Teachers May Work From Classrooms or Home During Distance Learning
The Woodland Joint Unified School District and the Woodland Education Association arrived at an agreement on August 14th, 2020 as part of a Memorandum of Understanding that allows teachers and other professional educators the flexibility to work from their regularly assigned workplaces or to work remotely from home while delivering virtual instruction. Today’s agreement follows the events of last week, when over 1,000 community members, including over two-thirds of the members of the Woodland Education Association, signed on to a letter demanding that teachers and educators be granted such workplace flexibility. The day of the August 6th school board meeting also saw a large demonstration at the WJUSD district office, including a car caravan where teachers, staff, and supportive community members called upon the District to trust teachers and educators enough to offer the choice to work from campus or from home during distance learning.
By making campuses available as an option to school staff during the work day, the district is providing reliable Internet service, supplies, and personal space without interruptions, which is appreciated by those colleagues who will choose to access these resources. Many teachers are fully equipped to conduct distance learning from home, and will not need to report to an in-person work site in order to work effectively with students and families. Allowing professionals a choice in work location provides a stable distance learning environment for students, as teachers won’t be forced to choose between their health and their jobs, or to choose between their families and their jobs.
All schools located in counties on the State of California’s COVID watchlist, including Yolo County, will open this fall teaching at a distance, with students learning from home, and teachers facilitating from remote locations. Woodland Joint Unified now joins the growing list of districts across California, among them Davis Joint Unified School District and Washington Unified School District of West Sacramento, that have announced that their teachers and other certificated educators will be able to choose whether to work from home or to have access to in-person schools and district work sites as needed during times when schools are closed to students due to the global pandemic. The Woodland Education Association celebrates today’s agreement to adopt the sensible and smart policy of trusting teachers and other professional educators to choose their workplace location during distance learning.
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The Woodland Education Association is the labor union for the certificated employees of the Woodland Joint Unified School District, and represents guidance counselors, school psychologists, education specialists, speech language pathologists, school nurses, teachers on special assignment, classroom teachers, and other certificated professional educators who serve students in the communities of Knights Landing, Yolo, and Woodland.