year, the I.R.S. announced this week.

If you have a health savings account, a different type of tax-favored account available with certain high-deductible health insurance plans, you can contribute $3,850 as an individual and $7,750 for family coverage next year. (Extra contributions for people over 55 remain capped at $1,000.)
Taxes withheldWith so many variables, it makes sense to check your withholdings early next year to make sure they are not too high or too low, especially if you have had a life change, like getting married or having a baby, Mr. Reynolds said. If you overpay, you’ll get a refund at tax time. If you underpay, you may owe a penalty.
​
The I.R.S. offers an online withholding estimator to help you make the calculations. You can make changes by submitting a revised W-4 form to your employer.

The I.R.S. announced one of its largest increases in decades to caps on retirement contributions, allowing workers with access to the plans to save more.

Americans saving for retirement through a 401(k) account will be able to increase their maximum contributions of pretax wages into it by almost 10 percent in 2023, thanks to a new limit announced Friday by the Internal Revenue Service.

That increase in the caps is the largest in decades, the tax agency said, as rapidly rising costs for items including food, energy and rent squeeze many Americans financially.
In 2023, employees can contribute up to $22,500 a year, up from $20,500, to 401(k), 403(b) and other tax-advantaged employer savings plans. Also included are 457 plans, which are available to public employees and to workers at other tax-exempt institutions.

The limit on what are called catch-up contributions, for people 50 and older, also rose, to $7,500 from $6,500. That means workers 50 and older can contribute a maximum of $30,000 to those plans next year. The maximum contributions to individual retirement accounts will rise by $500, to $6,500.

​“A lot of these adjustments have been larger than we’ve seen in a long time because of higher inflation,” said Anqi Chen, a senior research economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

The Consumer Price Index report for September, released last week, showed that inflation remained painful. The overall index climbed 8.2 percent from a year earlier, a slight dip from 8.3 percent in August. The I.R.S. determined the new caps using the inflation data.

Federal agencies have recently made changes to combat the effects of rising costs on consumers. This week, the I.R.S. confirmed that some tax filers would see savings on their bills, as the agency adjusted tax rates by about 7 percent. Earlier this month, Social Security announced an 8.7 percent cost-of-living raise as older Americans struggle to keep up with rising costs. The cost-of-living adjustment, known as the COLA, was the highest since 1981.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, participants remained disciplined and continued to contribute to their 401(k) plans,” said Carolyn Wegemann, spokeswoman for Vanguard. She added, “It was particularly encouraging to observe that participants remained disciplined and continued to save for retirement amid significant market uncertainty.”

The average employee contribution rate remained consistent in 2021 at 7.3 percent, Ms. Wegemann said.  As of March, 69 percent of private industry workers had access to retirement plans through their employers, and about 52 percent participated, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In March 2020, 67 percent of private industry workers had access to employer-provided plans.
​
Experts say the higher caps will not significantly change the overall savings picture for workers.
“The vast majority of employees don’t save the maximum,” said Teresa Ghilarducci, an economics professor at the New School for Social Research who specializes in retirement policy. “Therefore, raising the limits only benefits the few.”

Amazon, Apple, Chipotle, REI, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s. It feels like every day brings a new, surprising union.

Workers are organizing at some of the most well-known companies in America and in industries previously thought un-unionizable. They’re also doing so against the tide of a decades-long decline in union membership, which led to eviscerated benefits and wages that haven’t kept pace with the cost of living. Lately, the news has been filled with stories of everyone from baristas to warehouse workers voting for unions and bargaining for contracts — a trend that makes it look like unions are at last on the rise again.

Indeed, a series of recent data suggests that these union gains are more than just headlines. From election wins to collective actions, 2022 has so far been a great year for unions. In the first half of the year, unions won 641 elections — the most in nearly 20 years, according to data from Bloomberg Law, which analyzes National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) data.
And while union wins at household names like Starbucks, which has had more than 230 stores unionize this year, are certainly adding to the total, they’re not the only thing driving union growth. As Bloomberg Law’s Robert Combs pointed out, even without the coffee chain, 2022 still would have beaten last year’s numbers. Retail, service, health care, and transportation industries all saw growth in union formations this year.

In total, there were 80 percent more NLRB election wins in 2022 than there were in 2021, and those wins represent more than twice as many workers — 43,150 — as last year. Unions have won nearly 77 percent of their elections this year, matching the highest rate in the Bloomberg data going back to 2000.

Petitions for future elections were up nearly 60 percent in the first nine months of the fiscal year, according to the NLRB, so expect more elections — and potential wins — to come in the second half.

Experts credit the rise in union organizing, in part, to the pandemic. During the global crisis, many of the companies that have since unionized called their employees “essential workers” but didn’t treat them that way when it came to wages, benefits, and safety. The situation galvanized workers to organize, but they have a long way to go before they reap the rewards.

For a union to deliver on its promises, workers must bargain and agree on a contract with their employer, which is no simple task if employers don’t cooperate. Starbucks, for example, has been using a whole host of tactics to delay bargaining. So far, the company has begun bargaining with just three of the more than 230 Starbucks stores that have unionized.

To get companies to bargain in good faith, unions will likely have to turn to collective actions, like strikes. That’s already happening.

There were 180 strikes in the first half of this year, which is up 76 percent compared with last year according to data provided to Recode by Johnnie Kallas, project director of Cornell’s ILR Labor Action Tracker. More impressively, those strikes included three times as many people as last year. These actions have the dual purpose of getting unions what they want from their employers and elevating their plight to the public.
​
In general, the rise in union organizing is happening amid — and perhaps contributing to — increased approval of unions. Some 71 percent of Americans approve of unions in 2022, according to new survey data from Gallup. The last time union approval was that high was in 1965, when union membership rates were more than two times higher than they are now.
Whether this high approval leads politicians to enact reforms that would make unionizing less onerous in the first place remains to be seen. For now, all signs point to unions doing the best they can in the current situation.

August 2021 Regents Exams Cancelled

If USDE Waiver is Denied, Only Four June 2021 Regents Exams will be Administered

If USDE Waiver is Denied, Only Session One of the Grades 3-8 ELA & Math Assessments and Only the Written Test Component of the Grades 4 & 8 Science Tests will be Held

The Board of Regents today acted on a series of emergency regulations to allow for exemptions to diploma requirements associated with the June 2021 and August 2021 Regents Examination administrations.  With the COVID-19 crisis still affecting the State of New York and students having varied levels of in-person instruction, the Board and the Department are taking necessary steps to provide essential flexibility for the State’s students, families and educators.

These include actions to cancel the August 2021 Regents Exams and, should the U.S. Department of Education deny the Department’s waiver request, only four of the June 2021 Regents Exams will be administered; only Session 1 of the Grades 3-8 English Language Arts (ELA) and Math Tests will be required; and only the one-session Written Test component of the Grades 4 and 8 Science Tests will be administered.

“As we continue to see a global pandemic impact our schools and students in every corner of the state, the Board and I are determined to complete this school year in a manner that protects the health and safety of all of New York’s children,” said Chancellor Lester W. Young, Jr. “While we were disappointed by the USDE decision not to grant blanket waivers for state assessments, we are confident that the regulatory amendments acted on today and other assessment-related actions by the Department provide for the flexibility necessary to meet federal requirements while ensuring the well-being of those in our school buildings.”

“The Department continues to engage with USDE in regard to finding the best path forward in offering state assessments for the children of New York,” said Commissioner Betty A. Rosa. “In order to inform these discussions, we are engaging with stakeholders across the state to gain insight on the local approaches to student assessment.  The regulatory amendments advanced today provide fairness for our students; however we remain hopeful that USDE will provide the necessary waivers to allow our educators to remain engaged in the important work of fostering a safe and healthy learning environment for each child in New York state.”

Summary of the AmendmentsA summary of the amendments follows.  Full descriptions of the changes can be found in the Regents item.

CDOS Commencement Credential and CDOS Pathway: Commissioner’s regulations are amended to exempt students from any unfinished requirements for the career development and occupational studies commencement credential (CDOS) provided that the student is otherwise eligible to exit from high school and has otherwise demonstrated knowledge and skills relating to the CDOS learning standards.

Regents Exam Exemption Eligibility Requirements: Regulations are amended to allow students who have met the standards for the course of study, as locally determined, to be eligible for an exemption to the examination requirements. To qualify for such an exemption to the diploma requirements, students must meet one of the following criteria:

• The student is currently enrolled in a course of study culminating in a Regents Examination and by the end of the 2021 school year, or the 2021 summer session, will have earned credit in such course of study;
• The student was previously enrolled in the course culminating in the applicable Regents Examination, has achieved course credit, and has not yet passed the associated required Regents Examination but was intending to take the test in June 2021 or August 2021 to achieve a passing score; or
• The student is in grade 7 or 8, is enrolled in a course of study culminating in taking a Regents Examination and has met the standards assessed in the provided coursework.

The Department will also extend exemption eligibility for pathway assessments, alternative assessments, technical assessments, and locally developed tests through the 2020-21 school year.

Mastery and Honors Flexibility: Regulatory amendments will allow for flexibility in the calculations for the mastery and honors endorsement wherein student course grades may be substituted for exam scores in cases where Regents Examination exemptions would preclude a student from qualifying for an endorsement to their diploma.

Science Laboratory Experience: Commissioner’s regulations relating to science laboratory experience are amended to:

• Clarify that a student may still be eligible to take a science Regents examination, and therefore be eligible for an exemption if applicable, even if they are unable to meet the 1,200-minute science laboratory experience requirement due to the COVID-19 crisis; and
• Expand the amendment allowing students to continue to meet the laboratory requirements through a combination of hands on and virtual experiences due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Graduation Assessment Exemption Declination: With the cancellation of the January 2021 Regents Examinations, the Department amended regulations to provide parents and persons in parental relation of students scheduled to graduate in January, June, or August of 2021 who have been exempted from a graduation assessment requirement the opportunity to decline such exemption.

Additionally, the amendment extended the time period required by schools to give parents or persons in parental relation notification of the option to decline such exemption from 10 calendar days to 30 calendar days.

