High-Risk Paras, Teachers Ordered Back

Angela Walder’s doctor has prescribed her remote work for the rest of the school year. Her employer denied that request and ordered the Barnard paraprofessional to return to in-person work this week, or take unpaid time off.

She took the time off.

This is one outcome of New Haven Public Schools’ messy efforts to bring roughly 250 teachers, paras and other staff members with Covid-related accessibility accommodations back to in-person work.

“They have no empathy — and no MD — to say I have to come to work when my doctor has clearly said I should not,” Walder said.

Walder has diabetes. The chronic condition does increase the likelihood that her illness would be severe if she catches Covid-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Covid-19 vaccines eliminate much of that chance for severe illness. At the same time, both the CDC and the American Diabetes Association have turned to individual doctors during the pandemic to counsel patients on the best course of action for them.

New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) has now offered every staff member the opportunity to get their shots. The district’s position is that it’s time to define when these accessibility accommodations will end.

“We brought back staff because the accommodations were intended to be temporary, but may be not well articulated. This will be dealt with by a case by case basis via HR,” Superintendent Iline Tracey said by email.

Like many workplaces, NHPS recognized a temporary category of Americans with Disabilities Act accommodations during the pandemic. This category allowed staff with risky conditions or those who lived with high-risk individuals to work remotely.

The district notified those under this protected category that they would need to return to work on April 26, two weeks after the last NHPS vaccination slots. Or they could reapply using a new form.

Engineering Science University Magnet School (ESUMS) teacher Kirsten Hopes-McFadden brought the issue to the New Haven Board of Education on Monday. The New Haven Federation of Teachers had previously assured teachers that ADA accommodations would not be removed unilaterally just because teachers had gotten vaccinated. 

“HR has made this medical decision by unilaterally and arbitrarily ending ADA accommodations without any new medical information. And has stated that employees are expected to return to in person while the claim is pending. This was not done in the fall, and it puts these teachers at a greater risk of a severe outcome up to and including death,” Hopes-McFadden told the board.

Hopes-McFadden is using her own sick days in the meantime.

Request Rejected

Walder learned in the first week of April that her Covid-related ADA accommodation was expiring. Unsure what she needed to fill out, she tried to create the documentation on her own and submit it early. Only after that did she get the new paperwork she would need to fill out.

Her doctor, a physician with Internal Medicine of Greater New Haven, reiterated what he had written on her Covid-specific ADA form: Walder has diabetes, a risk factor for Covid-19, and should be allowed to work from home. He signed the form and dated it April 20.

On April 23, after some prompting, Walder heard back from the NHPS’ Office of Human Resources.

“Although it is clear you have a medical condition, based on the information we have available to us, it does not meet the standard for an accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). As a result, your request has been denied,” wrote Labor Relations Manager Taryn Bonner.

Walder could consider taking an unpaid break to care for her personal health condition under the Family & Medical Leave Act, Bonner wrote.

Walder’s job as a paraprofessional is her sole source of income. Paraprofessionals are already among the city’s lowest-paid workers.

She worked a second job at Wal-Mart until the pandemic started. She stopped working there when a coworker with a similar underlying condition passed away from Covid-19.

The former coworker is not her only brush with Covid-19. Her mother was hospitalized after getting Covid-19 and her father passed away from the disease. Walder came down with the illness herself in November after a trusted relative visited her house. She had headaches, dizziness and nausea and slept straight through three days.

She continues to experience long-lasting versions of some of those symptoms, including chronic fatigue, short-term memory loss, nausea and body aches. Even during her interview, she paused occasionally, searching for the rest of a simple phrase.

Walder now sees her doctor once a month. They have a plan for protecting her from another bout of Covid. This plan includes exercise, blood sugar monitoring and remote work until the end of the school year. 

She plans to fight her accommodation denial. She has already reached out to a disability lawyer and her state representative.

Diabetes is a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The question is whether remote work is a reasonable accommodation under the circumstances. Walder maintains that it is.

“Sometimes it’s really hard for teachers to navigate online and in-person teaching. They need someone there to help with that,” Walder said. ​“When I don’t see a child, I say, ​‘Johnny, where are you? Come back on so we can see you. This is what we’re doing now.’”

Or remote students have lost the supplies the teacher dropped off for them. Walder helps the remote students figure out what to do.

“If the administration would take a day to see what goes on, they would see the beauty and necessity of this,” Walder said.

Cicarella: Fair Timing, Though Messy

New Haven Federation of Teachers President Dave Cicarella has spent the past few weeks fielding calls from teachers worried about their Covid-19 accommodations. The requests to return to school seem fair to him. What’s wrong is that some teachers are still in limbo.

Teachers and other staff should have heard whether the order to report to school on Monday applied to them, Cicarella said. Instead, those who haven’t heard yet are taking sick days until they know for sure.

“That is legitimately frustrating. HR is swamped. I was on the phone with them yesterday. Some requests have been cleared, some have been denied, and more than a few are pending,” Cicarella said.

The problem is that a handful of New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) employees are processing between 70 and 80 requests, according to Cicarella. Every request has to be verified. Incomplete forms have to be sent back and forth between staff members, doctors’ offices and the human resources department. HR employees have to reach out to principals about whether the staff member’s request would cause an undue burden on the school. Then the HR team has to determine whether the request should be approved or denied.

Otherwise, the timeline for ending Covid accommodations is fine, from Cicarella’s perspective.

“The country is basically reopening. Many school districts have been back for a long time,” Cicarella said. ​“We’ve been out for over a year. We’ve been under a lot of criticism — myself included and Dr. Tracey.”

Remote learning has been challenging for families and students. Some students never or rarely show up to school; the number of students failing classes has skyrocketed.

The district has now reopened in-person classes at all schools, up to the high school level. Staff with Covid-related accommodations are the last to return.

“How do you justify keeping 100 teachers and staff out of school?” Cicarella said. ​“I don’t know if that’s reasonable.”

Roughly 250 teachers, paras and other staff members received Covid-related ADA accommodations this year, according to Cicarella. Between 70 and 80 reapplied using the new forms.

Some staff members chose not to reapply. For example, one staff member has recovered from the severe illness that made her high-risk for severe Covid-19 and feels ready to return to school now.

Jackson-McArthur: It’s A Pandemic

Pediatrician and Board of Education member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur clarified that the Covid-19 vaccines work really well to prevent severe illness from the virus, even for people with underlying conditions like diabetes.

“You’re not going to go to an emergency room,” Jackson-McArthur said. ​“If you have the vaccine, you should be protected.”

That said, so little time has passed since the vaccines have entered the real world. She doesn’t understand why the district would end Covid-19 accommodations now; the pandemic is not over. In general, Jackson-McArthur has leaned heavily on the side of caution with reopening schools during the pandemic.

“I still know four people on ventilators — three in New Haven. These are young people. Until it is over, if the accommodations are because of health issues, we should continue them. I don’t think it should get too complicated. Are we still in pandemic or are we not?”