A group of a handful of Crookston School District teachers walked out of the Crookston School Board meeting on Monday after the Crookston School Board didn’t act on a motion made by board member Dave Davidson (a former Crookston teachers union head) to allow teachers to teach from home during distance learning.
KROX received emails, texts, and messages from a few teachers sighting the Governor’s Executive order that states if any employee can work from home they should be allowed to do so. While that is true, if the employer (in this case the school district) deems it essential to work from the school, it is within their rights to do so. In this government order, there isn’t a true black and white case that says either side is wrong.
Crookston School District Superintendent Jeremy Olson had reached out to the Minnesota Department of Education, the Minnesota School Board Association, and others to make sure what they were doing was within the district’s rights and they weren’t doing anything wrong.
Superintendent Olson sent KROX the following statement Tuesday afternoon.
The district considers it an essential function of the job to teach from the classroom and have access to technology support, educational equipment, materials, and resources in the classroom. The district also considers an essential function of the job to have collaboration opportunities with other teachers, support personnel, and administration during a short term distance learning period.
The Minnesota Department of Education’s Wendy Hatch sent KROX the following in an email on Tuesday. (KROX didn’t receive a yes or no from MDE and you can tell from the response, it actually says both ways are acceptable).
I’m going to point you to page 16 in the Safe Learning Plan that lays out the staff accommodations and how that intersects with Governor Walz’s work from home executive order. Executive Order 20-74 states that all employees who can work from home must work from home. This is a broad mandate that applies across industries. For school districts and charter schools, this means that if a staff member can perform their essential job functions from home, they must work from home. The purpose of this order is to limit unnecessary travel and intermingling of people to limit transmission of the coronavirus and spread of COVID-19. The analysis about whether the essential duties of a job can be done at home should be done on a case-by-case basis and will be dependent on the circumstances of a position. School districts and charter schools should not issue blanket orders that require all staff to work in person. If a staff member cannot perform all their essential job duties from home, they can be required to come into the school building to perform those duties that cannot be performed remotely.
Under the Governor’s Safe Learning Order (Executive Order 20-82), if a staff member is medically at-risk for complications as a result of COVID-19 or has members of their household who are at-risk, the school district or charter school must allow them to work from home to the extent possible. This obligation extends beyond the more general work from home mandate in Executive Order 20-74 and applies to those employees who may not typically be able to work from home but who may be able to as an accommodation for being in the at-risk category or having a member of their household in the at-risk category. School districts and charter schools should use the same HR processes and ADA analysis that they normally use when an employee with a disability requests accommodations in order to perform their essential job duties.
