how many teachers in florida have died of covid

Many Republicansin fact, most of themhave gotten their first two shots. The local CBS affiliate notes that these deaths come at a moment of heightened tension between Florida Gov. 'The end of the beginning.' Including weekends and holidays, thats nearly six classroom closings on average per day. Despite the jump in deaths, the rate of kids testing positive for Covid-19 for the first time is about the same as last winter before the current Delta surge. 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. But on the whole, Democratic leaders have mostly not promoted ideas or enforced policies around COVID that actively chip away at life expectancy. She will be remembered as an enthusiastic team player who made learning science fun for her students, family members said in her obituary. According to his wife, Morris died the evening of Sept. 4 at St. Vincents Medical Center Riverside in Jacksonville. Congressional districts controlled by a trifecta of Republican leadersstate governor, Senate, and Househad an 11 percent higher death rate, according to the Lancet study. Zuckermans brother Charles told reporters that his sister was known for her fearless independence: She was a very active person who had a lot of friends. Never miss a story sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. The 13 employees of Miami-Dade school district have died of COVID-19. What we do have is a patchwork of estimations and correlations that, taken together, paint a blurry but nevertheless grim picture of how Republican leaders spread the vaccine hesitancy that has killed so many people. No country has a perfect COVID-vaccination rate, even this far into the pandemic, but Americas record is particularly dismal. Both Mark McCall, 60, and his son Britt, 35, worked as foremen on Duval County Public Schools maintenance team. Its a pretty tragic thing to be happening in our country right now.. Catherine Shuman, 38, died Aug. 11 after a battle with COVID-19 according to her family. He was employed by St. Johns County School Transportation as a bus driver. COVID They were teachers and coaches. PEOPLE has partnered with GoFundMe to raise money for the COVID-19 Relief Fund, a GoFundMe.org fundraiser to support everything from frontline responders to families in need, as well as organizations helping communities. There have been a total of 10 pediatric deaths due to COVID-19 in the state. Thats a statement we can confidently make based on the study and we couldnt before.. Trump disparaged vaccines while president, even after orchestrating Operation Warp Speed. Although they can't show it. Broward County Teachers Union President Anna Fusco issued a School counselor Jennifer Susko is one of hundreds of Cobb County teachers and staff who protested over Covid-19 safety concerns during a school board meeting on January 21, 2021. Since they reopened on October 9, Broward County has had 2,279 students and 1,627 employees test positive for COVID-19. If you know an educator from Northeast Florida or Southeast Georgia who is not listed who you want remembered, please email us at news@actionnewsjax.com. Florida officials reported 150,118 coronavirus infections from Aug.13-19. Whats different is that more of those kids are landing in the hospital specifically for Covid-19, Wolfson officials said. 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. But the wildly disproportionate presence of Republicans among the unvaccinated reveals an ugly and counterintuitive aspect of the GOP campaign against vaccination: At every turn, top figures in the party have directly endangered their own constituents. Were it not for the health benefits, Aime Gotreaux says she would have already resigned from her job as a special education teacher in Kennesaw, Georgia. 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. She was uncomfortable with the high coronavirus case numbers in the county, coupled with a lack of testing for employees and students. She worked throughout the summer to ensure our students were ready for the transition to a new school and there were days we had to tell her to go home.. Teacher Elizabeth DeSantis, wearing a mask and face shield, helps a first grader during reading class at Stark Elementary School in September 2020 in Stamford, Connecticut. According to the Florida Education Association (FEA), 40 active educators have died from COVID-19 in the state since DeSantis ordered that schools reopen on July 6, 2020. Shell played college football at Jacksonville University and spent several years in the Canadian Football League. Though cases of teachers quitting over Covid-19 concerns are rare, Gotreaux isnt alone in feeling expendable. 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. may have been by accident. Taken all together, the list below paints a stunning portrait of the tragic toll the COVID-19 delta variant has taken on educators in Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia. China's official count 0 2.5 million . Thirteen school employees from Miami-Dade County Public Schools have died from Covid-19 since August 16, the school district and local teacher union told CNN on Tuesday. One teacher, 67, and her school cafeteria manager daughter, 43, died at the same hospital just days apart. The deaths were all. Other factors could explain the higher death rate in Republican-leaning placesmore poverty, less education, worse socioeconomic conditionsthough Woolf said he isnt convinced that those factors arent related to bad state health policy too. 04 Mar 2023 20:04:11 In September, a local teachers association in central Texas filed a grievance with their district over what they referred to as unsafe conditions. 