What they’re saying: Teachers have demanded more personal protective equipment and better ventilation to help manage the risk.

But the absence of safety measures or unified guidance has put “teachers in a terrible, terrible position where the the only thing they can advocate for is having remote education,” said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers.

“At the end of the day you needed double the space and double the number of teachers in order to deal with this pandemic,” Weingarten said.

By the numbers: 1.5 million teachers in the U.S. have health conditions that put them at higher risk of serious illness from COVID-19, per a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis.