COVID testing is free, fast and encouraged for frontline workers

January 14, 2021 by

Andrew Virden leads union officers on a tour of the community testing site at Roy Wilkins Auditorium.

COVID-19 testing is fast, safe and open to anyone free of charge at 21 community testing sites across Minnesota.

That’s the message state health officials want union members – and all frontline workers – to hear as more businesses, schools and other gathering places begin reopening to the public.

As a small group of union leaders toured the testing site inside St. Paul’s Roy Wilkins Auditorium today, state officials emphasized that testing remains critical to containing the coronavirus outbreak. And containing the outbreak is critical to keeping Minnesota schools and businesses open.

“Getting tested is what we have to do until – and even after – vaccines start getting into people’s arms,” said Andrew Virden, a state incident commander assigned to local testing sites. “We’re going to need to continue to monitor the outbreak.”

Getting tested at Roy Wilkins, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport or any of the other community testing sites typically takes 10 minutes or less. The process requires nothing more than an email address and saliva.

“This is free. There’s no barrier,” Virden said. “You don’t need a photo ID. You don’t need insurance.”

Gregory Cobbins, who’s been working at the testing site since November, helps Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy through the process.
SEIU Local 284 President Kelly Gibbons
St. Paul Regional Labor Federation President Kera Peterson
Laborers Local 563 Business Manager Joe Fowler
UFCW Local 1189 Secretary-Treasurer Jim Gleb (L) and Gregory Cobbins

People who access community testing sites often get their results within 24 hours, Virden added. The quick turnaround is key to keeping frontline workers and their families safe.

“You do not want to be that vector,” Virden said. “You don’t want to be the person that gets their whole team sick. You don’t want to be the person that gets your customers sick. You don’t want to be the one that gets grandma sick or your family sick.”

Tests are not in short supply, officials emphasize, and getting tested is safe.

The Roy Wilkins is a cavernous space (ask any concertgoer), making it easy to maintain six feet of physical distance. People can schedule appointments in advance to avoid standing in line. And testing stations are sanitized after each use.

Roy Wilkins’ testing site opened in October 2020, as Minnesota began seeing a second wave of COVID-19 cases.

“When we first opened through the end of December we were averaging at least 2,000 people per day,” said Kou Yang, a site manager at Roy Wilkins. “Since January we’ve been at about 700 to 1,000 people per day on weekdays, and on weekends 500 to 700.”

Public health officials warn against a letdown in testing and other tools to contain the virus’ spread as cases level off, noting that a new, more contagious strain of the virus has begun circulating in Minnesota.

“It’s about folks monitoring themselves as to their health condition, especially if you’re a frontline worker, especially if you’re working in the public and especially if you’re exposed,” Virden said.

Click here for more information on the 21 community testing sites Minnesota offers.

Filed Under: Community, Politics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Standardized testing the subject of two events this month

March 2, 2015 by

Broken PencilTwo public events in March – a film screening and a lecture – will consider the wisdom of increasing the use of standardized testing in public education.

St. Paul Federation of Teachers Local 28 will co-sponsor a screening of “Standardized” at 6 p.m. March 10 at the East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier St. The free event is part of the library’s ongoing series of education-focused films and discussions.

The film features education experts offering their opinions on standardized testing. It’s subtitled: “Lies, Money and Civil Rights: How Testing if Ruining Public Education.”

The discussion will continue March 21, when Seattle high school history teacher and Macalester College graduate Jesse Hagopian offers a public presentation on his essay “The Testocracy versus the Educational Spring” at 7 p.m. in the college’s John B. Davis Auditorium, located at the southwest corner of Snelling and Grand Avenues.

9781608463923_0Hagopian edited “More than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing,” a collection of essays by scholars, teachers, administrators, students and parents, published last year by Haymarket Press.

As a union activist, Hagopian was among the leaders of a historic 2013 boycott of the MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) test in Seattle. In 2013 he was named the national “Secondary School Teacher of the Year” by the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences.

He writes frequently for nationally circulated journals, and posts a widely read blog, I Am an Educator.

The presentation is free and open to the public.

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , , , ,

Education Summit leaves teachers, parents on the outside looking in

February 6, 2014 by
Jenny Warner, a parent of two students in the Minneapolis Public Schools, joins the demonstration outside the Education Summit.

Jenny Warner, a parent of two students in the Minneapolis Public Schools, joins the demonstration outside the Education Summit.

Parents, students and other activists demonstrated this morning outside a hotel downtown St. Paul, site of a business-backed conference on education reform that featured Michelle Rhee, a prominent national voice for weakening the influence of teachers and their unions.

Not surprisingly, presenters at the Education Summit, sponsored by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, did not include representatives of any local teacher or parent groups. And the event’s timing – a Thursday in January – didn’t do much to make teachers feel welcome.

Demonstrators outside took notice.

“It’s obviously intentional,” Minneapolis parent Jenny Warner said. “I’m not a teacher, and it was prohibitive for me to get here. It’s obvious teachers and parents are not invited to take part in this discussion.”

Demonstrators unfurled a banner calling on the public to “boycott corporate education reform.” They identified increased testing and private-school vouchers as elements of that reform movement they oppose.

“I am against the standardized testing, high-stakes testing, corporate education reform movement,” Warner said. “I believe students are more than their test scores. Their success can’t always be measured by a standardized test.

“I know what Michelle Rhee is selling, and I don’t want our community to buy into it.”

Through the advocacy group StudentsFirst, Rhee is “promoting the firing and de-unionization of teachers as a national solution,” according to a preview of the summit authored by former Minneapolis teacher Sarah Lahm for the think tank Minnesota 2020.

Lahm attended the summit and provided live updates on Twitter.

