Florida teachers on edge as mask war, Covid surge mark first weeks of school

Homestead: American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten crouched to sit at a first-graders’ table in a Florida school, chatting with masked 6-year-olds about books and their former kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Smith.

Lillian Smith, a local union steward who taught at William A. Chapman Elementary in Miami-Dade County for more than 30 years, died last month of COVID-19. At least four Miami-Dade County teachers or staff have died from COVID so far this school year, as cases and hospitalizations in Florida have soared. Weingarten, in Miami on Friday as part of a U.S. tour to support COVID-safe back-to-school measures like masking, told Reuters that Florida is "a place where you have a governor who is more concerned about his political aspirations than the safety and the wellbeing of the people he was elected to serve."