On the same day Pinellas County teachers protested their order to return to school, a local St. Petersburg law firm is now offering them living wills at no charge.
Gallagher and Associates Law Firm Partner Charles Gallagher took to Twitter on Tuesday to announce that “G&A is happy to provide gratis living wills for teachers involuntarily forced to return to the classroom.”
“While we agree with medical experts that it is premature to reopen schools in this Tampa Bay hot zone, we want to help teachers that are forced to return,” the post read.
Gallagher told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that $250 is generally the cost of a living will. He came up with the idea after he heard a story on NPR about three teachers that went back to work in Arizona. All three teachers became infected with coronavirus and one teacher, Kimberley Chavez Lopez Byrd, 61, died.
RELATED: Photos from Pinellas teachers’ rally for a safer school reopening
On July 6, Florida’s Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran signed an executive order demanding that along with reopening, schools must "provide the full array of services that are required by law so that families who wish to educate their children in a brick and mortar school full time have the opportunity to do so."
Further comments from Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio have received massive backlash. At a Thursday Jacksonville press conference DeSantis said, “I’m confident if you can do Home Depot, if you can do Walmart, if you can do these things, we absolutely can do the schools,” he said. “I want our kids to be able minimize the education gap that I think has developed.”
On a recent Fox News appearance, Rubio echoed DeSantis’ comments by saying, “People are going to work everyday,” he said. “They’re going to work at the grocery store. They’re going to work at Walgreens, Wal-Mart, CVS. They’re picking up garbage. They’re police and fire, the janitors … people are going to work everyday. Similar expectations should be placed on those in the education system.”
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