DALLAS — Kristina Kimberlin has had a “last will and testament” since she spent a year in law school and her professors drilled it into her head that she had to have one, especially if she was single.

She hadn’t really thought about it again until this year, and COVID-19 turned the world upside down.

Kimberlin teaches seventh-grade English with the Ferris Independent School District. At 48 years old, she’s been a teacher for 25 years, but this is the first year that her back-to-school preparations included updating her will. 

What You Need To Know

  • As schools look to reopen in the fall, some teachers are preparing their wills

  • In Texas, schools have the option to continue online learning until November

  • Many schools in North Texas will keep online learning for the first few weeks of the year

When she was finished, she had an odd moment of clarity and dread, the same kind of moment she used to experience while living in Alaska, where she had to climb into tiny passenger planes that didn’t have any seat belts.

“I don’t want to do any other job,” she said. “So you take a deep breath and go into the classroom.”

Kimberlin is one of thousands of teachers all across the country who are coming to grips with the reality that going back to the classroom this fall could include the very real possibility of death – whether it’s theirs or someone else close to them. Other teachers have posted on Twitter about their will preparations, and it’s served as a sobering reminder of the stakes for the coming school year.

The Trump administration has made a recent push to reopen schools nationwide in the fall, citing children’s low risk of contracting COVID-19 and the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics that failing to reopen schools would be detrimental to children. The administration has even threatened to withhold federal funding from schools that do not reopen. 

In Texas, public schools were given the option to continue virtual learning until November. The decision is up to each school district. In Ferris ISD, the first four weeks will be virtual, but there will be some students in the classroom.

Kimberlin said she understands the push to reopen schools from the point of view of parents. She said that some parents need to work while others aren’t necessarily equipped to homeschool their children.

But she’s also more concerned about contracting COVID-19, given her health problems. She has kidney disease, she said, and asthma. Contracting the disease could have serious adverse effects on her health even if she were to survive. 

“It’s a question of how do you balance kids’ lives versus kids’ educations versus teachers' lives,” Kimberlin said.