A statewide survey of Alabama educators has found that a large majority feel uneasy about heading back into school buildings this fall as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread, a concern that carries particular weight in Mobile County, where thousands of teachers and students are preparing for a school year unlike any other.
The Alabama Education Association surveyed nearly 41,000 teachers, administrators and support staff in mid-July about how their schools planned to handle reopening amid COVID-19. Roughly 65 percent of respondents said they would feel “very uncomfortable” going back to their school buildings under the health and safety conditions currently in place, citing worries over face coverings, social distancing, transportation logistics and cleaning protocols in buildings that were not designed with a pandemic in mind.
Most of those who took part in the survey work in elementary schools, where education officials have said the youngest students are likely to struggle most with mask-wearing and maintaining distance from classmates. Middle school, high school and even college-level educators also responded, giving the survey a broad cross-section of perspectives from across Alabama’s public education system.
More than 60 percent of respondents said they would rather see schools open with remote instruction only, at least to start the year. That option is already the plan in more than a dozen Alabama school systems, including the Mobile County Public School System, which opted to begin the academic year with virtual learning for at least the first nine weeks before revisiting the decision. Other districts around the state are moving forward with in-person instruction but requiring face coverings for most students and staff, along with more frequent cleaning and distancing measures inside classrooms and common areas. Nearly every system is also offering some form of online option for students who are sick or considered at higher risk for COVID-19 complications.
Only about a quarter of the survey’s respondents said they preferred a hybrid approach mixing in-person and remote learning, and just 14 percent said they wanted schools to reopen entirely as normal, with regular in-person classes for everyone.
Written comments submitted with the survey pointed to specific, job-related worries in addition to broader health concerns. One respondent who manages information technology for a school system noted that support staff often move between multiple buildings in a single day, raising the risk that an infection could spread across a district before it was detected. Others described concerns for their own health or that of family members living in their households, particularly among longtime educators nearing retirement age.
According to the Alabama Education Association, 36 percent of respondents said they had at least considered retiring rather than returning to a classroom in August under current conditions. Several described high-risk family circumstances, including elderly relatives or spouses managing chronic conditions, that made the prospect of an in-person return especially daunting. Some noted they had looked into the financial realities of early retirement through the Retirement Systems of Alabama but found the cost of losing employer-provided insurance made stepping away before they had planned to unfeasible.
Several Alabama school systems have said they intend to work individually with teachers who have high-risk family members or health conditions of their own, in some cases allowing them to teach online or otherwise work remotely. Even so, some districts, including Mobile County, have asked teachers assigned to virtual instruction to still report to their school buildings to teach remote classes, pointing to more reliable internet access and better equipment available on campus compared with what some teachers have at home.
Despite the discomfort many educators expressed in the survey, most Alabama school systems are moving ahead with plans to bring at least some students back into classrooms in the coming days and weeks. Governor Kay Ivey has encouraged districts to reopen in person where they can do so safely and has ordered that students in second grade and above, along with teachers and staff, wear face coverings while at school.
State Superintendent Eric Mackey has left the ultimate reopening decisions to local boards of education, saying each district is better positioned to weigh its own COVID-19 case trends and resources. Case counts have climbed across Alabama over the summer, though the pandemic’s impact has varied significantly from one part of the state to another. Even so, Mackey has said he hopes as many systems as possible will find a way to bring students back in person.
“There is no substitute for a highly qualified, live, human teacher in a classroom with students. There’s a personal interaction that simply cannot be replicated with online learning,” Mackey said. He added that he believes every district should aim to offer both an in-person option and a remote option, leaving the choice to parents, while acknowledging that roughly 15 Alabama school districts are taking a different approach for the start of the year.