Eli Saslow reports for Washington Post from Hayden, Arizona, population 662, under the headline, "I'm sorry, but it's a fantasy." Here's an excerpt quoting the superintendent of the Hayden-Winkleman School District, Jeff Gregorich, who was interviewed by Saslow as part of an oral history series featuring voices of the pandemic.
The governor has told us we have to open our schools to students on August 17th, or else we miss out on five percent of our funding. I run a high-needs district in middle-of-nowhere Arizona. We’re 90 percent Hispanic and more than 90 percent free-and-reduced lunch. These kids need every dollar we can get. But covid is spreading all over this area and hitting my staff, and now it feels like there’s a gun to my head. I already lost one teacher to this virus. Do I risk opening back up even if it’s going to cost us more lives? Or do we run school remotely and end up depriving these kids?
This is your classic one-horse town. Picture John Wayne riding through cactuses and all that. I’m superintendent, high school principal and sometimes the basketball referee during recess. This is a skeleton staff, and we pay an average salary of about 40,000 a year. I’ve got nothing to cut. We’re buying new programs for virtual learning and trying to get hotspots and iPads for all our kids. Five percent of our budget is hundreds of thousands of dollars. Where’s that going to come from? I might lose teaching positions or basic curriculum unless we somehow get up and running.
I’ve been in the building every day, sanitizing doors and measuring out space in classrooms. We still haven’t received our order of Plexiglas barriers, so we’re cutting up shower curtains and trying to make do with that. It’s one obstacle after the next. Just last week I found out we had another staff member who tested positive, so I went through the guidance from OSHA and the CDC and tried to figure out the protocols. I’m not an expert at any of this, but I did my best with the contact tracing.
An earlier post featuring this school district, which lost a teacher to COVID-19 in the spring, is here.
Another compelling oral history interview from this series is here. No dateline is given, just a reference to the intercoastal waterway in North Carolina. The woman interviewed works at a convenience store, and she talks about folks refusing to wear masks in spite of the state mandate--even as she cannot afford to give up her job there and thus must expose herself to the risk the customers pose.
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