COLUMBUS, Ohio—The Ohio Federation of Teachers and the Cleveland Teachers Union have asked state officials to cancel in-person K-12 classes for the rest of the school year because of the coronavirus crisis, the respective leaders of the two unions said Friday.

“We’ll be contacting the governor’s office with a checklist of what we would need in schools for conditions to be safe for students and teachers to return," said OFT president Melissa Cropper in a statement. "It does not seem practical that we can have a safe return to physical classrooms this school year.”

CTU president Shari Obrenski, speaking on a conference call with reporters organized by the Ohio House Democrats, said that “Keeping schools closed for the remainder of the school year would probably be, in our estimation, the best course of action."

Gov. Mike DeWine has closed K-12 schools across the state since March 16; his current closure order runs through May 1. The governor has raised the prospect that he will keep schools shut through the end of the school year, but so far he hasn’t taken such action.

Obrenski said she and other union officials were “taken a little aback” by DeWine’s comments on Thursday that he intends to reopen Ohio’s economy after May 1.

“We're also anxious to get our state moving back to a more normal everyday existence,” she said. “We understand that opening the economy, however, is going to present some real and new challenges.”

When in-person classes resume – be it this school year or next – Obrenski said it will be a “vastly different experience” for students and educators alike, and that precautions need to be taken.

“We have serious concerns about the health and safety of the children and the educators who will be working with them,” she said. “We have students who are medically fragile, who have diabetes, asthma, hypertension, other chronic conditions that would make them particularly vulnerable to infection under this disease. We have adults that are serving our children who also have these conditions.”

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