10:43 AM EST, Wed February 3, 2021. hide caption. Its us, the teachers and staff trying to stay alive, versus them, the board members who refuse to acknowledge what were going through and the board members who refuse to work in the office, she said. Reuters Fact Check. Sadly, reports published by the UK Government since then, reveal that things only got worse. 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. Talk about teachers and pupils who wanted to wear masks & got suspended? All Rights Reserved. Why are we so insignificant?. According to the posts, the CDC stated that the other 94% of people died from other causes, and that only 9,210 people have died from COVID-19. One school district in Florida has reported 17 employee deaths from COVID-19 since August as schools continue to battle the state and Gov. The right-wing media have leaned even harder into vaccine skepticism. They were administrators and maintenance workers. The GOP governor has built a national reputation for resisting coronavirus restrictions and has spent weeks fighting against school districts that want to require students to wear masks in schools. He was 51 years old. They were bus drivers and school-resource officers. Four teachers in Florida's Broward county have died from Covid-19 this week as the Delta variant of coronavirus rages in the state amid political rows over mask mandates and vaccination. Workers in essential industries had nearly twice the death rate as those with "non-essential" positions. The culture around social distancing and other safety protocols seemed to ease up over time, with no one strictly enforcing the rules, he said. You can find out more and change our default settings with Cookies Settings. The anti-science messaging that fuels such a divide is popular with Republican leaders because it plays so well with their constituents. We almost feel as if we are being selfish if were saying were afraid to get sick, she said while choking up. 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. Across the U.S., the American Federation of Teachers lists 210 union members who have died. Experts say that education programs -- long devalued on and off many . In an act of defiance aimed at Republican Gov. Our deepest condolences are going out to the family and friends of former Ribault Trojans head coach Lin Shell. On top of all that, theyre seeing colleagues getting sick and even dying of Covid-19 and worry they or their loved ones could be next. But when Covid-19 cases began rising sharply around December, that didnt happen. A student arrives for the first day of classes on Aug. 23 at a public school in Miami Lakes, Fla. At least 13 employees of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools have died from complications of COVID-19 since Aug. 16, according to district officials. Superintendents are doing the best they can, but theyre dealing with a lose-lose situation, he said. None of them were vaccinated, Fusco said. Teacher deaths from COVID-19 raise alarms as new school year begins. The deaths also pose a political threat to Gov. Ron DeSantis Mandate Female Athletes to Divulge Menstrual Cycle Details? Some 15 million people died during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, new figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest. While most, but not all, of the children who have died in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) had an underlying health condition such as obesity or were immunocompromised, most of the patients we have treated for MIS-C were previously healthy, Gayle said in an interview. According to official NHS data which can be viewedhere, from March 2020 up to the 25th of August 2021; a period of 18 months, 90,147 Covid deaths within 28 days of a positive test have been recorded in England hospitals. Supporters of the Chicago Teachers Union prepare for a car caravan on January 30. The district said it has ordered approximately 50,000 desk shields and expects the installation to be complete "within another month," per WESH2 News. Then three educators in her district died of Covid-19 within the span of a month, and she was upset at seeing business continue as usual. His spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, instead pointed to a statewide decrease in pediatric hospitalizations over the past two weeks. The total number of individuals who died after contracting Covid-19 despite vaccination is 750. The Biden administrations COVID blunders are no doubt to blame for some of the nations deaths. How many Florida teachers died of Covid-19 this past week? Read it at . Cookies collect information about your preferences and your device and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. But he knows that the current situation is testing teacher morale. Her sister described Harrington to Action News Jax as the kindest person shes ever known. In October, more than 100 teachers in Austin stayed home on the first day of in-person classes despite the districts orders. That said, weve had teachers, coaches, principals, and superintendents get ill on a pretty regular basis and die, Brown said. Some educators died just before the school year started. He has won praise from conservatives across the nation for his rejection of lockdowns and measures like vaccine passports, positioning DeSantis for a possible 2024 presidential run if former President Donald Trump chooses not to mount a bid. But the deaths since July 30 also occurred as hundreds of thousands of kids in Florida began returning to classrooms and amid the ongoing fight between DeSantis and school districts over student mask mandates. Follow-up research published in The Lancet Regional HealthAmericas in October looked at deaths from April 2021 to March 2022 and found a 26 percent higher death rate in areas where voters leaned Republican. Then the notices