Lawmakers Team Up With Teachers To Push Back On Baker's Proposed Return To In-Person Learning

In many suburban public school districts in Massachusetts, in-person learning is limited.

Joe Mathieu, host of WGBH's Morning Edition

Joe Mathieu is the anchor and executive editor of WGBH's Morning Edition. Before joining WGBH Radio, Joe worked for six years as morning anchor on WBZ NewsRadio in Boston, where he was part of the team that received a Peabody Award for coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings. Joe also received the Edward R. Murrow Award for best newscast in a major market.

March 16, 2021

Updated August 07, 2023

The Baker administration and public school teachers have been at odds over the call to return children to in-person learning, and over the request to get teachers vaccinated faster. GBH Morning Edition host Joe Mathieu spoke with GBH News State House reporter Mike Deehan about the ongoing disagreements between Governor Baker and teachers. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.

Joe Mathieu: So the governor and the teachers have been feuding for a while, you could say. Now some lawmakers are stepping into the fight. What are they doing?

Mike Deehan: Yeah, well, it's not really clear if we're going to see action here on Beacon Hill, but there's a lot of politics in play. The background here is that Baker is still insisting that elementary schools go back to in-person learning by April. Teachers unions and a lot of school boards — perhaps more importantly, a lot of school boards and school officials at the district level — are opposing that, saying "we need more time." There's a new bill from Northampton's Lindsay Sabadosa in the House of Representatives that would force Baker to push that back to April 26th. She didn't write that bill with the unions; it was written by a lot of these district folks in consultation with them. However, the unions are in agreement with that because they don't want to go back [to in-person learning] until they're vaccinated and they certainly don't want to go back April 1st the way the Baker administration has been pushing this. So we've seen a lot of bills like this before where they're not necessarily intended to go through the legislature, get passed, then vetoed and then passed again. They're really just to send a message. And they've been effective. I think that the Baker administration really has changed tactic a little bit when they see that dozens of lawmakers have signed on. There's 10 co-sponsors on this bill right now. So if they want to take action they'd have to do it very quickly or Baker can kind of take the hint. So actually, one person who is hinting is House Speaker Ron Mariano. He's a former teacher himself. He's not backing this particular bill, but when he talked to reporters last week, he was also critical of Baker's push for in-person learning.

Mathieu: And this all comes after Governor Baker, of course, gave in to demands from teachers unions to make them eligible for vaccines earlier than first planned. He had been resisting calls to prioritize teachers, right? This story has evolved a lot, Mike.

WATCH: "Baker does not feel that teachers need or should all be vaccinated."

Mathieu: So they've set aside four days, as we've been reporting, for teachers only at the mass vax sites over the next several weeks. And as we've also been reporting, teachers want more than that. They want to be vaccinated before they return to school and they want the shots brought to them, essentially, right? Instead of going to the mass vaccine sites, they want to do that more locally. Are we getting any movement there?

Deehan: Almost certainly not from Baker. Again, it might be something that the legislature uses a little bit of leverage on, but I don't see the governor moving on this. He's focusing on those sicker and older populations, and his administration's been pointing out all this data that what the teachers are saying isn't necessarily what medical experts are saying. However, we're seeing he dedicated those days at the mass vax sites to comply with some federal changes that were made. I think it's important to point out that it wasn't Baker's decision to let them be eligible in the first place this early. That was more the Biden administration. So they're still locked in this war and you're right, the teachers do have a plan to set aside new increases in vaccine supply and then have those shipped out to the districts and administered there in person in the schools. That is a plan that doesn't seem to have much purchase on Beacon Hill.

Mathieu: I've got to ask you while you're here about the poll. It's not ours; it's from UMass Amherst and a local TV station. Is this an outlier? And I'm asking you that because we get the morning consult poll regularly showing [Baker] is the most popular governor ever born or something like this, and this poll shows a pretty steep drop.

Deehan: Yeah, it does. It shows a drop from 78 percent in August to just 52 percent now — approval of the governor in general. It could be just a blip because the vaccine rollout been lumpy and bumpy, as Baker likes to say. But if you're a Democrat looking to run for governor — you're Ben Downing or even potentially AG Maura Healey — you could see this as a sign that Baker might be beatable, if he decides to run for a third term.