From vaccinations to in-person college, Charlie Baker has confirmed how a lot he hates lecturers

This all got here because the Baker administration relaxed restrictions on indoor eating and efficiency venues, and pushed relentlessly to pressure faculties to reopen in particular person at the same time as coronavirus transmission in many of the state’s counties remained too excessive for reopening below Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) pointers. It got here because the Baker administration pushed—over the objections of not simply lecturers unions but in addition the Massachusetts Affiliation of Faculty Superintendents and the Massachusetts Affiliation of Faculty Committees—to carry high-stakes standardized testing regardless of the disruption and trauma of the previous yr. The truth is, many observers hyperlink the present sturdy push to get faculties open in particular person to the push to manage standardized testing.

The slams in opposition to lecturers for eager to be vaccinated of their communities got here after the Baker administration provided state police vaccinations of their workplaces—precisely what lecturers had been assailed for requesting weeks later—solely to have 30% of state police decline these office vaccinations. This was additionally after the state opened up vaccinations to individuals who accompanied somebody 75 or older to be vaccinated, a transfer that rapidly and predictably led to abuses. However lecturers? Screw them.

In his surliness over vaccinating lecturers, Baker additionally repeatedly cited the quantity of vaccine accessible to the state, the implication being that Biden was forcing the state’s hand on lecturers whereas not offering sufficient doses. The state was solely getting 150,000 doses every week, Baker mentioned, and that wasn’t going to alter in any vital method within the month of March.

So it was fascinating when this week, the state introduced that slightly than the anticipated 155,000 doses, Massachusetts had gotten 170,000 doses, together with 8,000 surprising one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccines. However it was extra fascinating when a state spokesperson characterised that as a “modest enhance” that wasn’t vital. That’s, in fact, about 10% greater than anticipated—relying the way you calculate these 8,000 one-dose vaccines—and what was anticipated was already barely greater than Baker had mentioned only a week earlier can be the weekly quantity for the remainder of the month.

It feels an terrible lot just like the Baker administration is so dedicated to demonizing lecturers that it’s going to not admit when issues are wanting up, vaccine-wise. After which, in spite of everything that whining about lecturers stealing different individuals’s doses, the state on Wednesday launched a timeline for opening up additional eligibility tiers for vaccination, with individuals age 60 and older and a few classes of employee changing into eligible on March 22, simply 11 days after lecturers supposedly throttled entry for the state’s most weak elders.

In the meantime, Baker’s push to reopen faculties in particular person is occurring not simply with an overtly hostile strategy to lecturers, however without consulting school committees and with the barest pretense at concern for fairness. Considerably, the state Board of Training votes against mandatory reopening got here from the coed, mother or father, and instructor representatives on the board—the members over whose choice Baker had the least management. 

As one Cambridge mother or father and celebrated creator tweeted just lately:

Tracy O’Connell Novick, a college committee member in Worcester, Massachusetts, wrote a robust letter to her representatives within the state legislature highlighting each the Baker administration’s energy seize on college opening and its lack of take care of fairness. 

“The Commissioner doesn’t have the authority to reverse the state funding legislation based mostly on his capricious definitions of time on studying, the place days till the primary week of April might be funded for elementary college students, nevertheless delivered, however can’t be funded after the primary week of April, if delivered apart from he dictates. But, as you understand, that is simply what he has explicitly threatened,” she wrote. 

The consequences of these funding threats will fall a lot more durable on some college districts than on others, she continued, particularly on districts that “have many extra college students who’re Black or Latino, many extra college students who’re studying English, and lots of extra college students who’re poor.” And whereas the state training commissioner has held out the prospect of waivers for faculties that may’t meet no matter politically motivated requirements of security he chooses to embrace at the moment, “If the state is making coverage that requires waivers for the most important, brownest, poorest, districts, then the state is making inequitable insurance policies, and the Division ought to clearly be instructed that it wants to begin over.”

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed simply how weak Charlie Baker’s declare to being a great supervisor is. There was the day in early March he instructed the individuals of Massachusetts to not fear after which headed to the airport for a ski trip whereas the state misplaced every week within the struggle, finally changing into one of many nationwide if not international epicenters of the virus. There’s been a lot conflicting messaging, with faculties pressured to reopen and at the same time as Baker moralized about social distancing in different settings (with out placing into place the robust restrictions which may have enabled faculties to go in-person safely). The early weeks of vaccine distribution—right here within the state the place vaccine maker Moderna is headquartered—had been a shambles, as Baker deserted a mass vaccination plan the state had spent many years refining and employed start-up firms to run mass vaccination websites on no-bid contracts. Public well being leaders throughout the state say the method has poorly served their communities and wasted thousands and thousands of {dollars}. The state’s vaccine sign-up web site crashed on the day eligibility opened as much as individuals 65 and older.

It’s been one type of mismanagement after one other from a man whose model was amiable technocrat. And all the time, all the time, Baker has turned to demonizing and scapegoating lecturers to distract from his personal failures.