Teaching Profession

We Feel Your Grief: Remembering the 1,000 Plus Educators Who’ve Died of COVID-19

A Reflection on the People Our Schools Are Losing
By Lesli A. Maxwell — September 03, 2021 3 min read
Teaching Profession

We Feel Your Grief: Remembering the 1,000 Plus Educators Who’ve Died of COVID-19

A Reflection on the People Our Schools Are Losing
By Lesli A. Maxwell — September 03, 2021 3 min read
090321 1000 Educators Lost BS
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Most Sunday evenings, I open my laptop to compile a weekly death census.

It’s a routine I began when teachers, paraeducators, custodians, and other school staff were dying in quick succession in the early weeks of the pandemic, mostly in New York City. I did not imagine it would still be necessary more than 18 months after the coronavirus began claiming American lives.

But it is. Every week, there is someone—or a few people or dozens of them—from the K-12 workforce who dies from this awful virus.

First, I read stories about them. Most accounts are far too brief. Some reveal touching, tragic details. Then, out of each story, I extract and type eight pieces of data into an Excel spreadsheet:

  1. Name
  2. Age
  3. Job title
  4. Job classification (teacher, school leader, district leader, school support staff, etc.)
  5. School or district name where the person worked
  6. City/town and state
  7. Date of death, and
  8. Link to a local media article, obituary, or other credible source

It’s a simple list of facts I enter. About Tabitha Blair, a teacher no longer in front of her 4th grade students in Sebastian, Fla. About Principal Roy Mathews, his voice gone from the morning announcements at Bainbridge High School in Georgia. About Norma Reyes, a paraprofessional whose hands-on support for kids learning to read, speak, and write in English at a Florida elementary school is lost.

My colleagues on the visuals team scour the web for photos of each person, and painstakingly upload those along with the data to our memorial gallery, Educators We’ve Lost to the Coronavirus.

It’s a catalog of loss that feels woefully inadequate—because it is.

A name, a job title, a date of death, and a black and white photo do not capture the grief; what might have been.

But it’s important to document what we can, to record the names, and acknowledge the deaths. We won’t stop until the pandemic is declared over. We thought we’d be close to the end by now.

See also

Teaching Profession Educators We Lost to COVID, 2020-2022
April 3, 2020
1 min read

Then, Delta arrived. The pace of death has been breathtaking—more than 50 K-12 school employees in the state of Florida alone since July. I type their names into the spreadsheet.

Virginia Perry. Age unknown. Cafeteria worker. Stanton-Weirsdale Elementary School. Weirsdale, Fla. Date of death: Aug. 25, 2021.

Rhonda Brasher Lehman. 52. Cafeteria worker. Stanton-Weirsdale Elementary School. Weirsdale, Fla. Date of death: Aug. 28, 2021.

Rashida Kimmons. 40. Teacher. S.L. Mason Elementary School. Valdosta, Ga. Date of death: Aug. 19, 2021.

John Croy. 70. Bus driver. Polk County Public Schools. Bartow, Fla. Date of death: August 2021.

Our memorial gallery has 1,045 names now, as of Sept. 1. That’s a big number. A big number that falls short. It doesn’t capture everyone. We err on the side of caution before adding another name to the list. Not everyone has an obituary or a local news article to confirm they died from COVID.

Others, too, are bearing witness to this mounting death toll. School Personnel Lost to Covid, known as @losttocovid on Twitter, keeps a daily record. Their count exceeds 1,600.

Before vaccines, the deaths were excruciating to record. Now, it’s beyond excruciating.

When I read the more-recent stories of those who died, many don’t mention the person’s vaccination status.

But some do. Usually, it is one sentence: “she was not vaccinated,” or “he had planned to get vaccinated later.” Or, in a few accounts, a family member left behind issues a plea: Get the shot. Don’t do what our loved one did.

Those are crushing. These educators could have avoided serious illness. They could have survived. They could still be greeting students at the schoolhouse doors. They could still be serving hot meals in the cafeteria. They could still be teaching our kids.

We will continue to record their names. We will remember them.

Related Tags:

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Assessment Webinar
Reflections on Evidence-Based Grading Practices: What We Learned for Next Year
Get real insights on evidence-based grading from K-12 leaders.
Content provided by Otus
Artificial Intelligence K-12 Essentials Forum How AI Use Is Expanding in K-12 Schools
Join this free virtual event to explore how AI technology is—and is not—improving K-12 teaching and learning.
Federal Webinar Navigating the Rapid Pace of Education Policy Change: Your Questions, Answered
Join this free webinar to gain an understanding of key education policy developments affecting K-12 schools.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Teaching Profession Explainer Teacher Pay, Explained: Salary, Benefits, and Pensions
Learn how teachers are compensated, and the role that states and districts play in setting pay.
Illustration concept of chalkboard with a money symbol drawn and in the background are a people that represent teachers and administrators.
Liz Yap/Education Week and iStock/Getty
Teaching Profession Teachers, This Newsletter Is for You
EdWeek's Teacher Update is an email you'll actually want to read.
1 min read
A teacher reads a story to her prekindergarten students at UCLA Community School.
A teacher reads a story to her prekindergarten students at UCLA Community School.
Allison Shelley for All4Ed
Teaching Profession Movement Breaks Aren’t Just for Kids—Teachers Need Them Too
Teachers who integrate movement into their daily routines can enhance their well-being and effectiveness.
4 min read
Teacher Jazzmyne Townsend works with students during a small group reading lesson at Stanton Elementary School in Washington, D.C., on April 3, 2025.
Teacher Jazzmyne Townsend works with students during a small group reading lesson at Stanton Elementary School in the District of Columbia on April 3, 2025.
Richard Pierrin for Education Week
Teaching Profession Opinion Teach For America's Outgoing CEO Reflects on Her Tenure
How changes to the education and political landscape have affected the organization since its founding 35 years ago.
9 min read
The United States Capitol building as a bookcase filled with red, white, and blue policy books in a Washington DC landscape.
Luca D'Urbino for Education Week