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Wisconsin possibly exposing DOC teachers to COVID-19, despite cancellation of all classes
I'm writing this to expose the Department of Corrections’ lack of responsibility in times of a pandemic.
My husband is a teacher at a DOC facility in southeast Wisconsin, and the reality there is that part-time and outsourced employees have been released and can stay safely home, with full paid administrative leave. At the same time, staff teachers must still go to work and stay locked in those buildings for a whole work day, even though classes have been cancelled.
Staff teachers have families, most of them with kids. So why are they being coerced to get out of their homes when no classes are being taught in prisons? What is going to happen when the number of infections reach an all-time high (pretty soon according to researchers) and teachers are infected?
it is not fair that staff teachers are being treated unequally to part-time and outsourced teachers, as if the full-time staff doesn’t matter!
The state has proven to be incompetent in dealing with this pandemic, and it is appalling to see that no action has been taken to protect staff teachers. Gov. Tony Evers, what a shame. I can't find the words to say how disappointed we all are with your lack of action.
This has to end. We need the state to let all DOC teachers stay safely at home. They, like the other DOC teachers, deserve the right to protect themselves and their families from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. Action must be taken now, or it will be too late.
I am sharing this information so the whole state of Wisconsin can know how incompetent this administration has been in dealing with state teachers at the DOC.
Name withheld for fear of reprisal
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Photo: Jame Timothy Peters via Pixabay
(1) comment
I have to agree with you. There has been no word from our governor on what he intends to do not if but when this virus takes over these prisons. There is a lot of residents in Wisconsin who have loved ones incarcerated or employed in these institutions and are worried sick. These people deserve their government to step up and protect them. All of them including the inmates. Every life matters. Tony Evers will have a lot of deaths on his hands if he doesn’t address this sooner then later. These employees are walking into a Petri dish of covid 19 everyday to take care of prisoners who are by the way piled on top of one another in every single prison in this country, with no way of protecting themselves. Many states have stepped up to thin the population of their prison systems and get thier staff down to the bare minimum needed and offered them PPE. I have talked to a prisoner at Oshkosh correctional and he informed me that the guards are not even wearing face masks. If we the people are to wear them in public 6 feet away from people how are we stopping the spread in these institutions? Or is it that after we convict someone of committing a crime in this state that their lives and the people’s lives that are supposed to be there to care for them don’t matter anymore. The prisoner I talked to has heart disease,asthma,COPD and diabetes is 53 years old and has 8 years to go on a 10 year sentence. His reply was he doubts he will live to see freedom again. Tony Evers and DOC we the people beg you to address this situation before this becomes an all catastrophe.
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