Return To School Or Retire? Pick Your Poison by Dr. Michael Flanagan

Original art by Pamela Michaels

Let me begin this piece by thanking our retiring educators for their years of service in America’s public schools. 

Teachers are there for our students on good days and bad days. Through their successes and failures, their high points and low points. The day-to-day interactions and emotional connections we make with our students is what fills our souls.

It is a “big reveal” for someone who has put twenty or thirty years into a profession to announce they are retiring. For educators especially, it can be very emotional. Not only are we leaving our careers and beginning the next phase of our lives, we are saying goodbye to our students. 

Retirement is usually accompanied by celebration and an acknowledgement of a productive career. But since the coronavirus has abruptly ended the Spring 2020 semester, this year’s retirees will miss that acknowledgement and closure.

Contemplating retirement is difficult under the best of circumstances, but now that decision has become immensely more complicated. Covid-19 and the economic collapse have created a life and death dilemma for older teachers. Should we retire from teaching and trust in our evaporating pension funds, or return and risk our lives to teach our students again? 

Many educators are debating retirement now because of the health worries associated with returning to schools. Even those of us who may not have the age, years of service, or were planning to continue working even though we could retire. It is very clear that older teachers—many with underlying conditions—are at high risk in school buildings during this pandemic. 

Schools are petri dishes for viruses. Even with the implementation of social distancing strategies, split schedules or hybrid models of teaching--half remote learning half in person teaching--when schools reopen children will be children. Elementary students like to touch and hug each other constantly. They will not wear masks all day, and they cough and sneeze without covering their mouths. Middle school and high school students in overcrowded schools will not possibly be able to socially distance. There is simply not enough space in hallways and classrooms for safe social distancing in a school building. 

In addition, students share desks, cafeteria tables, textbooks and computers throughout the day. We all breathe the same air and touch the same materials in a school building. It is impossible for custodians to clean all of these items every change of period. Vulnerable educators will have no real protection from contracting the virus. 

Too many teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors and other staff have already died from Covid-19. In NYC for example, the mayor and the Department of Education have already demonstrated that they will downplay the threat of Covid-19. At the cost of our lives.

There is the possibility that many jobs may no longer exist when our schools finally reopen. Due to the economic collapse, school districts will need to enact massive layoffs because of coronavirus cuts to state budgets. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has already begun floating the idea of changing Federal laws to allow states to claim bankruptcy to get out of having to pay defined benefits pensions and healthcare benefits. So we can expect little help from the Federal government in terms of bailouts for education.

And let us not forget the newest education reform being pushed by disaster capitalists, that brick and mortar schools are no longer necessary. In New York State, Governor Cuomo and billionaire education reformer Bill Gates have already begun to reimagine schools as virtual learning environments with no in-person teaching at all. 

Whether through choice or by layoffs--if we do retire--will we have health care and pensions? The crash of our economy is already having an insurmountable impact on state pensions. People are legitimately faced with the prospect of not having enough to retire, and thereby being forced to struggle to live. Seeing as how there appears to be no Federal relief for pension funds forthcoming, besides cuts in benefits and health care, municipalities may even end up increasing the retirement age.

Even with the budget cuts, social distancing strategies and hybrid models of teaching, eventually schools will reopen. So the question remains--depending on budgets--will older teachers and staff return to their school buildings, or will we retire in droves? 

Of course, there will be many teachers and staff who do return to our schools, regardless of the risk. That is because we love teaching and want to be there for our students. It is a concept many billionaires and politicians cannot understand, or choose not to see. They view teachers and unions as self-serving and greedy. Because that is all they themselves know--greed, corruption and selfishness. The education reformers will never understand why we teach. They only see weakness in what is actually our greatest strength--the love of teaching. 

Educators who are close to retirement must make a fateful decision for next year. The stakes are high. Return to school and teach our precious students--at the risk of our very lives--or gamble on retirement and hope that there will be money left in our pensions so that we can survive. We must pick our poison. 

I end this piece as I started it--by thanking our retiring educators for their years of service in America’s public schools. Your students and your colleagues--whatever we all do--will not forget you.