Dear BTU Family,
In light of the announcement this morning that the district will be moving to all remote instruction, we are postponing the actions planned for today. In lieu of the car caravan and rally, we will be holding a socially distant press conference at 4:00 at the Boston Teachers Union headquarters which will be live streamed on our Facebook page. Please do not show up to the Bolling Building or Madison Park. While today’s actions are postponed, our fight for safe schools and the best possible learning experience, particularly for our high-needs students, continues.
Please see our press statement on the latest announcement:
“The BTU supports the decision to switch to all-remote learning in light of the troubling increase in COVID positivity rates announced today. However, we remain very concerned about the impact on the learning experience of high-needs students. We continue to advocate for a safe and sustainable plan that safely provides the additional services that many of our special education, EL and other students continue to need. We look forward to working with the Boston Public Schools to establish a sustainable, improved and safe plan that centers high-needs students both during this work-remote phase, and for when positivity rates come down. Parents deserve as much predictability as possible for the next set of scenarios, and we think there is an opportunity by working together – and with educators and families having a voice at the table – for the system to achieve more predictability for students, families and educators. We also feel that these difficult decisions and recent developments are the direct result of a failed White House response to the pandemic. To keep students and communities safe and to get our public schools the resources we need to recover from this public health disaster, we encourage everyone to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on or before November 3. Our nation needs a new President who will lead a federal plan to combat COVID-19, not just in our schools, but in all of our communities across the country.”
Lastly, and most importantly, thank you to everyone for their continued actions, calls, emails and advocacy. Our strength is in our collective power, and it is because of our unified efforts that we are able to fight for what all of our students, families and educators deserve.
We will be in touch soon about our next steps as we continue to advocate for the best possible and safest possible plan for all of our students.
#InThisTogether as always,
BTU Officers and Staff