USDE Waiver Exemption Requests: NYSED is in the process of surveying districts and charter schools about their local approaches to student assessment. This information will be used to inform NYSED’s conversations with the USDE regarding the administration of the federally required spring 2021 grades 3-8 ELA and math assessments, grades 4 and 8 science tests, and Regents Examinations. It is the intent of the Department to showcase the wide range of quality assessment practices that are taking place at the school and district level throughout New York State.

While no final decisions have been made on the Department’s assessment waiver request, the Department is planning ahead. Accordingly:
​

• If USDE grants the Department’s waiver request, the State’s elementary- and intermediate-level assessments and all of its June and August 2021 Regents Examinations will be cancelled. 
• Should USDE not grant the waiver request or not respond prior to the scheduled test administration dates:
  • the Department will administer only the Regents Examinations required under ESSA during the June 2021 administration, which are the ELA, Algebra 1, Earth Science and Living Environment Exams;
  • the August 2021 Regents Exams will be cancelled;
  • only Session 1 of the grades 3-8 assessments in Math and ELA will be required, a shift from the standard practice where these assessments are administered in two sessions; and
  • only the written test component of the Grades 4 and 8 Science Tests will be held; the performance tests will not be administered.

Timetable for ImplementationThe emergency regulations will become effective on March 16, 2021. It is anticipated that the proposed amendment will be presented for permanent adoption at the June 2021 Regents meeting, after publication of the proposed amendment in the State Register and expiration of the 60-day public comment period required under the State Administrative Procedure Act. 

Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, which the Supreme Court will hear next Monday, March 22, targets a nearly half-century-old regulation in California that permits union organizers to briefly enter agricultural worksites and speak to farmworkers. But the stakes in this case go far beyond union busting.
The plaintiffs in Cedar Point ask the justices to so radically reshape the Court’s approach to property rights that some of the most basic state and federal health and safety laws could fall. Among other things, if the Court accepts the plaintiffs’ argument that farm owners have a constitutional right to kick union organizers off their property, it could also mean that restaurants have a constitutional right to keep health inspectors from entering their kitchens, or that factory owners can prohibit the government from inspecting their machines to make sure those machines are safe to operate.
Cedar Point is one of the most radical property rights cases to reach the justices in a long time. And its plaintiffs ask for a significant reshaping of the American social contract.
The case arises out of the Fifth Amendment’s “Takings Clause,” which provides that private property shall not “be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The plaintiffs claim that this clause gives them a broad “right to exclude unwanted persons from private property,” and that this right permits a property owner to forbid a union from entering their land, even if state law permits that union to do so.
If the Cedar Point plaintiffs prevail, California will have to pay farm owners if it wants to enforce its pro-union regulation.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that laws granting unions a limited right to enter an employer’s property and speak to workers are constitutional. As the Court held in Central Hardware v. NLRB (1972), the government may require an employer to allow a union onto its property so long as “the access is limited to (i) union organizers; (ii) prescribed nonworking areas of the employer’s premises; and (iii) the duration of organization activity.”
But the Cedar Point plaintiffs don’t just ask for a decision that could sweep away decisions like Central Hardware. They ask for such a broad power to exclude others from private property that even things like health inspections could be endangered.
Sign up for The Weeds newsletterVox’s German Lopez is here to guide you through the Biden administration’s unprecedented burst of policymaking. Sign up to receive our newsletter each Friday.
How the Takings Clause currently operatesThe specific regulation at issue in Cedar Point has been on the books since 1975. It allows organizers to enter a worksite and speak to farmworkers for up to three (nonconsecutive) hours a day — the hour before the start of work, the hour after the end of work, and the workers’ lunch break.
Before a union may do so, it must notify the government and the employer. The union may enter the worksite for up to 30 days, and it may invoke this right to enter a particular worksite up to four times a year.
Thus, union organizers are allowed on a farm’s property for a maximum of 120 days a year, and only for a total of three hours per day.
The Cedar Point plaintiffs argue that this limited intrusion of their property amounts to what is known as a “per se” taking. Current law distinguishes between per se takings, which involve unusually severe intrusions on private property and are treated with particular skepticism by courts, and milder intrusions on property rights that fall under the broader umbrella of “regulatory” takings. Notably, the Cedar Point plaintiffs do not argue that California’s union access rule is a regulatory taking — so they appear to have made a strategic decision to avoid more measured legal arguments in favor of their more radical claim.
Property owners subject to a per se taking will generally prevail in court, while plaintiffs who allege a regulatory taking often lose — even if they challenge a land use regulation that imposes fairly substantial limits on how they can use their property. In one famous regulatory takings case, the Court upheld a New York City law that prevented the owners of Grand Central train station from constructing a high-rise office building on top of the terminal.
Very few cases qualify as per se takings. Under existing precedents, a law doesn’t count as a per se taking unless it deprives a property owner of “all economically beneficial or productive use” of their property, or subjects the property owner to a “permanent physical occupation” of their land.
So, under this framework, California’s union access rule is not a per se taking. Though a union that successfully organizes a workplace is likely to secure a contract that requires the employer to pay more money to its workers, unionization does not deprive an employer of all economic benefits from their land. And California’s rule does not allow anyone to permanently occupy a property owner’s land. It only allows union organizers to enter that land for a few hours a day, and only for about a third of the year.
How the Cedar Point plaintiffs want to remake the lawBefore we get into some details about the Cedar Point plaintiffs’ argument, it’s helpful to understand two legal concepts.
The first is the concept of a “license.” Suppose that I hire a dog walker to walk my dog on weekday afternoons while I’m at the office. As part of this arrangement, I give the dog walker a key to my home and permission to enter in order to bring the dog outside for his walk. Under this arrangement, I have granted the dog walker a “license” to enter my home.
Licenses are often temporarily arrangements. And they typically (though not always) can be revoked by the property owner. If I decide that my dog walker is doing a bad job, I can fire them and take away their legal right to enter my home. And if I sell my home, the dog walker doesn’t retain any right to enter my former home once the new owner takes possession.

Watson is a very good dog who will bark at you if you trespass upon my home without a license to enter.An “easement” is something else entirely. Suppose that Marge owns a house in a rural area with minimal electrical infrastructure. Now suppose that Big Electric wants to build a power line under Marge’s land that can bring electricity to her neighbors, and that Big Electric also seeks a permanent right to enter Marge’s land and repair this power line if it is damaged. So Big Electric offers Marge money in return for a permanent right to build and maintain this power line.
Big Electric is seeking an easement. Easements typically transfer a portion of a property owner’s rights permanently to someone else. Under ordinary circumstances, a landowner may exclude anyone they want from their property. But under the terms of this easement, Marge would permanently give up her right to exclude Big Electric’s repair crews. Big Electric would own the right to enter onto Marge’s land just as surely as Marge owns her home.
And if Marge someday sells her home to someone else, Big Electric would still own that easement. It would belong to Big Electric, not Marge, and therefore is not something that Marge could transfer to someone else.
This distinction between licenses and easements matters because in Nollan v. California Coastal Commission (1987), the Supreme Court held that, if the government seeks a “public easement across a landowner’s premises,” then the Takings Clause requires the government to compensate that landowner. The Cedar Point plaintiffs rely heavily on Nollan in their brief, arguing that the California union-access regulation “appropriates an easement across the property of all agricultural businesses in California” by stripping those businesses of the right to exclude certain people from their land.
Essentially, they argue that this alleged easement amounts to a per se taking because it permanently gives unions a right to visit certain worksites — even if the unions can only enter those worksites some of the time.
The state concedes that its regulation “is similar to an easement insofar as it affords union organizers a ‘nonpossessory right to enter’ the property of agricultural employers.” But the state ultimately argues that its regulation only grants “some form of license” to union organizers.
It’s a strong argument because, while the California regulation does diminish some property owners’ rights to exclude unwanted visitors, it does not resemble an easement in one very important way. The California regulation does not permanently transfer any of a farm owner’s property rights to unions. The unions do not own anything because of this regulation.
If California were to repeal its regulation tomorrow, the unions would be left with nothing. Had the California regulation actually imposed an easement on farm owners, then unions would retain their ownership of this easement even after the regulation that established it ceased to exist. Under Nollan, if the unions had obtained an easement allowing them to enter private land, then the Takings Clause would forbid California from taking this easement from them without compensating them.
If the Supreme Court agrees that California’s regulation appropriates an easement from farm owners, then the implications are profoundAt least in marginal cases, the line between an easement and a license can be blurry. As one California appeals court judge complained in a 1994 opinion, commercial land use arrangements often involve such complicated terms that “it is increasingly difficult and correspondingly irrelevant to attempt to pigeonhole these relationships as ‘leases,’ ‘easements,’ ‘licenses,’ ‘profits,’ or some other obscure interest in land devised by the common law in far simpler times.”
But, to the extent that the Supreme Court is uncertain whether to classify the rights granted to unions by California’s regulation as a “license” (and therefore as more permissible under the Constitution) or an “easement” (and therefore subject to the Takings Clause’s restrictions), there are profound practical reasons to prefer the former option.
The state’s brief in Cedar Point spends several pages explaining just how many laws could become invalid if the government cannot require landowners to allow unwanted persons onto their property.
“The categorical rules proposed by petitioners and their amici would also imperil a wide variety of health- and safety-inspection regimes,” the state’s legal team writes. “These include, among many others, food and drug inspections, occupational safety and health inspections, and home visits by social workers,” as well as a federal law providing that “underground mines must be inspected ‘at least four times a year.’”
States also frequently enact laws allowing non-governmental workers to enter onto private land. “Many States authorize utility companies and similar entities to enter private property, even absent the owner’s consent, for surveys, repairs, connections, and similar purposes,” the state’s brief explains.
And, in what is likely a bid to secure the votes of conservative justices who support strict enforcement of immigration laws, California argues that the rule proposed by the Cedar Point plaintiffs could prevent law enforcement from arresting many undocumented immigrants.
Although longstanding legal principles permit “entries onto private property to make arrests or enforce criminal laws,” these principles “do not appear to apply to entries by Border Patrol agents to enforce noncriminal immigration laws, or by other government officials to enforce other civil laws.”
US laws permitting unwanted persons to enter a property owner’s land, moreover, stretch back to the early days of the American Republic. Indeed, a Massachusetts law from the 1640s, when the state was still a British colony, provided that “‘any man ... may pass and repass on foot through any man’s propriety’ in order to access ‘great ponds’ for the purpose of fishing or fowling, so long as the entry did not damage the property.”
The strict limits on governmental regulation of property rights proposed by the Cedar Point plaintiffs, in other words, are quite novel. And those limits could invalidate countless state and federal laws, preventing health inspectors from investigating potentially unsafe businesses, and preventing workplace inspectors from investigating dangerous factories and other worksites.
The Roberts Court, which now has a 6-3 Republican majority, is often very hostile toward the rights of unions — even when those rights are clearly established by existing law. In Janus v. AFSCME (2018), for example, the Supreme Court overruled a 41-year-old decision permitting unions to collect certain fees from non-members who benefit from the union’s services.
But, to rule against the unions in Cedar Point, the Supreme Court wouldn’t simply need to undermine many years of decisions benefiting unions. Such a decision could profoundly rework the balance of power between landowners and the government, undercutting huge swaths of state and federal law in the process.
A justice who may be inclined to spite the United Farm Workers in Cedar Point, in other words, needs to ask themselves if they also feel safe eating out at a restaurant that is closed to health inspectors.