about Covid-19 cases at the school started coming in, including two in his own classroom. At least six . Threatens to Withhold Pay of District Employees Who Mandate Kids Wear Masks in School, Georgia County Closes Third School amid Coronavirus Outbreak as 500 Students Are Quarantined, Wisconsin Parents Sue Schools After Their Children Contract COVID, New Jersey School District Suspends Vice Principal After COVID Outbreak at Elementary School, Will Children Have to Wear Masks When They Return to School? They chose to analyze data from Florida and Ohio from before and after vaccines were available. Even when vaccines came around, these differences continued, Mauricio Santillana, an epidemiology expert at Northeastern University and a co-author of the study, told me. Partisanship affected outcomes in the pandemic even before we had vaccines. Although we still cant say these decisions led to higher death rates, the association alone is jarring. How many died > 30 days FRSIKTIGHET . Here are their names and stories: Korey Harrington, 47, was an ESE middle school teacher at Pine Island Academy in St. Johns County. "But a mask mandate? Pushaw noted an Aug. 27 White House briefing that included comments by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who said nationwide hospitalization rates for children are on par with previous surges. This station is part of Cox Media Group Television. Overall, K-12 employees' general satisfaction . Fourteen of the 15 states with the lowest vaccination rates voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Three teachers from Florida's Broward County died from COVID-19 on Tuesday and Wednesday. This means that in-school transmission of coronavirus will continue to occur even if teachers are vaccinated, making schools significant vectors for the spread of more infectious and lethal variants of the virus throughout Florida communities. Unfortunately, some of these children will not survive, Rathore said. However, otherwise healthy kids are now facing multisystem inflammatory syndrome about a month after they become infected by the virus. International Committee of the Fourth International, COVID, Capitalism, and Class War: A Social and Political Chronology of the Pandemic, Sign up for the WSWS Educators Newsletter, scheme to distribute vaccines to wealthy, affluent communities, One year of the COVID-19 pandemic: A disaster caused by capitalism, School worker deaths mount in Florida as virus spreads without restraint, Florida Governor DeSantis prioritizes vaccine rollout for wealthier communities. The district has an online portal that tracks COVID-19 cases among its employees and staff, and it is continuing to urge all of those who are eligible to get vaccinated. Loved to travel. There were questions as to how students would cope with these massive changes and how many would develop mental and emotional health issues with an impact on their personal well-being and academic progress. One of the most compelling studies comes from researchers at Yale, who published their findings as a working paper in November. "The whole excitement of going back was just running through our teachers when we went back to work on Wednesday," Fusco told NPR by phone Saturday. She also coached the Wacona Science Olympiad team. "The pandemic continues to severely impact our community, and many public servants including educators, healthcare staff, rescue workers and law enforcement officers are experiencing tragic losses," the district said. Whats most concerning about all of this is that partisan disparities in death rates were also apparent before COVID. There were 254,412 childhood Covid infections at the end of July, but the state added 146,604 from July 30 to Sept. 2. But whats most concerning is the revelation that the number of people who died within 21 days of having a Covid-19 vaccine (30,305) in the first 6 months of 2021 was 691% / 8x greater than the number of people who allegedly died of Covid-19 within a period of 18 months (3,832). For more information or to donate, click here. FEMA insists that they have no control over the guidelines, and that the distribution terms are dictated by DeSantis, who has been implicated in a scheme to distribute vaccines to wealthy, affluent communities. News helicopters flying over Miami have shown video footage of very long lines of cars waiting early in the morning for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) site at Miami-Dade College to be opened, and reports are emerging that many who were not eligible under current state guidelines were still able to receive shots there last week. Six members of a church in Florida, all of whom were unvaccinated, died of Covid-19 in less than two . She was angry that she wasnt given an option to continue working remotely, despite being the primary caregiver for a mother with lung cancer. 5. But given how events have unfolded in her district after the death of three educators, submitting her resignation letter wont be hard. Those who died include teachers, school bus drivers, a security worker and a cafeteria manager. The survey, conducted in December, included responses from . Amanda Winkle is the digital content manager for Action News Jax. istock. Just as Florida has historically served as a testing ground for the gutting of public education, so too is it serving as a testing ground for the homicidal back-to-work and back-to-school policies of the Republicans and Democrats, who are both promoting a herd immunity policy among Florida educators, parents, students and the broader working class. Though some teachers fear being back in classrooms while the virus is still raging in their communities, other leaders argue that the educational toll on students and the stress on families are more urgent concerns.