You are risking your life every day going to work, she said. Only Texas has lost more officers to COVID-19 than Florida, with 151 of its 160 line-of-duty deaths due to the coronavirus. How many teachers are they going to let die before they say, OK, this is a problem?. Many schools struggle to reopen for in-person learning. While both say they will continue insisting on a mask mandate, they report that social distancing rules will be relaxed to allow as many students as possible to come back to classrooms. Teacher deaths from COVID-19 raise alarms as new school year begins. But to acknowledge how many Republicans didnt have to die would mean giving credence to scientific and medical expertise. COVID They were teachers and coaches. Florida accounted for one in five infections nationwide over the summer, which stretched an already strapped nursing workforce and jammed hospitals to the point where some facilities used office boardrooms as overflow wards. Zuckerman was a single mother of a 10-year-old daughter named Lacey, and taught first grade at Aventura Waterways K-8 Center. It feels scary to go to your job and not know if you could catch this deadly virus and potentially bring it back home to family members who are already vulnerable, he said. Children arrive, Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021, for the first day of school at Washington Elementary School in Riviera Beach, Fla. | Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo. Marks wife, Sherry, was also hospitalized but recovered. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been over 220,000 confirmed pediatric cases of COVID-19 in Florida, and nearly 8,000 emergency room admissions. Both closed on March 13, 2020 and were the last in the state to reopen in October. But she wishes school officials cared about their teachers. There was the third grade teacher in South Carolina who used her musical talents to make learning fun. Fourteen of the 40 deaths have occurred since January 1, 2021. Rivers was a proud and devoted educator for Duval County Public Schools for over 15 years on multiple campuses as a teacher, Dean of Students, Reading Interventionist and finally as Assistant Principal, according to his obituary. "This sad statistic underscores the impact of misinformation and disinformation efforts through some vocal entities, who quite frankly profess anything but scientific reality," Carvalho said. Far-right crowds cheer for missed vaccine targets and jokes about executing scientific leaders. One of the educators that lost their life to COVID-19 was Abe Coleman, 55, a teacher for . "It is a big number. All three worked at elementary schools and . Britt died July 26, Mark died just four days later. The data, however imperfect, demand a reckoning with the consequences of such a strategy not only during the pandemic but over the past few decades, and in the years to come. Bobby Rivers, assistant principal at Arlington Middle School, died on Aug. 10. A message from the Pine Island Academy principal was sent to families, stating that Harringtons commitment to her students was never in doubt. But when Covid-19 cases began rising sharply around December, that didnt happen. Over the course of one week, Broward County three educators two teachers and one teaching assistant are reported to. Widely known football player and Jacksonville coach Wagner Linzel Lin Shell Jr., 39, died July 30. It is the first time in two months since the delta variant-fueled wave started June 18 that weekly cases have . Graduate students at the University of Florida who are members of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) report that their departments are sending around emails with details on such hopeful rumors, and the Graduate Assistant Union has tried to organize carpool rides for teaching assistants to drive 80 miles to Jacksonville in the hope that they can be vaccinated. The past few months as a teacher have made her feel disposable, she said. Following her passing, Hollis husband shared the following post on Facebook: We are heartbroken. Since October 5, when Miami-Dade reopened, 5,198 students and 2,084 employees have tested positive for COVID-19. Schools in Florida are currently required to allow families the option to opt out of mask requirements, per DeSantis, and individual school districts have been battling the state over their right to enact such mandates in classrooms. So far, 433 Polk County school employees and 3,434 students have tested positive for COVID since the school year began, according to the district's coronavirus dashboard. While I have only been here and known Mr. Rivers a short time, his passion for students and for education was immediately evident. Unfortunately, we dont have the data to do so. When we compare individuals who are of the same age, who live in the same county in the same month of the pandemic, there are differences correlated with your political-party affiliation that emerge after vaccines are available, Jacob Wallace, an assistant professor of public health at Yale who co-authored the paper, told me. Official Government reports confirming eight times more people died due to Covid-19 vaccination within six months of the vaccine rollout than had died of Covid-19 within eighteen months are extremely worrying and evidence that the Covid-19 vaccines currently on offer should have been withdrawn from public use nearly 2 years ago. Ron DeSantis ahead of his 2022 reelection bid. "He's just pushing his political