“We have a lot of people who came today, even though it’s 12 degrees below out here,” Augsburg student Dua Saleh said. “We’ve got a lot of parents, students and local people – the people who should be in charge of what our children are being taught, not the corporations.”

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Filed Under: Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Parents, students support teachers’ walk-in demonstrations across St. Paul

January 30, 2014 by

St. Paul teachers and their supporters join a "walk-in" demonstration at American Indian Magnet school in the city's Dayton's Bluff neighborhood.

On days when the cold or snow delays the start of school, some students trickle into Ryan Long’s classroom at American Indian Magnet school, while others stay home altogether.

Sadly, it’s on these rare occasions that Long and other St. Paul teachers glimpse what it’s like teaching a manageable class size of students.

Ryan Long, a special education teacher at American Indian Magnet, supports his union's push to limit class sizes in the district.

Ryan Long, a special education teacher at American Indian Magnet, supports his union’s push to limit class sizes in the district.

“All of a sudden, you could manage your classroom,” Long said, joining a demonstration outside the school building before the start of classes this morning. “You can get things done.”

Limiting class sizes is among the key proposals Long’s union, the St. Paul Federation of Teachers, has prioritized in ongoing contract negotiations with the St. Paul Public Schools. SPFT members highlighted those priorities during “walk-in” demonstrations before class today at 55 school sites citywide, including American Indian Magnet in Dayton’s Bluff.

Parents, students and neighbors joined teachers at the walk-ins, showing their support for contract proposals the SPFT developed after months of gathering input from community stakeholders.

“We started our negotiation work with families, students and community members. It is only natural to continue that,” SPFT President Mary Cathryn Ricker said. “It’s time to make progress on a contract that ensures the schools St. Paul children deserve.”

[Click here to sign onto a petition supporting the SPFT’s community-driven vision for St. Paul’s schools.]

Negotiations began eight months ago. Along with limits on class size, teachers are pushing for expanded access to pre-Kindergarten; guaranteed staffing of school nurses, social workers, media specialists and other support staff; and a de-emphasis on standardized testing.

Michele Fairbanks, who teaches at the American Indian Magnet and has a daughter in the school, pointed to research by the union indicating some students spend as much as 30 days per school year taking tests.

“One set of tests is fine,” Fairbanks said. “But three or four standardized tests per year is overkill. The tests cost a lot of money, and that takes a lot away from students, from class sizes.”

In September, the district moved the talks into closed-door mediation and out of the public eye – a decision that rankled many teachers.

“The school district makes a big deal of having ‘Strong Schools, Strong Communities,’” American Indian Magnet teacher Jason Bresette said, citing the title of the district’s strategic plan. “But when they closed negotiations, it didn’t feel like they wanted strong community input.”

“Teachers who aren’t on the bargaining committee, parents, community members – we can’t listen or watch because they walked out so early in the process,” Fairbanks added.

Union officers said teachers planned the citywide walk-in to demonstrate their “frustration with the pace of talks, but it is not part of a formal run-up to a strike … or other job action.”

Long, who splits a case load of 45 students with one other special education teacher, believes district administrators and school board members share many of the teachers’ concerns, particularly when it comes to class sizes. But his caseload isn’t getting any more manageable as negotiations drag on.

“I’m supposed to have about 10 to 12 students in my caseload,” Long said. “We run out of chairs sometimes. It’s hard to move around in the classroom.”

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Filed Under: Union Events Tagged With: , , , , , ,

As talks move out of public eye, teachers keep up community outreach

November 20, 2013 by
St. Paul teachers and their supporters deliver a petition to the school board in support of their core bargaining principles.

St. Paul teachers and their supporters deliver a petition to the school board in support of their core bargaining principles.

To prepare for negotiations on a new contract, the St. Paul Federation of Teachers reached out to parents and the general public, using the feedback they received to craft an innovative, community-driven set of guiding principles for their contract talks.

So you can imagine teachers’ frustration when the St. Paul Public Schools asked the state to move their negotiations into closed-door mediation in September.

“We believe the reason they did that was to prevent the large audiences of parents, community members, students and other educators from being able to listen to our discussions,” SPFT organizer Paul Rohlfing said.

The district and union have had two mediation sessions since management walked out of bargaining, with two more scheduled for Nov. 21 and Dec. 11.

Although negotiations have moved behind closed doors, the teachers’ negotiating team has worked hard at keeping members of the community engaged and invested in the contract proposals they helped develop.

At the St. Paul Board of Education’s Nov. 12 meeting, SPFT members presented school board members with a petition signed by 4,000 people who support the union’s community-driven, core bargaining issues: smaller classes, less testing, more pre-kindergarten offerings, better school staffing, more parent engagement and a culturally relevant education.

Teachers, Rohlfing said, volunteered their time to generate signatures on the petition, which is still accepting signatures.

“They canvassed their neighborhoods after school,” Rohlfing said. “People went to PTA and PTO meetings at their school. We had people staffing tables on parent-teacher conference nights and at sporting events.”

The public outreach will continue, teachers say, throughout negotiations. The union has been releasing videos on its website, breaking down teachers’ contract proposals, where they came from and why they matter. Plans for lawn signs are in the works, Rohlfing said.

“We feel like the most important thing is to get our message directly to parents and community members through those people who they know and trust, the educators who work with their kids,” he added. “These are our public schools; they belong to all of us collectively.”

Tell members of the St. Paul Board of Education it’s time to move forward with negotiations on the teachers’ core bargaining issues. E-mail all board members at once: sb.members@spps.org.

Find videos breaking down the teachers’ core bargaining issues – like the one below about testing – at www.spft.org.

Filed Under: Organizing Tagged With: , , , , , ,