States and cities across the country are moving to put teachers near the front of the line to receive a coronavirus vaccine, in an effort to make it safer to return to classrooms and provide relief to struggling students and weary parents.

In Arizona, where many schools have moved online in recent weeks amid a virus surge, Gov. Doug Ducey declared that teachers would be among the very first people inoculated. “Teachers are essential to our state,” he said. Utah’s governor talked about possibly getting shots to educators this month. And Los Angeles officials urged prioritizing teachers alongside firefighters and prison guards.

But in districts where children have spent much of the fall staring at laptop screens, including some of the nation’s largest, it may be too early for parents to get their hopes up that public schools will throw open their doors soon, or that students will be back in classrooms full time before next fall.
Given the limited number of vaccines available to states and the logistical hurdles to distribution, including the fact that two doses are needed several weeks apart, experts said that vaccinating the nation’s three million schoolteachers could be a slow process, taking well into the spring.
And even once enough educators are inoculated for school officials and teachers’ unions — which hold considerable power in many large districts — to consider it safe to reopen classrooms, schools will likely need to continue requiring masks and distancing students for many months, experts said, until community spread has sharply dropped, possibly by summer.

“I think some people have in their head that we’re going to start rolling out the vaccine and all this other stuff is going to go away,” said Marcus Plescia, the chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, which represents public health agencies.
But in schools, as in daily life, he said, there will be no quick fix. “My feeling is that we’re all going to be wearing masks and keeping our distance and trying to be careful around each other for probably most of 2021.”

Vaccination could have the largest impact on schools in places where teaching has remained entirely remote this fall, or where students have spent limited time in the classroom. That includes many big cities and districts in the Northeast and on the West Coast, which have been the most cautious about reopening despite little evidence of schools — and elementary schools in particular — stoking community transmission.

At the same time, there are many schools in the South, the Midwest and the Mountain States where a large percentage of teachers and students are already in classrooms, and where a vaccine would most likely not have as much impact on policy. But even in some of those parts of the country, such as Arizona, distance learning has resumed in recent weeks as coronavirus cases have surged, and vaccinating teachers could help reduce such disruptions.

The nation’s roughly three million full-time teachers are considered essential workers by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which means that in states that follow federal recommendations, they would be eligible to receive the vaccine after hospital employees and nursing home residents.

But the essential worker group is huge — some 87 million Americans — and states will have flexibility in how they prioritize within that population. Many more people work in schools than just teachers, including nurses, janitors and cafeteria workers, and it is unclear how many of them would be included on the high-priority list.

Public health experts disagree on where teachers should fall, with some saying that in-person education is crucial and others noting that teachers generally have better protections and pay than many other essential workers, such as those in meatpacking plants and day cares. Many teachers have not been in their classrooms since March, either because their districts have not physically reopened, or because they have a medical waiver exempting them.

Groups that represent teachers, for the most part, are eager to see their members fast-tracked for vaccines. Last month, more than 10 educational organizations, including the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions, wrote to the C.D.C. asking that school employees be considered a priority group.
“Our students need to come back to school safely,” they wrote. “Educators want to welcome them back, and no one should have to risk their health to make this a reality.”

Teachers in districts that have already opened classrooms, like Houston and Miami, should be prioritized for shots, said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which includes some of the country’s largest local chapters.

“Let’s have an alignment here of the schools that are reopening for in-person learning and availability of vaccine,” she said. As more teachers are vaccinated, she added, “we believe that more and more schools can open in person.”

In New York City, home to by far the country’s largest school system, Mayor Bill de Blasio has confidently predicted that many more of the city’s 1.1 million students will be able to return to classrooms this spring as the vaccine is distributed to educators.

Michael Mulgrew, who runs the United Federation of Teachers, the local union, said he thought that timeline might be overconfident — “I don’t think it’s around the corner,” he said of full reopening — but agreed that the thousands of teachers in New York City who were working in person should be among the first educators to get their shots.

Other union leaders, however, were wary about efforts to prioritize within their ranks.
“We don’t want to be in the business of putting a hierarchy in place,” said Becky Pringle, who runs the country’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, “because some of our members are being bullied into returning back to classrooms. That’s not safe, we don’t want to support that.”

Teacher health concerns and union political power have played a significant role in states and cities that have not yet opened their schools, including Los Angeles and Chicago, the nation’s largest districts after New York. In California, where teachers’ unions hold great sway, state and local health rules will not allow the Los Angeles Unified School District to reopen classrooms until the rates of known cases drop significantly, regardless of the vaccine.

Austin Beutner, the superintendent, said he would like to use the district’s extensive testing infrastructure to systematically vaccinate teachers, school nurses and others. But he does not expect a return to pre-pandemic conditions — dozens of children in classrooms five days a week, without social distancing or masks — until the end of 2021.

“If we were able to provide those who work in a school with a vaccine tomorrow, great. They themselves are protected. But they could also be a silent spreader,” he said, referring to the fact that it has not yet been determined if vaccinated people can still carry and spread the coronavirus. And students are unlikely to receive shots before the fall because pediatric trials have only recently begun.

In Chicago, the teachers’ union is fighting a plan to begin returning some students to schools early next year. “Obviously, if school is continuing remote, there’s less urgency around the vaccination,” said the Chicago Teachers Union’s president, Jesse Sharkey.

Asked if he could imagine schools opening before fall 2021, Mr. Sharkey said yes, but he suggested it would have more to do with controlling the spread of the virus than vaccinating teachers. “With mitigation strategies in place, and with a reasonably low level of community spread, I do think that we could get to open schools,” he said.

Chicago has plans for a phased school reopening starting in January if the spread of the virus stabilizes, but the local teachers’ union says cases remain too high.

Not every union leader expects all of their members to eagerly line up for inoculation. “Some don’t want to go back unless there is a vaccine, and others absolutely don’t believe in it,” said Marie Neisess, president of the Clark County Education Association, which represents more than 18,000 educators in Nevada.

In California, E. Toby Boyd, president of the state’s largest teachers’ union, said educators have been told they will be in the second wave of vaccinations. But some teachers may be reluctant to be among the first recipients.

“My members are anxious to get back to the classroom, but they’re skeptical,” said Mr. Boyd, whose organization, the California Teachers Association, represents some 300,000 members. “We need to be sure it’s safe and there are no lasting side effects.”
Teachers in California also continue to push for other safety measures that they think need to be addressed before normal school can resume. “We view the vaccine as one important layer in preventing school outbreaks,” said Bethany Meyer, a special-education teacher and union leader in Oakland, Calif.

“We also need testing and tracing and other mitigation measures, and that’s going to be the case for some time,” Ms. Meyer said, adding, “A vaccine is important, but our thinking is longer term than that.”

In places like Miami, where public schools have been open for much of the fall, vaccinations could have a different effect. Karla Hernandez-Mats, the leader of United Teachers of Dade, said she believed that widespread vaccination among educators there would help reduce the chaos caused by frequent quarantines and classroom closures.
​
The vaccine, she said, “would create more of a sense of normalcy, and it would bring a lot of relief to a lot of teachers working in person right now.”

