Philadelphia Teachers Union promotes pseudo-science as it prepares deal to open schools As the February 22 deadline for students and teachers to return to unsafe classrooms approaches, the Philadelphia Teachers Union (PFT) is waiting on a “scientific mediator” to provide a justification to reopen schools as new variants of COVID spread throughout the population and the US approaches ghastly milestone of half a million deaths. Since last summer, Jerry Jordan, president of the PFT, has been in negotiations with the School District of Philadelphia to reopen schools. During the fall, both sides agreed to a Memorandum of Agreement in which the first paragraph states that both the school district and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers “recognize the goal of reopening school buildings for student instruction.” At the time, cases around the US had been rising rapidly as schools across the country started to reopen.