More Sacramento-area teachers walk out of class over district rollbacks of COVID mask mandates
Nearly 200 Rocklin Unified School District educators called in sick or took leave Monday, protesting their district’s last-minute defiance of state-imposed K-12 mask mandates.
An angry Rocklin Teachers Professional Association in a statement Monday afternoon said its teachers learned the district’s board held a special Feb. 23 meeting ahead of its regularly scheduled March 2 meeting on a day’s notice and during the district’s President’s Week break to adopt a new mask enforcement policy.
“While there are varying opinions on masking in our community and our schools, the issue teachers are most concerned about is the lack of respect for educators blatantly displayed by the RUSD Board of Trustees in making this change,” the statement read.
Union leaders contended that teachers were unaware of the meeting and that the district’s board made the decision in closed session instead of a public meeting.
“Our school board’s actions not only violated the state mandate, they violated our collectively bargained agreements, and, most importantly, the trust we worked so hard to establish,” the union’s statement concluded.
District spokesman Sundeep Dosanjh said teacher absences were “unexpected.”
“While unexpected, like many school districts across the nation, Rocklin Unified has been dealing with staffing shortages since the start of the current school year and continues to utilize credentialed substitute teachers and central office staff to fill vacancies and to supervise students as needed across the district,” he said in a statement.
The walkout came as Gov. Gavin Newsom announced changes to the state’s COVID-19 mask requirements for classrooms. His administration said masks would not be required for in-person learning on March 11, easing into a policy change he has signaled over the past month.
Rocklin Unified joins a growing list of suburban and foothill school districts in the greater Sacramento area to break with the state, voting to ignore the in-class mask mandates for K-12 students before the Newsom administration rules change. Roseville Joint Unified, El Dorado Joint Union High School District, and also last week, Nevada Joint Union High School District, each voted to make enforcing the mandate optional.
Nevada Union district officials in a letter to parents and students last week explaining their decision said they and other California school districts are “caught in the middle of a very difficult and progressively escalating situation where we acknowledge our obligation to comply with state and California Department of Public Health mandates and our ability to effectively and humanely enforce them.”
District leaders ultimately decided that the disruption the masking rule caused to classroom learning made enforcing the mandate “unsustainable.”
Newsom’s announcement altering classroom masking rules after March 11 to recommend rather than mandating masking would seem to render the local districts’ decisions moot. But teachers and other schools personnel in Rocklin and in Grass Valley in neighboring Nevada County are angry enough to sit out classes, frustrated, they say, that district leaders are forcing them to choose between obeying state mandates still in place and orders not to enforce those same rules.
Nevada Union was forced to cancel classes Thursday and Friday after dozens of its educators failed to show up for work. Then came Monday’s sick-out in Rocklin.
Teachers were back in class on Monday at Nevada Union, but union officials in both districts say the votes to ignore the mandates are also end-runs around bargaining agreements negotiated with teachers and staff.
“The issue for our unit remains: It is not about the mandate. Teachers are angry over the board violating our contract and disregarding the collective bargaining process,” Eric Mayer, president of the Nevada Union High School District Teachers Association, said Monday via text. “Our (memorandum of understanding) states we will follow public health guidelines. Having clear agreement between our district’s guidance and the law will make our teachers feel supported and safe.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2022 at 4:26 PM with the headline "More Sacramento-area teachers walk out of class over district rollbacks of COVID mask mandates."
.JPG)