by Anna North, VOX

Hybrid learning was supposed to be an improvement.
When school buildings closed in the spring due to the pandemic, students, teachers, and families all struggled with remote classes. But come fall, the virus was still raging across much of America. So many districts — including the nation’s largest, New York City — struck a compromise.
They would bring kids into buildings, but only for part of the day or week. That way, they’d reduce the number of students in schools at any one time, limiting viral spread, while still giving students crucial in-person time with their teachers and peers.
That was the idea, anyway. In practice, however, hybrid models could turn out to be the worst of both worlds, as David Zweig predicted at Wired in July.
To begin with, hybrid schedules don’t really solve one of the pandemic’s biggest problems for parents: the lack of child care. While having kids in school a few days a week or a few hours a day might give parents a bit more flexibility to do their jobs, “the benefits of being able to work a little less part-time and a little less erratically are not going to be anything like what you’d be getting from full-time school,” Michael Madowitz, an economist at the Center for American Progress who studies the impact of child care, told Vox.
And while some parents may be able to stay home with their kids on the days they’re out of school, others will need outside child care. That means kids will spend part of the week in child care centers, camps, pods, or other group arrangements — all of which increase their potential exposure to the virus, which they can then bring into their schools. “I do wonder if we are actually creating more problems through the hybrid model because now we are allowing more time for more exposures to occur,” Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, told Vox.
Hybrid models appear to do one thing they’re supposed to do: They give kids a little bit of the in-person interaction they missed out on in the spring. But some say there are better ways of achieving that goal, from outdoor classrooms to prioritizing in-person school for younger students, who often struggle the most with remote learning.
Education during the pandemic is an incredibly difficult problem — “people are trying really, really hard to solve this,” Madowitz noted. But it may be a case where the compromise solution is far from the best one.
Hybrid models are supposed to limit the spread of Covid-19. Experts worry they might do the opposite.American schools began weighing the idea of hybrid instruction in the late spring and early summer, when it became clear that Covid-19 would be far from gone at the start of the fall semester. Ultimately, about 12 percent of districts around the country were planning on a hybrid start as of late August, according to a survey by the Center on Reinventing Public Education. That percentage amounts to thousands of schools nationwide — New York City alone has over 1,800, serving more than 1.1 million students.
Hybrid models vary in their execution — some have students coming in only a few days per week, while others split students into morning and afternoon groups. But however they work, the idea is roughly the same: A hybrid schedule reduces the number of kids in each classroom at once to better allow for social distancing. It may also reduce the number of people each student interacts with in-person, since students often stay with cohorts that are smaller than their normal classes. And many districts are setting aside time in their hybrid schedules to deep-clean schools, although some have begun to raise questions about how much surface cleaning really matters when it comes to reducing viral spread, Nuzzo noted.
Beyond questions about the efficacy of cleaning, there are a couple of potential problems with hybrid schedules. For one thing, hybrid education doesn’t necessarily reduce the number of students each teacher has contact with, since they may teach multiple cohorts. That’s concerning because adults are at much greater risk of serious illness or death from the virus than children are. “Really, who we’re concerned about most in terms of reducing risk in a school environment is the teacher,” Nuzzo said.
Then there’s the question of what happens during the days or hours when students are remote. While some parents are caring for children at home during that time, others are enrolling kids in camps or child care centers — some of which are adapting to care for more school-aged kids. Still other families are bringing kids together in informal groups sometimes called “pods” to share child care responsibilities. Finally, older children may be getting together with friends without adult supervision.
Overall, if kids “are in some other care environment where they are now exposed to another group of people, then we may have effectively increased the number of people all having contact with each other over the course of a week,” Nuzzo said.
That, in turn, increases the likelihood that a student could bring Covid into school and infect others. A number of epidemiologists have raised this concern in recent months. For example, William Hanage, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, wrote in an August op-ed in the Washington Post that “hybrid school plans make it easier for the virus to transmit into schools, simply by producing more links between schools and families along which the virus can travel.”
So far, there’s little comprehensive data on Covid-19 and schools in the US, let alone on hybrid models, but some data does show troubling hints. For example, the Covid-19 Schools Response Dashboard, which pulls together case counts and other data from a selection of schools around the country, found that, as of September 22, staff infection rates were actually higher at schools using hybrid learning than at schools with fully in-person instruction. There could be reasons for this beyond the model itself — for example, dashboard co-creator Emily Oster told Vox that schools might be more likely to use a hybrid schedule if Covid-19 transmission rates in the area are already high.
Still, there’s little evidence in the data so far that hybrid schedules make schools safer, and according to experts, there’s a lot of cause for concern.


With kids home for much of the week, parents still face child care strugglesThe other, related problem of hybrid models is one of child care. In the spring, the closure of schools and day care centers caused a crisis for working parents around the country. The problem was most severe for women, who still shoulder the majority of caregiving responsibilities.
Women also lost a majority of the millions of jobs shed by the American economy early in the pandemic, and many economists feared that without a solution to the child care problem, even more women would be pushed out of the workforce. Mothers, especially those who are primary breadwinners, faced the prospect of “having to choose between making a living and taking care of their families,” Nicole Mason, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, told Vox this summer.
Some economists — and families — looked to fall as a possible respite, when a resumption of school would allow moms to get back to work. That didn’t happen. Instead, many districts started the fall either in hybrid mode or fully remote.
Hybrid models may have provided some parents with a bit of a break — as Madowitz put it, “for a lot of parents, anything is better than nothing.” But for many others, a few days of child care and supervision isn’t that much better than no child care at all.
That may be especially true for parents in low-wage service jobs who don’t have a lot of control over their schedules. Hybrid models may also pose a particular problem for families that rely on grandparents or other older relatives for child care, Madowitz said, since the virus exposure of a partial week at school could put those relatives at risk. Indeed, more than half of New York City families have chosen all-remote rather than hybrid learning this fall, with some citing older family members as the reason.
With millions of kids still at home for at least part of the week, then, millions of parents — a majority of them moms — haven’t been able to return to their normal working hours. Instead of rebounding with the return of school, women’s employment plummeted this fall, with 865,000 women dropping out of the labor force in September, compared with just 216,000 men.
And while hybrid learning may be helping some parents get a bit more work in, “when you look at what’s been going on with jobs, its really hard to believe you’re gonna get this huge pop” in women’s employment from hybrid schooling alone, Madowitz said.
Not to mention, any child care break that parents get from hybrid schooling may be short-lived if schools have to return to remote instruction due to rising Covid-19 cases in the area. That’s already happened at more than 100 schools in New York City, which closed earlier this month due to growing clusters of the virus in Brooklyn and Queens. And New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that the entire school system will close if the city reaches 3 percent test positivity over a seven-day period. That means any parents who have been banking on school to facilitate their work schedules will have to scramble for another solution — or quit.
When it comes to women’s employment in particular, “I’m just deeply scared,” Madowitz said.
Hybrid models may benefit students, but there may be more creative solutions that would work betterThe biggest benefits of hybrid models are likely educational. “At least in the hybrid education models, the students are getting some real-time, in-person instruction,” as well as interaction with peers, which is important for social and emotional development, Emiliana Vegas, co-director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, told Vox.
“We know that students really thrive when they learn to collaborate,” she explained. “That’s really much harder to do in a remote setting, particularly for the younger children.”
While there’s little data so far on the effectiveness of hybrid models, there is data showing significant learning losses during all-remote school this spring, concentrated among low-income and Black and Latinx students. Experts hope that having at least some in-person time will mitigate these losses, Vegas said.
And some families have seen the benefits for their kids. Amy, a New Jersey mom who asked that her last name not be used, told Vox that remote school in the spring for her two sons, then 8 and 3, was “like a nightmare.” But with both boys in school on a hybrid model now, “this fall has been a lot better.”
Amy’s younger son, who has an autism spectrum diagnosis, “really needs the in-person guidance” and is getting occupational therapy and speech therapy during his four days at school. With him out of the house, it’s also a bit easier for his older brother to focus on remote school. He’s at home three days a week and in school for two, and though he was recently diagnosed with a visual processing disorder that can make Zoom lessons challenging, overall “things are pretty good if you’re looking at pandemic parameters,” Amy said.
While families like Amy’s are benefiting from hybrid schedules, in some districts the model doesn’t actually guarantee much in-person instruction. For example, Nuzzo said that one plan floated by her child’s district would have students come into classrooms for online lessons. “I’m not sure that that’s worth the hassle of leaving the house,” she said. “I don’t want him to be on a screen anymore if he’s going to be in a school building.”
And some fear that the educational benefits of a hybrid model could be negated by the sheer logistical challenges of bringing students into schools in the midst of a pandemic. New York City, for example, has been forced to put all its energy into health and safety, leaving little time to help teachers with the challenges of hybrid education, Tom Liam Lynch, editor-in-chief of the website InsideSchools, and a parent of a New York City sixth grader, told Vox.
Starting in the summer, parent concerns about actual pedagogy have gone unheard, Lynch said: “Parents are asking for the plan for high-quality instruction, and the city’s saying we have sanitizer.” Now it’s October, and there’s still “no leadership in terms of what constitutes high-quality learning and teaching,” he said.
Given these and other concerns, some are pushing for different solutions to the problems of pandemic education. For example, a lot of districts chose hybrid models because it was the only way to allow for social distancing within their school buildings, Nuzzo said. But districts could use outdoor space or temporary structures to make room for more kids. Alternatively, younger children could be brought back first, freeing up larger high-school buildings to host elementary-school classes.
Overall, there’s been a lack of creativity around physical space when it comes to schools, Nuzzo argues: “Think about places that were able to create hospitals and have tents and things like that, and yet we haven’t applied that level of thinking with respect to schools.”
There’s also the potential for rethinking what school buildings are for. In New York City, a lot of the conversation around reopening schools (and closing them in the first place) has been around the crucial social services schools provide, from child care to meals for food-insecure students. Instead of trying to reopen schools on a hybrid model, the district could have focused on delivering those face-to-face services while keeping instruction remote, Lynch said.
Such a solution “would have freed up building principals to be able to very creatively use millions of square footage of New York City school building space for tons of non-academic services,” Lynch said. “You could have child care at your local school in some form; you could have access to guidance, to meals, to a nurse; you could have even informal clubs and other kinds of activities that students could come in for.”
But so far, such a solution isn’t on the table in New York City. And overall, in a time when policymakers are faced with many competing priorities, schools can often feel like an afterthought.
“I am very frustrated about governments that have made faster decisions to reopen restaurants and bars and movie theaters and public gatherings well in advance of opening schools,” Nuzzo said. “It just feels like very short-term thinking.”

By Steven Yoder, Washington Post

ITHACA, N.Y. — On a frigid Thursday in February, math teacher Marietta Gibb was warming up her sixth-graders at DeWitt Middle School with some algebraic expressions. She showed the students a video to review the math, and then sent them scattering to different tables to practice the exercises they had found challenging.

“We don’t want anything too easy, because if you go to the gym and you pick up two pounds, what purpose is that?” Gibb said as she encouraged her students to select math problems at their individual levels. “[And] we don’t want to pick up the weight that’s way too much for us, because we’ll end up hurting ourselves.”

At a table in back, two girls matched bright blue cutouts of unsolved equations with their solved counterparts. Two boys worked on riddles that tested them on combining like terms. A student practiced distributing negative numbers on a whiteboard.

