Gov. Jim Justice again endorsed a map of coronavirus spread that determines school status, even as it faces multiple legal challenges.
Justice said, “at the end of the day, if there’s lawsuits there’s lawsuits.”
The West Virginia Education Association, one of the state’s big teachers unions, announced on Tuesday that it intends to seek an injunction over changes to the state’s map that determines school status based on the spread of coronavirus. The union says the map has been altered repeatedly to lower standards for opening schools.
Meanwhile, a senior quarterback at George Washington High School is suing over the map too, saying it affects very little except for schools. The plaintiff, J.T. Alexander, is a senior at the high school in Kanawha County, where classrooms have yet to open this year. He wants to attend class and play ball.
Justice was asked about the lawsuits — each taking aim at the map from different directions — during a briefing Wednesday.
“I appreciate and respect people’s legitimate concern,” he said.
But then he seemed to focus his comments mostly on the WVEA’s impending action.
“In a lot of these situations, there’s politics, politics, politics — and it stinks,” Justice said.
The teachers union is questioning whether continued changes to the map have compromised the safety of students and employees in public schools.
Changes over the past few weeks have included placing smaller counties on a 14-day rolling average; having nursing home residents, corrections inmates and now some isolating college students count as one unit; altering the cutoff points for colors meant to indicate county status; and adding an additional color, gold.
The most recent change had a dramatic effect last week.
Initially the map counted just daily positive cases on a rolling average and adjusted for 100,000 population. State officials concluded people were holding back on getting tested because positives would count against their local numbers.
So state officials now allow use of a percent positive figure. Counties are assessed by whichever is better, the average daily positives or the percent positive.
A daily state map appeared with that change for the first time Friday, and then a dominant Saturday map that dictates school status also reflected the switch.
Significantly more counties were depicted as green, the lowest levels, on the map. Monongalia County, which has been red for weeks, very quickly went to green.
Justice today said the recent changes are meant to encourage more testing and to identify more positive cases, helping to slow the spread of virus.
“Here’s the bottom line of the whole thing: If we don’t test, we’re going to get worse. That’s all there is to it. It’s just that simple,” Justice said.
He objected to instead using a map by the Harvard Global Health Institute, which shows three counties — Kanawha, Tucker and Gilmer — as red and another 13 as orange, the highest levels. Only two counties, Pocahontas and Lewis, are green on that map.
“If we’d done that, right now, we’d have a third to half our state shut down,” Justice said. “Just think how preposterous this is in so many ways.”
The American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia issued its own statement today, objecting to the frequency of changes to West Virginia’s map.
“The public no longer trusts the Governor’s map. In grading the Governor’s performance on this critical test, he receives an F. He is failing to keep West Virginians safe,” stated AFT-WV President Fred Albert.
The union said the rapid descent of some counties from red or orange to green is a puzzler, despite the governor’s insistence on the validity of the state’s data.
“Constant changes in the map have given our school employees, parents and students emotional whiplash,” Albert stated.
“Adding a color or moving the target doesn’t make our schools or communities safer. We’ve tried to improve safety and transparency for our schools, but any progress achieved to improve safety by the union is always soon undone. We go one step forward; Governor Justice tweaks the map and drags us two steps back.”
All AFT-WV local presidents had an emergency meeting Tuesday night to discuss what to do next, the union said.
The union said local presidents will be reaching out to members to assess specific concerns in their counties because every county re-entry scenario and covid case rate is different. They’ll then gauge what actions the local members are willing to take to address the issues.
“Unlike the Governor’s ‘map of confusion,’ AFT-WV’s message has been consistent since April,” Albert stated. “We want to go back to our schools, but only when it’s safe for students and staff.”