March 14, 2017

For more information:

Roger Glass/202-270-2484


PRESS STATEMENT

WTU President Elizabeth A. Davis on the
failure to close DC Public Schools today

The WTU has surveyed DC schools and found that many teachers did not report to
work today due to the inclement weather. In some schools, a majority of the teachers
are absent today.

In addition, numerous WTU members have contacted the union to complain about
DCPS opening schools and forcing teachers, students and parents to navigate often
risky and unsafe sidewalks and roads to come to school.

Over 2,000 of our teachers live outside of the District, primarily because their salaries
do not allow them buy or rent homes in DC. Its unfair to ask them to travel from places
like Fairfax, Gaithersburg, Waldorf and other towns and cities outside of DC to make it
to work on a day like today.

What message are we sending our children and their parents when city leaders use
their authority to decide to close their own offices and stay home where they are safe,
but then refuse to close the DC schools, thereby forcing children and DCPS school
workers to report to school under these same risky and unsafe road conditions?

The WTU will be contacting Mayor Bowser and DCPS Chancellor Wilson to express
the unions concerns about the opening of DC schools today, and to make sure they
recognize how difficult it is for many teachers and students to get to school when we
have inclement weather like we have today.

The Washington Teachers Union is the bargaining agent for the
4,800 educators who teach in the District of Columbia Public Schools.

1239 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE Washington, D.C. 20003 T: 202.293.8600 F:202.293.8633 www.wtulocal6.org