agenda to cater to the same constituents that were pro-Donald Trump," Fusco said of the governor. hide caption. While the 17 child deaths may seem low compared to the older adults, the increase of six deaths in August is an inevitable result of more kids becoming infected, according to officials at the Wolfson Childrens Hospital in Jacksonville. COVIDs high Republican death rates are not an isolated phenomenon but a continuation of this trend. She had previously taught at Nease High School, working with special needs students. Even with this new research, it is difficult to determine just how many people died as a result of their political views. She was the best thing to happen to our family! They were teachers and coaches. They link political party and excess-death ratethe percent increase in deaths above pre-COVID levelsamong those registered as either Democrats or Republicans, providing a more granular view. Then the notices about Covid-19 cases at the school started coming in, including two in his own classroom. DeSantis says Florida teachers, school staff will not be prioritized for COVID-19 vaccine . When you consider that testing was compulsory in hospitals, despite it not being written in law, and they used thePCR test notorious for producing false positives, its not hard to see how the Government managed to mix tens of thousands of people who actually died of other causes into the Covid-19 death statistics. Over 21,000 students and staff have had to quarantine. Please hug your loved ones tight today.. Our final recorded deathon Sept. 14, 2022was teacher Jennifer Hawkins Mason, 61, who taught at Farmingville Elementary School in Ridgefield, Conn. In places with strong teachers unions, educators have more power. Other politicians, such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott, made all COVID-vaccine mandates illegal in their state. Ron DeSantis, the Broward County School Board voted 8-1 Tuesday to make wearing masks in all district schools and facilities mandatory for students, staff, and visitors, member station WLRN reported. Supporters of the Chicago Teachers Union prepare for a car caravan on January 30. DeSantis has threatened to withhold pay from superintendents and board members who buck an executive order banning mask mandates in schools. They were administrators and maintenance workers. Although we still cant say these decisions led to higher death rates, the association alone is jarring. Since they reopened on October 9, Broward County has had 2,279 students and 1,627 employees test positive for COVID-19. One teacher, 67, and her school cafeteria manager daughter, 43, died at the same hospital just days apart. I dont feel like people have compassion towards that or if they truly understand that that is what we do.. We felt a duty and responsibility to remember and to document as best we could the teachers, the bus drivers, the principals, the key people who keep our schools operating day in and day out, Lesli Maxwell, managing editor of Education Week, told CNN. Samantha Mathers is a digital reporter and content creator for Action News Jax. Shell played college football at Jacksonville University and spent several years in the Canadian Football League. As information about the coronavirus pandemic rapidly changes, PEOPLE is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, COVID-19 is the leading cause of death for law enforcement in 2021. Vaccines could have saved lives. By using this website, you accept the terms of our Visitor Agreement and Privacy Policy, and understand your options regarding Ad Choices. She had a bit of a gypsy soul. A family of Duval County Schools employees world was rocked in late July after a mother was hospitalized and her husband and son both died from COVID-19, according to the FEA, citing reporting from the Times-Union. He was 51 years old. Less than a week before schools are set to reopen in Florida's Broward County, local union officials say three educators have died of complications from the coronavirus. That said, weve had teachers, coaches, principals, and superintendents get ill on a pretty regular basis and die, Brown said. The childhood fatalities have left pediatric experts deeply concerned about how the virus will affect youngsters in the months ahead as children interact in classrooms, even as the overall number of infections and hospitalizations in the state appears to be cresting. On top of that, teachers have experienced burnout over the last year when combining the stress of the pandemic, teaching both online and in-person classes and an increasing workload. When youre responsible for the education of 5.4 million children across the state, there are sometimes going to be decisions that not everyones happy with.. Whats different is that more of those kids are landing in the hospital specifically for Covid-19, Wolfson officials said. AshLee DeMarinis, 34, who taught special education at a middle school in Potosi, Missouri, died Sunday after three weeks on a ventilator; she had expressed fear about in-person teaching amid. Poyner was the student pastor and Bible teacher at Northside Baptist Church/Christian Academy in Starke. Florida in August changed its rules for determining whether someone died of COVID-19, moving that responsibility from public medical examiners to the doctors who treated the patients. The culture around social distancing and other safety protocols seemed to ease up over time, with no one strictly enforcing the rules, he said.