Teachers resign as 2 metro Phoenix districts plan in-person openings

Two East Valley school districts will return to in-person classes Monday, and numerous teachers have already resigned. 

Others may sit out of classes in protest.

The Queen Creek Unified School District and adjacent J.O. Combs Unified School District voted this week to reopen schools for in-person learning.

Patrick Camunez, a parent whose wife also teaches in the Queen Creek district, said he immediately withdrew their children from the district.

"It's the only district they've ever known, and we've withdrawn," Camunez told The Arizona Republic.

And they're not alone.

Parents in districts across the state are deciding whether to continue online schooling for their children amid the pandemic, or send them back to school campuses.

Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association teacher's union, said Queen Creek is now seeing a mass resignation of teachers.

Four teachers from Queen Creek High School have submitted resignations since the vote, and more plan to submit their resignations in the next few days, according to Queen Creek Education Association president Jacob Frantz. Frantz said there have been 43 classified resignations in the district since May. 

The district did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday about the number of teachers that had resigned. The district is comprised of 12 schools: eight elementary, two junior highs and two high schools, as well as a virtual academy.

Thomas said Queen Creek and J. O. Combs are acting against the data metrics that the Arizona Department of Health Services is suggesting schools rely on to determine when they will reopen.

Last week, state officials recommended schools consider the number of COVID-19 cases in their county, the percentage of people testing positive and the percent of hospital visits. 

According to the latest numbers, updated Thursday, no county in the state yet meets all three benchmarks. 

However, schools were not required to use the metrics in their decision-making process, and Queen Creek and J. O. Combs moved forward with reopening. A handful of other, mostly smaller, schools around the state have also indicated they will start in-person classes.

Camunez said his wife, who has an underlying heart condition that puts her at risk if she contracts COVID-19, is "heartbroken" by the district's decision. His wife has since put in for emergency family medical leave after being denied requests by the district to teach from home.

Camunez called the communication from the district and the decision to reopen "tone deaf."

"We’re in the middle of a pandemic," he said. "They're talking about things that could result in somebody dying."

'Freedom to choose'

On Tuesday, the Queen Creek governing board voted 4-1 to reopen schools, which resulted in raucous applause from parents gathered at the meeting.

It was an emotionally-charged meeting, where approximately 20 parents, teachers and students addressed the school board, with the majority urging the board to reopen.

Brayden Cluff, a physics teacher at Queen Creek High School, said numerous strategies had been proposed to mitigate the spread of the virus, including cleaning and sanitizing classrooms.  But he said teachers would not have time between class periods to properly sanitize their classrooms and keep students safe.

"Let’s not jeopardize the trend by bringing back a large group of people into a small space and then distribute them throughout the county," Cluff said. "Queen Creek is not an island. There is no way that we can contain the spread of COVID-19 just to Queen Creek.”

But Mikel Moreno, a coach at Queen Creek High, fired back at Cluff, saying passing periods had been extended with plenty of time for teachers to disinfect their classrooms.

"If you can't do it in that time, then get another profession brother," Moreno said.

Most of the parents arguing for schools to reopen centered their arguments around wanting the freedom to choose between online or in-person classes. Joel Anderson, a Queen Creek resident, called Queen Creek a "freedom loving town."

“All we are asking the board for is the freedom to choose in-person education," Anderson said. “Let the teachers and parents have a choice. We know that the group that is trying to deny the freedom of others is a vocal minority.”

But Camunez said his wife had filed 11 requests to teach remotely under the Americans with Disabilities Act, but the district had denied them all. The messaging from the district has been clear that teachers will not be allowed to teach from home, he said.

Camunez said he has since filed a complaint with the Attorney General's Office alleging discrimination after his wife's requests were denied.

Thomas, with the Arizona Education Association, said the mass resignations out of Queen Creek means one high school is running very low on science teachers. 

"That only makes sense because science teachers may be the only ones that are best able of all of us in the education field to best understand how a virus works, how it spreads and to best measure the risk that you'd be putting yourself in," Thomas said.

For a state that is already experiencing an educator shortage, the loss of teachers is exacerbating an already fragile situation, he said.

At a J.O. Combs governing board meeting on Monday, only a handful of parents spoke, but the majority were in favor of reopening schools.

Only the Combs Education Association, the teacher's union, submitted a letter cautioning against reopening before the Department of Health metrics had been met.  

"We hold a very serious concern that any reopening before all the metrics have been met contains an inherent and detrimental potential for rapid spread of the disease and could potentially cause closure of schools for extended periods of time if there is an outbreak in one of our schools," the letter read.

The governing board ultimately voted 3-2 to resume in-person classes on Monday.

What will Monday look like?

Kerri Curtis, a parent in J. O. Combs, said she was not happy about the decision to reopen schools.

Curtis said the district had sent out an email survey a few months ago to gauge whether parents wanted to send students back to in-person classes. Curtis said only 12% of parents said they would prefer to keep their children at home.

But Camunez cited a similar survey that Queen Creek sent over the summer that gave parents two options: continue conducting school online or return to school in person "when it was safe." The district later said 80% of parents responded saying they wanted to return to in-person classes.

"Everybody that I talked to said 'in-person when it's safe,'" he said. "That's the way I responded to the survey. They used that survey to say 'Hey everybody wants to come back in person.'"

Curtis said she plans to keep her two children, who are in elementary and high school in the J. O. Combs district, home for now. She said online classes will continue for students who choose to stay home, but teachers will have to manage both their in-person and online classes from the classroom.

"Unfortunately, the teachers, they find out this stuff maybe an hour before we do," Curtis said. "They're flying by the seat of their pants as well."

Thomas said the pandemic has highlighted how reliant communities are on educators and schools and "how many of our issues and problems have we funneled toward school systems."

He anticipates that Monday will be confusing for students as teachers and support staff decide whether to report for work.

"We may have more people decide at the last minute that they just can't go in, whether they're a bus driver that’s expected to run a bus route, a custodian expected to open a building early in the morning, or if they're a teacher that's expected to teach a class of students," Thomas said.

Thomas said teachers and parents are anxious and frustrated with the current climate and not being able to identify a solution for families. To move forward, parents and teachers must listen to one another in order to understand each side's stresses and anxieties, he said. 

But he anticipates that that level of listening may not happen by Monday.

"There will be a lesson for us all to learn in how things happen Monday and how to proceed," Thomas said.

Have a tip out of Scottsdale? Reach the reporter Lorraine Longhi at llonghi@gannett.com or 480-243-4086. Follow her on Twitter @lolonghi.

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