​This is the look of the Ithaca City School District’s new effort to limit tracking — or separating students by perceived ability — in middle school math. Instead of sixth- and seventh-graders being divided into lower and accelerated levels, the students take classes of equal rigor but sometimes work in small groups, split up to practice specific skills, or pair up with another student who can guide them through a problem.

The district began rolling out the program two years ago after recognizing that students of color made up a disproportionate share of pupils in lower-level math classes. Just 22 percent of students in the district are Black, Latino or multiracial, but in some lower-level math classes, children of color were overrepresented, according to teachers and administrators. Ithaca is hardly unique: Nationally, Black and Latino students are significantly less likely than White and Asian students to take accelerated math in middle school.

But the racial divide wasn’t Ithaca’s only concern. Students in accelerated math were struggling when they entered high school, having failed to pick up the skills they needed. Tracking didn’t seem to benefit anyone, so Ithaca became one of at least three school districts around the country to limit or abandon the approach.

Math is the most-tracked subject in school: Three-quarters of eighth-graders attend math classes that are segregated by ability, according to the latest federal data. The pervasiveness of math tracking may be due, in part, to the persistent belief that some people are good at math and others aren’t, education experts suggest. Now some experts are encouraging school districts to step away from the practice. In a report published in May, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics recommended districts eliminate tracking in middle school math.

The group points to slumping test scores as a reason change is needed: Eighth-grade math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have been flat for a decade, with just 34 percent of students testing proficient in 2019.

Still, researchers aren’t united on the benefits of eliminating tracking. In Ithaca, district leaders said it would be years before there was data to evaluate the success of the new approach. In the meantime, school administrators face a more immediate challenge, one that probably awaits other districts that attempt de-tracking: parent opposition. When Ithaca moved to reduce advanced math classes, parents voiced concern that students wouldn’t be challenged academically and would miss out on a chance to take algebra in eighth grade, which is often viewed as a steppingstone to high school calculus and a college STEM degree. Two years into the effort, school administrators are still contending with a backlash against de-tracking in this highly educated, politically liberal city.

ADThe changes to the math curriculum have their roots in Susan Danskin’s classroom. Danskin leads the math department at DeWitt, one of Ithaca’s two middle schools, which for years had separated eighth-graders into three different math levels. In her lowest-tier class in fall 2017, seven of the 10 students were Black, Hispanic or multiracial, compared with 25 percent of the school. Another DeWitt math teacher reported similar numbers. “We said, ‘We are just perpetuating institutional racism here,’ ” Danskin recalled.

The teachers worried the process for tracking children was overly subjective. Students were placed in regular or accelerated math at the end of fifth grade based on teacher recommendations. But teachers complained of sometimes feeling pressured by parents to recommend their children for accelerated math.

Over at Ithaca High School, Steven Weissburg, the math department leader, was also troubled. He once loved teaching ninth-grade geometry, a class for students who had completed accelerated eighth-grade math. But in recent years, he had come to dread it because the students had sped through content in middle school and had weak skills.

Weissburg and Danskin and other middle school math department leaders met with district officials and proposed de-tracking eighth-grade math. Superintendent Luvelle Brown needed no convincing. He and his leadership team felt the research about the benefits of de-tracking was clear. “But until we had the teacher connection and the ability to do that, we would have no chance,” he said.

In spring 2018, the district approved a pilot at DeWitt to collapse math for eighth-graders from three tracks to two: algebra and eighth-grade math. Teachers developed strategies to offer “differentiated” learning, like those practiced in Gibb’s class, to students of different proficiency levels enrolled in the same course.

The district liked what it saw and decided to take the changes a few steps further. In fall 2019, Boynton, the district’s other middle school, adopted DeWitt’s two tiers for eighth-grade math. Meanwhile, sixth- and seventh-grade math collapsed from two tracks to one. To support the changes, the district hired teachers to give students more individual attention and help them work more easily in small groups.

But almost immediately, parent opposition sprouted. At district meetings on the de-tracking effort, parents swamped administrators with questions. How would students be picked for eighth-grade algebra? What research had informed the move? How would children who excelled at math learn alongside students who were struggling?

Even parents who felt inclined to support the changes said the district wasn’t prepared to answer their questions. Tara Holm, a professor in Cornell’s math department who has a fifth-grader and a second-grader in the school system, said her understanding is that de-tracking “really is better for many kids.” But she wasn’t satisfied with the district’s explanations and how it had communicated the changes to parents. “It seemed like a very half-baked plan,” Holm recalled.

Parents started to organize. Deirdre Hay, a parent of two children in the district, drew up a petition asking the district reverse the decision. About 300 people signed. While the school board was united behind de-tracking, a parent named Erin Croyle jumped into the school board race as a write-in two weeks before the May 2019 election and defeated a longtime member after gaining the backing of de-tracking opponents.

ADStill, most parents are taking a wait-and-see approach. The resistance to the curriculum change “feels premature,” said Marianella Casasola, a senior associate dean at Cornell with two children in the district. She said she liked the idea of having students at different skill levels in the same classroom. But Casasola said, “It’s not clear how this is going to play out.”

Academic research tends to support de-tracking, but is not unequivocal. In a 2016 report, for example, education researcher Tom Loveless found that states that sort more children by ability in eighth-grade math wind up with more students scoring high on Advanced Placement exams in high school.

In Ithaca, Lily Talcott, the district’s deputy superintendent, said it would take years for the district to know for sure the impact of detracking. But she said the district would find ways to measure student performance and assess students’ views on the changes along the way.

ADTeachers, meanwhile, said they were satisfied with how the district has pursued detracking. Gibb, the DeWitt math teacher, said some parents told their children they would be bored in the combined math classes. But now, “I don’t hear kids saying they’re bored,” Gibb said. “I don’t see it. I’d never go back to the previous system. I think this is so much better for all the levels of kids.”

This story about middle school math was produced by the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

(CNN) — A 6-year-old afraid to go outside. A mom scared to send her children back to school, then thrilled at how they've thrived. A teacher worried she'll be ordered back to the classroom and become some kind of test subject.
​
These are some of the stressed stories of the pandemic-hit school year so far -- but it's impossible to know how widespread the experiences are because there is no national tracking of what happens when children and staff return to schools. And without that tracking, health and education experts say, there's no way to come up with best practices to restart schools, educate children most eFectively and open up their parents to commit to their work lives.

"Unfortunately, some of our knowledge is really just derived from anecdote," said Dr. Susan CoLn, professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "We don't have any good strategies to systematically collect the experience across a swath of the US to actually be able to study the different approaches that have and, in some cases, not worked so well."
Kimberly Berens, a scientist-educator with a PhD in behavioral science, told CNN she sees that play out around her in Long Island, New York.

"In a five-mile radius around my office there are several public and private schools, and every single one of those schools are doing different things, which is crazy," she said.

"What I know as a scientist is, if I'm manipulating multiple variables at one time, I have no idea what variable actually produced whatever outcome I achieved, or didn't achieve. So, with schools in one district all doing different things, then we can't put our finger on what contributed to an increase in prevalence or a decrease in prevalence."

New research on children and Covid-19
Some scientific knowledge about children and coronavirus has increased since schools across the country shut down in March.

CoLn told CNN that while new research has shown that children can catch and transmit coronavirus, which previously had not been as certain, "on average, a child's ailment will be less severe than that of the adult, provided they don't have underlying conditions."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study in late September saying that the incidence of Covid-19 among younger children appears to be much lower than in adolescents, which could give confidence that elementary schools, in particular, are safer to reopen. But there hasn't yet been a chance to study that.

Instead the anecdotes continue. Many remember the widely shared photos of crowded hallways as school started in Paulding County, Georgia, that were followed by cases of coronavirus and hundreds of students and staff in quarantine.
​
But for the majority of schools that have opened their doors, infection rates and case counts have not skyrocketed as much as medical professionals, teachers, and parents feared. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said that could have been a cause for celebration if anyone had been tracking the situation effectively.

"Some schools opened well and fine, without transmission of illness and that would have created great confidence," Weingarten told CNN. "But instead of having a great national celebration about any of this stuff, everybody's just completely on edge and anxious about what's going to happen because there's no national guidance."

The problematic openings could even have helped others, Weingarten said. "I think that the Georgia ... situation, where you saw a huge number of kids running through those halls in the middle of real community spread, scared people enough to do masks and physical distancing."
Part of what has led to a safe reopening, experts say, is only introducing in-person learning when there is a relatively low community spread of coronavirus.

Hannah Watters said she was concerned about safety in North Paulding High School when she
posted this photo to social media.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at the Texas Tribune Festival in late September "you've got to look at the relative risk to the children in the particular area, county, city, state, that you happen to live" when determining when to bring children back to school.

Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, concurred that "the first requirement, of course, is that we have, you know, a relatively low level of infection in the surrounding community."

"In places where the case numbers are rapidly accelerating, or just increasing and uncontrolled, it's going to stand that as people in the community get infected, those cases will show up at schools. And obviously, nobody wants to open a school to only have to shut it down again, because of need to quarantine students or staff."
​
In its guidelines, the CDC laid out that mitigation strategies such as wearing masks, social distancing by having reduced class sizes, spacing out desks, implementing cleaning protocols, and developing a proactive plan for when a student or staff member tests positive for Covid-19, should be incorporated in any plans to reopen a school.

But again, the evidence to prove that such measures are having an impact is anecdotal at best as there is no tracking down students to fight low virtual attendance nationally mandated testing and reporting of coronavirus infections in schools. And while New York state releases that information, Georgia has decided to keep it under wraps.

'Encouraging' data

To try to fill some of the gaps, Brown University has created a Covid-19 school response dashboard, analyzing data from 1,006 schools with more than 167,000 students and 54,000 staff. So far, just 0.13% of students surveyed have tested positive for Covid-19 and that rises to only 0.24% for teachers.

"That early data is encouraging," said Emily Oster, economist professor at Brown University, who helped create the dashboard.

"The process of opening schools doesn't seem to be driving epidemics outside of the school," Oster told CNN.

"These risks may be lower than people thought."

But there are suspected cases among both staff and students, and Oster said schools need testing capability to get an even clearer picture. She did add that schools that have implemented social distancing and mask mandates have had even greater success.

