Broward school district says all teachers must return to the classroom. They’re suing.

The union representing Broward County public school teachers filed a lawsuit Thursday against the school district seeking to prevent it from forcing all staff now working remotely because of COVID-19 to return to the physical classroom Monday.

The union argues that many of these employees have serious health issues that make them particularly vulnerable to the novel coronavirus, and the district — by forcing them to return to the workplace — is making them “choose between their lives and their livelihoods.”

When schools reopened to face-to-face learning in October, the district granted COVID-19 health-related accommodations allowing teachers and non-instructional staff to work from home to approximately 1,700 workers. That’s more than any district in the state, it says.

Those workers were told they would have to return to their assigned brick-and-mortar schools on Jan. 11, according to the district.

“This date has not changed,” Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie said in a recorded statement this week.

However, according to the lawsuit filed in Broward County circuit court, the Broward Teachers Union and the district entered into a memorandum of understanding finalized Aug. 22 that gives preference for full-time remote work assignments to staff at highest risk of health complications due to COVID-19 exposure. The lawsuit says that agreement doesn’t sunset until June 30, 2021.

“Broward schools is putting these most vulnerable educators and their families in immediate danger of possible severe illness and death,” Anna Fusco, president of Broward Teachers Union, said in a statement Thursday. “These highest-risk educators should continue doing their full-time jobs online.”

The lawsuit seeks to maintain the stay-at-home policy for medically compromised employees until an independent arbitrator can decide on the matter.

“Absent an injunction issued by this court, by the time an arbitrator reaches a decision on the grievance, it will be far too late to remedy the harm caused by the District’s failure to comply with its contractual obligations — hundreds of high-risk educators will have already been further exposed to the deadly COVID-19 virus,” the complaint reads.

The Broward school district has 33,022 employees, including 14,329 teachers, district spokeswoman Nadine Drew said. Of the district’s approximately 261,000 students, only about 25 to 30% have returned to the classroom since in-person learning restarted Oct. 9.

Fusco said the district estimates 35% of students will likely come back next week, and she doesn’t anticipate the number to increase significantly before the end of the school year.

That is part of the reason Fusco said she thinks it’s foolish to mandate vulnerable teachers and other staff to report back to work Monday.

“We do not agree to force the most sick and vulnerable to come back in the school sites when the pandemic is still very strong, and we have over 70% of our students still working remote,” Fusco said in a text message Thursday.

She also said most teachers already returned to in-person work, but the risk is too high for the ones who have not.

“The district must immediately stop playing this deadly bureaucratic game with our medically compromised educators,” Fusco said.

According to the school district’s online dashboard keeping track of COVID cases in the schools, 664 students and 724 teachers and other staff have been confirmed to have tested positive for the novel coronavirus since in-person classes began in October.

District staff, however, say contact tracing shows most of those cases did not originate or spread in the schools.

“Over the past months, we have learned from our public health officials and medical experts that the precautions we are taking and the measures we are implementing in our schools are absolutely working,” Runcie said. “Our schools are not a major source of spread of the virus.”

Runcie also said that many students who continue learning remotely are suffering academically and emotionally from not being in physical attendance. He said getting more teachers back into the classroom would encourage some of those students to return as well.

“We must bring these students back into our classrooms for more traditional classroom instruction, as well as to provide intervention and support to get them back on track to success,” Runcie said.

Runcie said that some staff may be able to work from home after this week, but that decision will be up to individual school principals and based on “the operational plan and needs of the school and not health-related accommodations.”