BERKELEY (KPIX) – With many teachers and their unions opposed to the call to reopen schools, the issue has reached a political deadlock and a meeting in Berkeley on Saturday raised the passion on both sides.
Parents, students and medical professionals gathered Saturday morning in a park next to Berkeley High to discuss the health effects of not being in school.
“We are seeing more and more depression, anxiety, social isolation, children falling further and further behind academically and socially,” said Dr. Dan Drozd, an infectious disease doctor, to the assembled crowd.
Even the CDC now says that, with proper masking and social distance, the risk of infection to teachers and students may not outweigh the damage done by keeping them at home.
“There is no evidence that opening schools with these precautions increases community transfer and the rate of school transfers is extremely low,” said Dr. Shelene Stine, East Bay hospital doctor. “We need to think about the safety of our teachers and children from both perspectives.”
But not everyone was willing to hear that.
“You don’t like your teachers! … We’ve had enough of these people!” shouted Berkeley High calculus teacher Masha Albrecht, interrupting the meeting, saying she doesn’t feel safe returning to class, regardless of what medical professionals say.
“I am especially mad at the doctors who say, ‘listen to the science’ as if we can’t read science,” she said. “I am a mathematician, I can read statistical studies. No one has shared with me anything to convince me that it is safe to go back to that school with a lot of kids. “
That prompted a response from Berkeley High Senior Noa Teiblum.
“They are infectious disease experts!” she said. I mean, who are you to think you have more to say about what is or isn’t safe than infectious disease experts at the CDC? It’s frustrating!”
Both parties are frustrated and neither seems to trust what the other is saying. It opens a gap between parents and teachers who may live on after the virus has been contained.