"We're certainly seeing that some of these mitigation factors are strongly associated with lower rates, and so places that are doing them seem to be having less spread than other places," Oster said. Oster has also talked to parents and school administrators and has discovered that one widespread anxiety -- that young children may not be able to keep their masks on -- could be misplaced.

"Actually, it's completely fine," Oster said of young students. "The people I think we are struggling to get to wear the masks are the adults and high school students."

How some children have been impacted

Kelly Foster was scared to send her second and fifth graders to in-person schooling at their private school in Atlanta -- but now feels she is one of the lucky ones.

"When my kids spend too much time online, they just become mean. It changes their personality -- they get grumpy, they get short-tempered," she said. Now they are back in school, their moods have improved dramatically, she said.

Alexis Barad-Cutler is hoping for that to play out with her children. She says her 6-year-old son Gavi has become afraid to go outside and has developed an anxious oral fixation from spending so much time on his iPad. Now he has to have something to chew in order to be able to pay attention to the screen, she said.

The Barad-Cutlers live in Brooklyn Heights, and Gavi and his fourth-grader brother just started going back to their New York City public school for two days a week. New York City is the only one of the US' top 10 largest school districts to open the school year with anything but entirely
online learning. And while many private schools and smaller rural schools have been able to open with protective equipment and social distancing, large city schools have
stayed closed.

In Atlanta, Kristina Christy's sixth grader and ninth grader have spent weeks and weeks of the new school year learning in a virtual format.

"This is not working," Christy told CNN.

She says her children are not doing well academically and she does not understand why public schools can't open.

"Every private school here in Atlanta is in-person or they have an option in-person," she said. "Why can't we learn from what they're doing?"

The difference between learning in-person and online could become another dividing line between students.

Nuzzo, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the delays, interruptions and other difficulties of online learning could have "lifetime consequences" for students.

"We very much have to worry about this loss and have plans for how to address it and to bring students back up to speed," she said.

But of course students are only part of the equation. Teachers need to go to school as well and for Karen Ngosso, a third-grade teacher in Baltimore, the time is not right. She says she's seeing almost all of her 42 students at Hazelwood Elementary log on to lessons and she stresses everyone is doing what they can to give the children a high quality education.

And until there is a vaccine against Covid-19, Ngosso said she is not comfortable returning to teaching in person.

"I know how I'm handling the pandemic, and how I'm following the protocols with myself and my children and the people that come into my space, but I can't control what anybody else does out in this whole big wide world, and people are moving and traveling and doing different things. And some people are like, it's nothing," she said.

"I don't want to be a guinea pig. I don't want to be a petri dish," she added. "People really have to understand that just because I'm a teacher doesn't mean I stopped being a human."

NPR

​Orange County, Fla., has 18,000 missing students. The Miami-Dade County public schools have 16,000 fewer than last year. Los Angeles Unified — the nation's second-largest school system — is down nearly 11,000. Charlotte-Mecklenburg in North Carolina has 5,000 missing. Utah, Virginia, and Washington are reporting declines statewide.

Comprehensive national data aren't available yet, but reporting by NPR and our member stations, along with media reports from around the country, shows enrollment declines in dozens of school districts across 20 states. Large and small, rich and poor, urban and rural — in most of these districts the decline is a departure from recent trends. Over the past 15 years, data from the U.S. Education Department show that small and steady annual increases in public school enrollment have been the rule.
Six months after schools around the country shut their doors amid coronavirus lockdowns, these fall enrollment declines come as schools have been scrambling to improve remote learning offerings, and to adopt safety procedures to allow buildings to open for in-person classes, sometimes just a few days a week. In many parts of the country the start of the year has been marked by multiple changes in plans, widespread confusion among teachers and families, deep concerns about safety, and worries about unequal access to technology.

Article continues after sponsor message"We are not alone in this," Chris Reykdal, Washington State's Superintendent of Public Instruction, said in a statement this week announcing a 2.82% decrease in enrollment statewide, driven by a 14% drop in kindergarten. "As our nation continues to fight the spread of COVID-19, states across the country are seeing changes in K–12 enrollment as families make decisions about the safest and most effective learning environments for their children."

Reykdal said operational cuts might be looming, and schools would lobby the state for stopgap funds. "Counts are taken every month, and if these trends continue, many of our districts will need to make adjustments in the short-term even as they plan for booming kindergarten and first grade classes next year."

In many places, the enrollment drops are especially noticeable in kindergarten and pre-K. For our reporting, we reached out to more than 100 districts and heard back from more than 60. In our sample, the average kindergarten enrollment drop was 16%.

Many education experts are skeptical about the virtues of remote learning for very young children, and lots of parents seem to feel the same way.

"It was either going to be virtual or hybrid, or if they were in person it was going to be weirdly socially distant and masked," says Megan Olshavsky, whose son was scheduled to start kindergarten this fall in Austin, Texas. "And he wouldn't be able to interact, really, with other kids."
Instead, Jonah, who is almost 6, is staying in his small private Montessori school for kindergarten, where he'll attend in-person, full time.

"We had signed him up to start in Austin in the beginning of the year and then, you know, in the late spring and the summer, we kind of realized that school wasn't going to look normal," Olshavsky said. The school district started the year with four weeks of virtual learning before phasing in small groups of students.

Jonah's Montessori cut class sizes to fewer than 10 students to reduce the risk of COVID spread. And since it's licensed as a daycare, the children aren't required to wear masks. Meanwhile, the Austin Independent School District is down 5,000 students this fall, a 6% drop.
Olshavsky says she and her husband will have to tighten their belts to afford another year of private-school tuition.

And school districts stand to lose money as well.

Public schools are generally funded by states on a per-pupil basis. This first week of October marks the first of two "count days" in many states — a day in the fall, right at the start of the new fiscal year, where school districts must submit an official enrollment count to determine their funding for the subsequent year.

And that system tends to favor schools in better-off communities, which get more of their funding from local property taxes, explains Bruce Baker, an education professor at Rutgers University. It's the less well-funded districts that are more dependent on state aid.

"If you've got a district where 70, 80 % of the money is coming in state aid based on some enrollment count number, which would tend to be a poorer district serving a higher share of low-income and minority students," he explains, "those districts stand to lose a lot if the state decides to follow through with using this year's enrollment counts as a basis for funding in the future."
The potential loss is a hardship for school districts that already are facing the costs of schooling during a pandemic — from masks and hand sanitizer to hiring additional teachers to run both in-person and virtual programs. On top of that, the coronavirus-induced recession has already driven education budget cuts across the country.

Stephanie Elizalde, the superintendent of Austin ISD, told NPR that the state of Texas has agreed to "hold the district harmless" for enrollment declines for the fall semester only. She is hoping that students start to show up in greater numbers now that the school doors are open a few days a week. Otherwise, she says, "we could have huge cuts." "I don't think there's ever been a time I can recall where I visited with colleagues and all of us are like, how are we going to manage this?..knowing that you have these cuts during the most economically challenged times and a pandemic is--I mean, that's just unheard of."

Baker agrees that a downturn in enrollment this fall does not automatically equal a budget cut next year— states have time to pass measures in the spring to help schools make up the gap in funds.

But in the meantime, budget pressures may push schools to make reopening decisions that they wouldn't otherwise. In Florida, for example, enrollment in Miami-Dade, Broward County and Orange County — all of which are in the top 10 largest districts nationwide — has dropped by several thousand students each.

Back in July, on the same day President Trump implored schools on Twitter to open in the fall, the Florida Department of Education offered school districts the following deal: Reopen and get funded based on the much higher enrollment levels from before the pandemic. Or don't, and get funded based on the actual number of students. Plus, districts will get about $2,500 less for every student who remains online-only.

Judith Marte, the chief financial officer of the Broward County schools, said at a recent school board meeting that the expected enrollment drops of 8,500 students could lead to a significant reduction in a district budget that is already "disgustingly low." And that shortfall, she added, could lead to potentially cutting thousands of jobs.

On the other hand, echoing the difficult decisions educators around the country have faced, Marte said she worries about the safety of returning students to buildings full time: "This is also incredibly stressful for staff, it's incredibly stressful for this board and the superintendent ... To do what's right for our community, it's a very, very difficult place to sit."

Concerns about the youngest students

If students are not showing up at their public schools, where are they going? Possibly to private school, though dozens of private schools have shuttered since the start of the pandemic. Child care centers, which may accept pre-K and kindergarten students, are threatened as well. But there are some reports of private schools gaining students even as public schools are losing them, in places where private schools are in-person and public schools are virtual or hybrid.

"The inequity of the situation is just really staggering," says Olshavsky, the mother in Austin. "We were basically able to pay to keep our kid in a safe learning environment."

Austin Superintendent Elizalde agrees that her main concern is an "exacerbation... of opportunity gaps in students from different economic backgrounds."

Not all families have the means to send their children to private school, or devote a parent to home schooling full time. Some families, says Elizalde, will be leaving children home with older siblings or to sit in front of the TV.

Jessica Diaz is a nurse in Tampa, Fla., married to a firefighter, with three daughters. Since she and her husband work in high-risk environments, they don't want to send her children to school in person. But she's struggling with the district's online learning offerings, too. Her children's nanny is Spanish-speaking and has trouble with tasks like navigating Zoom class meetings.

"I don't think [virtual school] is a sustainable option for our family at this point," she told NPR. "For all of the burden of constant emailing, changes in schedules, assignments and submissions, etc., we feel the content of the education that is being delivered is far below our girls' capabilities and not worth the trouble at this point. "

She plans to pull them out and home-school after the winter break, when she hopes she'll have time to put together a curriculum; but she'll have to do the actual teaching herself in the evening hours after work.

