NYCDoE Denies Medical Accommodations for Serious Risk Factors

Unconfirmed – but likely true.
Update – they denied MOST, not all

It appears that the New York City Department of Education has denied every request most requests for accommodation by a school nurse – even those with serious risk factors (eg. immunocompromised) and multiple risk factors.

The DoE needs nurses in every building to open.

The drive to open is folly. Political folly. de Blasio’s political folly. The only big school system in the country to open. Whether or not it is safe. Whether or not it is possible. And as the DoE finds obstacles, which they have and they will, since it is not time to open, they dump the problems on principals, or they ignore them, or they come to some horrible compromise with the UFT (insert reference to “instructional lunch” here.)

One big obstacle de Blasio faced was not enough nurses. We were 400 nurses short earlier in the summer. They promised to hire them. Mulgrew said schools would not open without them. But I do not think any have been hired. This will be an issue Tuesday. It will be a far larger issue September 21. The DoE is sending teachers into unsafe schools on Tuesday, hoping there is not a big backlash. But the day the kids come back?

In any case, they are short nurses. And they had 80 – 100 current nurses asking for accommodations. And they considered what the right thing to do was. And they considered what they would need to do to support de Blasio’s political folly. And given the choice, to act morally or act politically, they chose politics.

That does not explain why they waited until the Friday before school to deny the eighty nurses. You might think cruelty, but I’m inclined to believe they are more practical than cruel, and that waiting so late meant that nurses had no time to appeal. Or to sue.

And then there’s the union. There’s been an unhealthy obsession with opening, even at too much cost. We have 1800+ principals without engineering degrees trying to design safety systems. We should have been screaming about that. Our union accepted “Instructional Lunch.” For the members. Come on.

And today is a big test. We should expect the UFT to fight for accommodations for its nurses. Safety of ALL members is important.