Fall is coming; time to think ahead. In this issue, we think ahead about reopening. There is a plan, the result of a sequence of successive mandates from Tallahassee on down, in which each successive level was able to ask for advice in implementing the edict from above.
The USF Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida will meet tomorrow Friday at noon on Zoom. On the agenda: reopening, consolidation issues, and other pressing matters. And here are the minutes for the previous meeting.
We will meet tomorrow, and on July 24 and August 7. Any employee in the UFF USF Bargaining Unit may attend, but you must have an invitation: contact the Chapter Secretary. Meetings and events are posted on the Events Calendar of the UFF USF Website. Come and check us out.
Many of our students are struggling during this crisis, and the USF Foundation is supporting the USF Food Pantries to help out. They are accepting non-perishable donations, but one can also make monetary donations for the pantries at St. Petersburg, Sarasota / Manatee, and Tampa.
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The Plan then cites the Memorandum of Understanding that UFF USF employees just voted to ratify. It states that:
A bargaining unit member, or individual(s) with whom the bargaining unit member resides, whose age and/or underlying medical/health condition puts either of them at risk for death or severe medical/health complications should they contract COVID-19 during the Public Health Emergency, shall be given priority to teach their courses in an online format as a reasonable accommodation. |
This accommodation may be granted with the explicit understanding by all parties that the faculty member will engage with instructional digital designers in USF Innovative Education for the preparation necessary to deliver a quality online educational experience. Performance expectations exceed those associated with transition to remote instruction in Spring 2020. |
According to legend, Cnut the Great, King of Denmark, England, Norway, and all places north, had his throne set by the sea and commanded the incoming tide to halt. Which it did not. Accounts vary as to what Cnut (and his publicists) said next, but as Theodore Dalrymple observed, "Political power or office often gives those who possess it the illusion that they control events." Which brings us to a pandemic perpetrated by a virus indifferent to political desiderata.
According to Johns Hopkins, the USA has already suffered forty COVID19 deaths per 100,000 people, second only to the United Kingdom. And according to the Tampa Bay Times, Florida has suffered nearly twenty COVID19 deaths per 100,000 people, not as bad as Mexico but substantially worse than Iran. (For context, Pew says that in the USA, twelve people per 100,000 died of gunshot during the entire year of 2017 - and the death toll for COVID19 is just from March to now).
As for where we are heading, 538 has put up a sort of coronavirus spaghetti model, with projections of the major models; for July, the projections disagree (substantially) on whether we will significantly flatten - or raise - the curve.
But turning to what politicians and pundits call reality - i.e. politics and finances - reopening higher ed has become a political issue, and Tallahassee is committed to reopening. There are financial pressures as well: many students want face-to-face classes, and colleges and universities have residential and dining facilities that are either assets or liabilities, depending on whether students are on campus. On the other hand, quite financial pressures arise from the anxieties of parents. (Of course, many pundits and politicians who talk about economic reality aren't really concerned about economics: if they were, they would press for higher ed funding for adults to boost the economy while providing further training for subsequent employment.)
Except for anomalies like Japan, the nations that most effectively kept the virus at bay launched major (and occasionally invasive) efforts like tracing, testing, and quarantines. The United States has not done much of this sort of thing, and unsurprisingly, the first wave that politicians had hoped was receding is still going strong. USF's Plan for Autumn 2020 emphasizes "Virus Testing, Tracing and Surveillance," but considering the current testing debacle, this desideratum is easier said than done.
Across the country, faculty were out of the loop when plans for fall were composed. Here, the state Board of Governors and the university Boards of Trustees solicited input, but composed plans without stakeholders in the room. That may have been a mistake: soliciting input is different from getting stakeholders to agree to something, which means that the onus for whatever happens is on the Boards' heads. There are almost as many lawyers as alligators in Florida, so we know what happens if there are a lot of seriously sick people on campus. There has been some talk of having people sign waivers, but even if people sign, the real political reality is that in a political firestorm, waivers are about as useful as teddy bears.
The public health priority would be to prepare for what is likely to happen, not what some politicians would prefer to happen. While some institutions are playing it safe by going online in fall, and others are gamely going ahead with on-campus classes with precautions, there is little consensus about what to do. Cornell has an interesting plan, which was composed after a study concluded that over five times as many people would get infected if Cornell went online than if students went to class (with precautions). If students were on campus, they could be monitored closely and nagged into following precautions. But there is a whiff of in loco parentis in Cornell's thinking, and someone (no doubt staff and faculty) will have to enforce Cornell's scheme, and it will be interesting to see how it turns out.
Meanwhile, the recent resurgence in infections (and hospitalizations and deaths) have moved some institutions to reconsider their plans for reopening.
As the UFF/FEA Higher Education Re-Opening Committee Guidelines observes, a responsible reopening effort will cost money, which brings us to the budget.
Florida is not the only state that needs money to meet its needs, and the House of Representatives recently passed a Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act to address these and other COVID-19-related issues. But it would need to be passed by the Senate and signed by the President to become law. Lacking that...
Florida's government gets most of its income from the sales tax, which led some pundits to anticipate that Governor DeSantis would make major cuts in order to make the budget balance (as required by the state constitution). He cut a billion dollars - nowhere near enough to balance the budget - and did not raise taxes. Education was mostly unscathed, and universities were dinged only a little bit (although a few vital programs are scrambling for funds). Fox News speculated that the governor was trying "...to keep lawmakers from having to come back to Tallahassee ahead of the November elections to address revenue shortfalls caused by the coronavirus pandemic." If Fox is right, then we might have blood on the floor during a special session after the election. So at this moment, funding for the fall semester seems okay, but as for spring...
Reality Check
The Latest on the Budget
Chapter Meeting tomorrow Friday, July 10, at noon, via Zoom. All UFF USF members are welcome: for the Zoom link, contact the Chapter Secretary.
All UFF members are invited to attend. Non-members are also invited to come and check us out. To get the link to Zoom, contact the Chapter Secretary. Come and join the movement.Membership: Everyone in the UFF USF System Bargaining unit is eligible for UFF membership: to join, simply fill out and send in the membership form.
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