Experts in early childhood education agree with Elizalde that keeping kids out of kindergarten and pre-K, in particular, is likely to exacerbate existing inequalities. Kindergarten is not compulsory in most states. That means children can sit out the year without necessarily doing formal homeschooling or private school.
They may enter next year as first graders, or simply delay the start of kindergarten — a practice sometimes called redshirting and, in normal times, more popular among affluent families and boys.
Diane Schanzenbach, an economist at Northwestern University who studies redshirting, says starting kindergarten late has no long-lasting educational advantages and may even have some drawbacks, for example in lifetime earnings. And Chloe Gibbs, an economist at the University of Notre Dame, says decades of research have underlined the importance of early childhood enrichment for all children, and especially for children from lower-income and less educated families. "We have consistent evidence that these kinds of interventions can have big effects on children's both short-term skill development, but really importantly, their long-term life chances."
In other words, pre-K and kindergarten are the rare educational interventions that both narrow gaps and lift all boats.
​
When families keep children home, the opposite may be true, says Gibbs. "Parents may be choosing not to send their kids to pre-K or to hold back their age-eligible kids from kindergarten," she explains. " And that could be fine for kids in terms of their skill development, if they are in homes where they're ... reading a lot."
But, she adds, what experts really worry about are kids "for whom this early childhood landscape has changed so much. And what are they getting kind of in the absence of having those important early experiences?"

As the articles by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt and by Eric H. Holder, Jr., show, our democracy has been in decline for many years. To conclude this package on saving our democracy on a hopeful note, we turn to our youth. Their activism—especially for the Black Lives Matter movement—is inspiring: it should be supported, not squelched.

Free speech is the cornerstone of a high-functioning democracy. But all too often, speech that challenges those in power is ignored. When voices are not heard, they must become louder. And when they unify in mass protests, those voices strengthen our democracy. We are proud of the young people who are crying out to create a better, more just America that rejects its anti-Blackness and shares its opportunities. And we are proud of the educators who have helped those youth develop their understanding of social justice.

In support of young activists and the educators engaged with them, we offer excerpts from two new books: Campus Uprisings: How Student Activists and Collegiate Leaders Resist Racism and Create Hope, edited by Ty-Ron M. O. Douglas, Kmt G. Shockley, and Ivory A. Toldson, and Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All, by Suzanne Nossel. Each offers thoughtful perspectives on how young people and their educational communities can preserve free speech while building a better society through protest. Both books are written with higher education in mind, and both have ideas that can be adapted to elementary and secondary schools, as well.

While both excerpts offer examples of students addressing racism, Campus Uprisings does so in a forthright manner that may be difficult for some readers. Describing racist incidents in which the N-word is used, these Black authors choose to use the word in full. The question of how to handle such language is a difficult one: we respect the authors’ choice to convey the full horror of the racist act, and we are also concerned about how it may affect our Black readers. After consulting with colleagues, we concluded that in this case, confronting the harsh reality of racism is part of the way forward. Please help us reflect on our practices by sharing your thoughts on this specific question, or on our broader efforts to reckon with racial injustice, by emailing us at ae@aft.org(link sends e-mail).

We are also committed to listening to students. We begin this salute to protest by highlighting findings from a recent poll of college students on free speech. If your students’ views on exercising their right to free speech are not being equitably voiced and heard, consider using this poll to begin a dialogue—or possibly create your own survey—and find out more about your students and the changes they aspire to make.

Helping Students Find Their VoicesFree speech is essential to our democracy, and learning communities—especially college campuses and classrooms—are key spaces for participants to explore difficult topics, to be exposed to new ideas and perspectives, and to learn to function with others in a society. Many educators cherish the ideal of truly free speech and relish opportunities to help students engage with complex issues like present-day school segregation, mass incarceration, and the treatment of refugees and immigrants—but educators also grapple with the difficulties, particularly the risk that students’ remarks will be harmful to their classmates.

Even in educational settings that aim to be inclusive, students may be discouraged from speaking up because of barriers like institutional racism and the implicit biases it fosters. For example, the tendency for educators (and other adults) to perceive Black children and teens as older, less innocent, and more disruptive than their white peers (beginning as early as preschool) leads to higher rates of suspension and expulsion, fewer mentorship and leadership opportunities, and other obstacles to preparing for college.1 Such messages are reinforced when, as we have seen repeatedly in the anti–police brutality protests following the murder of George Floyd, government responses to largely peaceful demonstrations have been mixed and have included violent, unconstitutional attempts to suppress that lawful speech.

When students who perceive that they have been silenced do make it to college, how might they feel about “appropriate” ways to make their perspectives heard? What if some students believe that safely disrupting (not merely silently protesting) a speech by a known white supremacist, for instance, is the only way they can be heard? In such situations, we hope the book excerpts that follow will foster a meaningful debate among faculty, administrators, activist students, and the broader educational community. It might at first seem necessary to punish students who disrupt events, but more productive options may emerge through dialogue.

In setting the stage for such conversations, faculty and administrators may want to consider the potential for causing real harm in asking members of marginalized social groups, such as the children of Central American immigrants or students who identify as LGBTQ, to engage intellectually with peers who believe they are inferior, sinful, or otherwise not worthy of equal rights and opportunities.2 These are tensions that educators often feel acutely as they strive to make their learning spaces welcoming to everyone while also providing opportunities for meaningful learning.

Hearing Our Students’ Words, Silences, and ActionsA recent Gallup/Knight Foundation survey of more than 3,000 full-time college students offers some insights into the ways students perceive freedom of speech to operate on campus—and emphasizes some of the challenges involved. (Download the report for free here(link is external).)

While 96 percent of students said that freedom of expression was very or extremely important (a dominant majority that persists across racial and gender demographics), many students had an incomplete understanding of what kinds of speech are actually protected and where 


​Students are broadly aware that the exercise of freedom of speech occurs within larger social contexts. Among all students surveyed, 91 percent believed that it was very or extremely important that society be inclusive and welcoming to diverse groups of people. But students also recognized that practicing free speech and valuing diversity and inclusion might sometimes conflict. Although 24 to 29 percent of men, women, Democrats, independents, Republicans, and white students perceived such conflicts as frequent, 40 percent of Black students saw such conflicts as frequent.
These results show that there are many opportunities to engage students as they too grapple with what the legal and ethical limits of free expression—and their rights and responsibilities—might be.

Notably, most students (62 percent) felt their professors were willing to consider other points of view, a sign that many faculty are doing a good job of listening and making sure students feel heard. Students saw themselves as doing an even better job, but they had a much lower opinion of their peers and of Americans in general (see Figure 2).4 These gaps suggest that students are not communicating with each other as clearly as they think!

Digging into the implications of free speech sheds some more light on these disparities. Over and over, the poll data show that female students and students of color feel less safe on campus than their peers. Only 60 percent of Black students agreed that “the First Amendment protects people like me” (compared with 94 percent of white students). And 38 percent of all students reported feeling uncomfortable because of speech related to their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation—even if those comments weren’t directed at them—including 41 percent of female students, 41 percent of Black students, and 44 percent of Asian students. Significantly, one in eight students reported feeling unsafe because of speech, with female students twice as likely to feel unsafe as male students and Black and Asian students much more likely than white students (see Figure 3).5

Among all students, there was broader consensus on what kinds of speech schools should restrict. While 88 percent of all students believed colleges should be able to bar the use of racial slurs and half favor restricting clothing with the Confederate flag, only 11 percent believed colleges should be able to prevent students from hanging posters endorsing political candidates in their dorm windows (see Figure 4).6

This is the heart of the issue, and it brings with it an invitation for educators to reflect: How can we help students understand the value of freedom of expression while also helping them to exercise that freedom responsibly and respectfully? How can we balance our desire to help all students to feel safe expressing themselves in our classrooms with our responsibility to make sure all students feel safe, period?

These are challenges those who work in education spaces need to think through, particularly before enacting policies, deciding punishments, or planning class discussions on difficult topics. And students should be involved in those conversations and decisions. As the survey results show, while students may have a lot to learn about free speech, they also have a lot to share.
–Editors

For the full article on American Educator, including graphics/images, click HERE.

American Educator, Fall 2020

By Joie Tyrrell
Updated September 28, 2020 5:36 PM

Finding enough substitute teachers often has been an issue for Long Island school districts, but securing subs during a pandemic has become an even greater challenge, educators said.
There’s a smaller pool of candidates to choose from as fewer younger people are going into the field, and retired teachers who have served as substitutes in the past may be sitting this year out due to fear of contracting COVID-19. Additionally, with a mix of hybrid, remote and in-person classroom instruction, substitute teaching is far different from what it used to be.
"There has been a shortage of substitute teachers for a long time. That’s nothing new. However, the pandemic has complicated matters in many cases, and this is true for Long Island, New York State and the nation," said Bill Heidenreich, superintendent of the Valley Stream Central High School District and president of the Nassau County Council of School Superintendents.
Because of the substitute shortage, the state Board of Regents in July approved emergency measures, including giving schools more flexibility in hiring. The hiring change allows for substitutes who are not certificated and not working toward certification — but who hold a high school diploma or its equivalent — to be employed beyond a 40-day limit, for up to an additional 50 days. That gives subs the right to work up to three months, or beyond in rare circumstances.

