Back to School, or Something Like It: Local District Plans in a Pandemic
‘If you want to do it, do it right’ Last month, in conjunction with the Coalition for Healthier Schools, the New Jersey Work Environment Council (WEC) issued “The Pandemic vs. Schools,” a national call to action emphasizing the importance to districts of having a solid plan before reopening. WEC is a Trenton-based labor coalition that typically concerns itself with workplace health and safety issues. “Schools can either slow the spread of the virus or speed it up,” the report reads. “Right now, schools across the country are struggling to come up with these plans on their own,” a task, it argues, for which many [...]
Schools shouldn’t open unless they have effective plans to prevent infection | Opinion
There have been nearly 5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States, and this virus has no intention of going away anytime soon. As New Jersey plans to reopen schools, health and safety must be at the forefront. We cannot reopen schools without strong health and safety measures in place to protect our students and school staff. Given the lack of strong federal guidance, The New Jersey Work Environment Council, Healthy Schools Now coalition and the national Healthy Schools Network released A Call to Action. It calls on states to produce authoritative school infection, prevention, and control plans which local schools can adopt. [...]
Op-Ed – New Jersey needs a public bank – fast | Opinion
This past week, WEC placed an op-ed outlining how a state-chartered public bank can help us achieve safe, secure jobs and a healthy sustainable environment for New Jersey. "If the past three months have proven anything in New Jersey, it’s that we need money. Not “we,” meaning our millionaires and billionaires and Wall-Street backed corporations. “We,” meaning workers. “We,” meaning communities of color. “We” means the poor, the working class and the near-mythical middle class. “We” means the people hit hardest by the health and economic devastation brought by COVID-19. “We” have big problems, and you can’t fix big problems [...]
The risk of opening schools: Flexibility, planning needed
With President Donald Trump calling for campuses to welcome students in the fall and numerous large school districts around the country announcing that online-only schooling will continue, risk management teams are grappling with how to safely proceed amid the coronavirus pandemic. While various studies have found that most children are minimally affected when they contract COVID-19, the safety of teachers and other school workers is a growing concern. The political controversy over school openings is taking place against a backdrop of surging infection rates in some regions and decisions by some states to dial back to previous shutdown levels. The [...]
Trump’s EPA Sued Over Understating Risks of Deadly Chemical
NEW YORK, NY — Today, a coalition of community, labor, and environmental groups filed a petition challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final methylene chloride risk evaluation, which unlawfully determined that manufacturing, disposal, and several other uses of methylene chloride present no unreasonable risk. The risk evaluation — the first to be released under the 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) — violates the requirements of that law by understating methylene chloride’s known risks and excluding multiple ways in which workers and communities are exposed to the chemical. Read the full press release here.
Pandemic v. Schools – National Coalition for Healthier Schools Plan for Safe Reopening
School Buildings and Occupants Can Speed or Slow the Spread of COVID-19 Jul. 9, 2020 / PRZen / SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. -- As pressure mounts for schools to reopen this fall, awareness is growing of the need for specific plans on how schools will not just open, but stay open, by protecting the health of children and their families, teachers, administrators and school staff. By their nature, schools are an environment conducive to the spread of illnesses, including COVID-19. They are densely occupied for long periods and have a well-documented history of deferred maintenance which has resulted in well-known problems with ventilation [...]