An arbitration ruling stemming from the Broward Teachers Union’s lawsuit against the county school district over a return-to-the-classroom order seems to have offered solace to both sides in the dispute.
BTU filed its lawsuit last month in the 17th Judicial Circuit in Broward County in response to concerns that teachers with pre-existing conditions could face serious health risks by returning to in-classroom teaching. The lawsuit argued that Broward Public Schools’ return-to-classroom order violated teachers’ due-process rights.
Though most teachers had been working online since October as a precaution during the coronavirus pandemic, the district’s plan to have most teachers return to in-class teaching last month included safety measures and personal protection. The plan resulted from concerns about harm to students’ academic progress if online instruction were to continue, according to Broward Public Schools.
“The district may require teachers to return to their classrooms to meet operational needs based on the number of students who intend to return to school,” the arbitrator, Roger I. Abrams, said in his Jan.25 decision. “The evidence presented supports the conclusion that the district did so here.”
Abrams will continue to address issues that come up in the dispute through most of February.
The teachers union seemed to embrace another part of the arbitrator’s decision that aims to keep union officials informed of cases when teachers with health conditions seek to continue to teach remotely to avoid possible exposure to the virus.
“The district cannot act in an arbitrary and capricious fashion,” Abrams said in the decision. “In order to monitor compliance with this guidepost, the union must be supplied information in a timely fashion of how the principals exercised their right to grant or deny remote assignments.”
BTU President Anna Fusco told the Florida Record that the union would continue to monitor the district’s actions, adding that she knew of two teachers with underlying conditions at a single school who have tested positive with COVID-19 since Broward teachers returned to the classroom last month.
“We are filing paperwork to the arbitrator that (the district is) not really complying in an expedited manner to make sure more accommodations can happen,” Fusco said.
Despite reports that conclude schools do not generally become coronavirus hotspots, Fusco said the positivity rate in the county has been more than 10 percent and that the prospect of more students on campuses can accelerate the spread of COVID-19.
“They’re shortening up the social distancing,” she said. “They’re putting in more desks.”
Superintendent Robert Runcie has pledged that the district would supply information to the union about decisions on teachers seeking remote assignments, according to the arbitrator’s decision.