Zachary Schulman, 24, of Great Neck worked as a substitute in Middle Country last school year and signed up to do the same this year. Credit: Newsday / Alejandra Villa Loarca"The state has eased the requirements that one would need to be a substitute teacher. That is helpful, but it is also a little concerning because you want to make sure the person you are putting in front of the children is completely qualified," Heidenreich said.
Ron Masera, Center Moriches superintendent and president of the Suffolk County School Superintendents Association, said it's helpful that the Regents board approved additional substitute days, "But if the bodies are not there, it can only help so much."
Masera said his district has encouraged high school students to consider education as a career path "to build that pipeline for future teachers so down the road we have qualified candidates."
But fewer people are going into the profession. Between 2009 and 2017, enrollment in the state’s undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs declined 53%, from more than 79,000 students to about 37,000, according to a report from the New York State Educational Conference Board, which also noted that school districts statewide will need around 180,000 new teachers over the next decade.
The Middle Country school district may have found one solution for its shortage. The district partnered with Stony Brook University last school term to place student-substitutes in schools.
The program was expanded this year to include the Plainedge district, said Terry Earley, director of teacher and leader education at Stony Brook. Students can be either undergraduates or graduate students, and are in their last education methods course before they enter student teaching.
"We were looking for a way to get our kids more experience in the classroom," Earley said. "It’s a win-win for everybody."
Zachary Schulman, 24, of Great Neck worked as a substitute in Middle Country last school year and signed up to do the same this year. The Stony Brook senior is studying to teach grades 7-12, with a specialization in English. He said he would be comfortable serving as a sub for remote instruction as well.
"This program enhances the student-teacher prep experience," Schulman said, adding there was a "profound benefit of being able to work in a classroom with students as the teacher, even if I am reading lesson plans made by another teacher. I had the opportunity to lead a class."
Giovanni D'Ambrosio, 24, of Seaford, a graduate student at Stony Brook, is a student teacher who worked as a substitute in Middle Country until schools closed in March. He was disappointed he couldn't finish the year.
"I loved being there," he said. "I liked the experience. I went there every day as a sub, and when I finished my day, I went to Stony Brook to finish my classes."
Middle Country Superintendent Roberta Gerold said the program has helped meet the needs in the system's 14 buildings. The district pays its substitutes $145 per day. Long Island's pay scale for subs can range from $95 to $200 per day, Masera said.
With COVID-19, there are a new set of skills subs have to use, Gerold said, in that they are "not only in front of the classroom, but connecting virtually with the children at home. It is a different skill set and a whole different structure for schools."
Districts also have had to figure out how to handle instruction with a sub in charge. In the Valley Stream Central High School district, a teacher who may be absent will send assignments to all learners, remote and in-person, and a sub might supervise the students in the classroom, Heidenreich said.
Sandra Gaskin serves as a permanent substitute teacher in the Eastern Suffolk BOCES system and recently taught a hairstyling class at the Milliken Technical Center in Oakdale.
"It's quite a fulfillment to work with the students during the day in a field that I always loved," she said. "Being a substitute teacher is good because you have more flexibility to come and go. It's just welcoming to come back after being out for so long."
Eastern Suffolk BOCES partners with St. Joseph's College for recruitment of substitutes, and also runs a Substitute Services Program, which assists 36 districts with placing subs.
Recently, Eastern Suffolk BOCES had 234 positions that needed to be filled with subs across its 25 campuses. They were able to fill half, and many of the openings were covered with existing staff, said Ryan Ruf, BOCES' deputy superintendent for management services.
Per-day pay for substitute teachers can vary from $90 to upwards of $200.
The New York State Education Department does not issue substitute teaching certificates. Substitute teachers fall into one of the three categories:

• Substitute teachers with a valid teaching certificate can work in any capacity, for any number of days.
• Substitute teachers without a valid certificate, but who are working towards certification (taking college coursework) at a rate of not less than six semester hours per year, can work in any capacity, for any number of days, in any number of school districts.
• During the 2020-2021 school year, due to the COVID-19 crisis, substitute teachers who do not hold a valid teaching certificate and are not working towards certification, but hold a high school diploma or its equivalent, may be employed by the school district or BOCES beyond the 40-day limit, for up to an additional 50 days (90 days total) in a school year. In rare circumstances, a district or BOCES may hire a substitute teacher beyond the 90 days.
• School districts may have additional local requirements for individuals who are employed as substitute teachers.

The On-Line Application System OLAS is a web-based application that serves participating school districts as their source for filling jobs. This service, powered by Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES, opens up recruiting to a significantly wider pool of candidates for participating districts than can be reached through traditional recruitment methods. It includes listings for substitutes
Source: New York State Education Department; CK Council of school superintendents, Nassau BOCES

ALBANY, N.Y. Sept. 16, 2020 — New York State United Teachers today announced it has filed a lawsuit against the state over reductions in state school aid for districts across New York, seeking the release of money withheld in July, August and September and an injunction against future withholding of or delayed school funding payments.

The lawsuit filed in Albany County Supreme Court challenges the constitutionality of the unilateral executive budgetary powers provided for the state Division of Budget as part of this year’s state budget process. The union alleges that those unconstitutional powers have led to cuts that deprive students of their right to a sound basic education under the state Constitution.

The suit points to the fact that some school districts have no more local resources to tap and are dependent on state funding. In such districts, a 20 percent cut “could be catastrophic, and certainly would lead to a ‘gross and glaring inadequacy.’”

NYSUT has previously highlighted the devastation stemming from state cuts, including hundreds of layoffs in districts around New York.

The lawsuit can be read in full here.

“Time is up,” NYSUT President Andy Pallotta said. “With the loss of state funding driving cuts at the local level in districts around the state, we can’t just keep waiting for action at the federal level to fund our schools. At this point, a lawsuit unfortunately is the necessary next step to compel our leaders to do what’s right: Fund our future and stop these cuts.”

NYSUT argues that the Executive Branch’s budget reduction authority violates the separation of powers in the state Constitution and is an unconstitutional delegation of the Legislature’s constitutional oversight and policy-making powers. But, in the absence of federal action, the Division of Budget began withholding 20 percent of selected local aid payments in June, according to the Fiscal Year 2021 First Quarterly State Budget Financial Plan Update.

In the short term, continuing to withhold 20 percent of the funding appropriated would cause further issues with significant education-related payments the state makes this month, including a roughly $2.5 billion payment to school districts on Sept. 30.

In the lawsuit, NYSUT points to the state’s ability to draw upon approximately $7 billion in reserves and settlement funds to avoid draconian cuts. The union also has advocated for other solutions to help fund public education, including taxes on the ultra-wealthy and additional federal stimulus funding.

But none of these options have come to fruition. The result is school districts across the state considering or making staffing cuts that only serve to reduce student access to academic and other essential services. In New York City, leaders threatened 9,000 layoffs last month if the cuts go through. Hundreds already have been laid off in Albany and Schenectady, with another 116 in Syracuse, 54 in Copiague and 44 in Norwich losing their jobs.
​
“Our students and families deserve better than staffing and program cuts just as we begin a new school year with unprecedented challenges,” Pallotta said. “A high-quality education is a vital service that’s central to helping communities thrive. It’s about time it was funded like one.”

By Katie Sheppard, Washington Post

Teachers had just returned last month to prepare for the fall semester at John Evans Middle School in Potosi, Mo., when 34-year-old AshLee DeMarinis started to feel ill.
DeMarinis had been worried about returning to work at the rural middle school, where she was starting her 11th year of teaching. She had asthma, which put her at a higher risk for complications from covid-19 despite her young age.
“She was scared,” her sister, Jennifer Heissenbuttel, told The Washington Post.
Three weeks later, DeMarinis died in the hospital after testing positive for the novel coronavirus and suffering from complications caused by the infection.
DeMarinis isn’t the only teacher to die amid the pandemic as children return to schools across the United States. Educators in Missouri, Mississippi, South Carolina, Iowa and Oklahoma have died as the fall semester started in their districts.
It isn’t clear whether any of the teachers were infected at school, and many quarantined to avoid exposing students and other staff members. But their deaths have renewed fears that school campuses will become a breeding ground for the virus, spreading the illness as communities grapple with how to balance the need to educate children with properly addressing the pandemic.

School districts and state officials have struggled to find the right coronavirus precautions. In Georgia, one school district was forced to send hundreds of people home to quarantine after just one day of school prep on campus. Another district in that state ordered 900 children and staff to quarantine after being exposed to the virus during the first week back in class.
DeMarinis was an avid crafter who spent her summer at a lake with her sister and her nieces. When she returned to school on Aug. 10, she was concerned about the pandemic, her sister told The Post, but she got to work readying the classroom for her students who were set to start classes in a few weeks.
“She taught special education, and it was just her calling,” her sister said. “Her students loved her and her colleagues loved her.”

DeMarinis initially thought she had an ear infection when she started to feel sick on Aug. 14. But her condition worsened quickly, and by Aug. 19 she tested positive for coronavirus. She died on Sunday after three weeks on a ventilator at the hospital.

Nationally, at least five other teachers have died since early August.
This week, Demetria “Demi” Bannister, a 28-year-old third-grade teacher in Columbia, S.C., died from complications of the coronavirus, the State reported. On Sunday, Tom Slade, a 53-year-old high school history teacher in Vancleave, Miss., died of the virus, the Sun Herald reported.
Nacoma James, 42, a beloved football coach in Oxford, Miss., died in early August during the first week back on campus for his students. He spent the summer coaching at football practices until he was forced to self-quarantine after developing coronavirus-like symptoms, Mississippi Today reported.

The deaths have disrupted the start of the fall semester for many schools, and left students mourning their favorite instructors and role models.

“It’s like a gut punch really,” one of Slade’s students, Chase Hall, told WLOX. “He was a man I respected. I looked forward to him coming back to the classroom, and then he was gone.”
Stay safe and informed with our free Coronavirus Updates newsletter
Some districts have also been struggling to comply with quarantine requirements as staff and students test positive for the virus. Two days after children returned to classes in Tahlequah, Okla., school district officials confirmed special education teacher Teresa Horn, 62, died on Aug. 28 from a heart attack after testing positive for the coronavirus, KTUL reported.
“It is with a heavy heart that I announce the passing of one of our teachers,” Tahlequah Public Schools said in a statement. “Losing a member of your family is never easy and in the current climate, it makes the situation even worse.”

Tahlequah Public Schools sent students home for two days of virtual classes following Horn’s death. In a little over a week since, the district has reported at least eight students and staff members have tested positive and dozens have been forced to quarantine after possible exposure to the virus at school.
Even in districts that have committed to virtual classes, keeping kids off-campus is no guarantee the virus won’t spread among staff members.
A week before virtual classes were set to start in Des Moines, a teacher died after testing positive for the virus, sparking additional fears in a district that has been battling with state leaders over a statewide mandate requiring at least 50 percent of classes to involve in-person instruction.
“This death has shook many teachers in the district to our cores and underscores the importance of our district having the authority to keep our students, staff and community safe based on local health conditions,” Josh Brown, president of the Des Moines Education Association, told the Des Moines Register.