‘People are scared.’ Biloxi parent-teacher rally to delay school start draws small crowd
A handful of parents and educators gathered at the Biloxi Lighthouse on Saturday to call for a delay to the start of the school year and more funding for schools as COVID-19 cases surge across Mississippi.
The stakes are high, they said.
“No one has denied that a traditional reopening will lead to further transmission of COVID-19,” said Donald Turner, a parent in the Pascagoula-Gautier School District and leader of Mississippi’s chapter of the national Refuse to Return movement.
If schools reopen traditionally next week, as most districts on the Coast plan to do, “there will not be a student in the state of Mississippi who won’t have a classmate who will die this school year,” he said.
But turnout was low. Just a few people gathered to discuss not only the risks of returning to school, but the difficulties educators face every year in a state where teachers have the lowest average salary in the country.
The reasons for the sparse attendance are many, said Daniela Werner, a parent in Ocean Springs. Few proponents of keeping schools closed want to risk contracting the virus at a public event (though all participants were masked and took care to social distance). Teachers see potentially dire consequences from speaking out. And many view the state and district leadership as immovable, committed to the course they have chosen, to reopen schools despite advice from pediatricians to delay until cases are on a downward trajectory, Werner said.
“People are scared,” she said.
Margie Hudson, a third-grade teacher in the Hattiesburg area, said her superintendent had sent her a stern text message after she began advocating a delay to the start of the school year. Many of her colleagues fear they could lose their jobs if they speak out, she added.
During her speech to the group, Hudson gestured towards a small display near the park’s pavilion: a square of string set up to show the size of a typical classroom, and little paper cutouts of children standing up in the grass inside the square, a safe distance from each other. There were only 15 paper children, far fewer than many teachers have been told to expect in their classrooms this fall.
“That is why virtual and hybrid options are ideal,” Hudson said, adding that more virtual learning will mean fewer children in classrooms and easier social distancing.
The event came the day after the deadline for school districts around the state to submit their reopening plans to the state; most districts on the Coast plan to start school next week, on Aug. 5 or 6.
Organized by the advocacy group Mississippi Teachers Unite, the Biloxi event was one of several held across the state at the same time. In addition to events in Cleveland, Jackson and Oxford, organizers plan a virtual rally for Saturday evening.
Gov. Tate Reeves said Thursday he would take the weekend to review district reopening plans, and could announce statewide mandates, such as a mask requirement or delaying the start of school, early this week.
Corinth School District, the first in the state to return to class, announced on Friday that a student had tested positive for COVID-19.
According to an analysis by the New York Times, given current COVID-19 cases in Harrison and Hancock Counties, any school with 500 people could expect four of them to test positive for the virus over the course of a week. For Jackson County, that figure was even higher, at eight positives.
Turner said poor families were being ignored by state and district plans. Some districts, like Harrison County, have said that virtual learning is an option only for students who have high-speed internet and their own device to use for five-and-a-half hours each day.
“What that means is you do not make enough money for your safety to be considered,” he said.
Attendees also said they wanted to see more creativity from school districts and the state, rather than a continued commitment to keeping the school year as “traditional” as possible.
“Normal does not exist anymore,” Turner said.
