Second Group of HS Principals Calls for Remote Opening
August 28, 2020
To: Richard Carranza, Chancellor, The New York City Department of Education
C: Andrew Cuomo, Governor, The State of New York
Bill DeBlasio, Mayor, The City of New York
Marisol Rosales, Executive Superintendent, Manhattan
Vivian Orlen, Superintendent, Manhattan High Schools
Mark Cannizzaro, President, Council of School Supervisors & Administrators
Dear Chancellor Carranza,
With the safety of our students as our top priority, we, the undersigned principals of the Manhattan High School District (MHS), inspired by our colleagues across the city and in solidarity with our union, CSA, are compelled to ask you to reconsider the planned opening of New York City Public schools for the launch of in-person learning until we can reasonably affirm that safely returning to school buildings is possible. Our responsibility to our students demands that we make this request.
MHS is led by Superintendent Vivian Orlen and overseen by Executive Superintendent Marisol Rosales, who have been aware of our concerns and have engaged us in continuous conversation. As high school principals, our concerns are focused on the following:
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- Health and safety concerns: It is our understanding that the evaluation of HVAC systems across Manhattan has been inconsistent, raising the concerns of school leaders regarding the safe occupancy of their buildings. Of the surveys that have been conducted to date, no information or data has been shared with school leaders. As a result, we are unable to respond to questions raised by our families and staffs about the safety of our buildings. Unlike elementary schools, high school students see five or more different educators in one day which would essentially shut down an entire school when a single student tests positive for the COVID-19 virus.
- Travel Considerations: Unique to high schools, our students travel across all five boroughs to attend our schools, which increases their risk of exposure to and transmission of the virus. With varying COVID-19 positivity rates across the boroughs, we are concerned with risk of spread through our school communities and the larger NYC community. Most importantly, we are concerned with our most at-risk students who are traveling to and from areas that have disproportionately been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Instructional: Many of the changes and recommendations are not educationally sound or age-appropriate responses for older students. To achieve college readiness, older students need a variety of specialized classes and flexible programming to meet their diverse needs, which is challenging given the current constraints. The recently shared instructional guidance for remote and blended teaching has resulted in staffing concerns that negatively impact high school programming.
We are not equipped to welcome students for in person instruction on September 10th. As we are sure that you agree with us that in person learning is the best means for supporting student learning and growth. We can not communicate to families or staff that our buildings are safe for teaching and learning to begin in person. We are convinced that a full remote model for all high school students is in the best interests of all unless and until necessary evaluations of buildings have been completed and the information gathered from these evaluations is made transparent and shared with all stake communities in our communities. We will also need this time to meet our staffing needs.
Principals and educators have worked tirelessly since March to ensure that our communities are set-up for success through these extraordinary times. We strongly desire to return to our buildings to work in person; but this should only be considered when we can assure the entire school community that the buildings are safe and our students have access to an appropriate learning environment. However, we believe that in the absence of facts that would justify a return to in person learning under the current timetable is unwarranted inequitable and dangerous.
Respectfully,
Alicia Perez-Katz, 02m411 – Baruch College Campus High School
Amber Najmi, 02m400 – High SChool for Environmental Studies
Brooke Jackson, 02m412- NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies
Crystal Bonds, 05M692 – High School for Math, Science and Engineering
Daryl Blank, 02m600 – The High School of Fashion Industries
Derek Premo, 02m308 – LoMA
Dimitri Saliani, 02m416 – Eleanor Roosevelt HS
Doreen Y. Conwell, 03m492 – High School for Law, Advocacy, and Community Justice
Eric Glatz, 02m298 – Pace High School
Fausto de la Rosa, 02m500 – Unity Center for Urban Technologies
Gracie Villalona, 05m304 – Mott Hall High School
Isora Bailey, 02m376 – NYC iSchool
Karen Polsonetti, 02m392 – Manhattan Business Academy
Keith Ryan, 02m408 – Professional Performing Arts School
Kevin McCarthy, 04m495 – Park East High School
Kimberly Swanson, 02m655 – Life Sciences Secondary School
Li Yan, 02m545 – High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies
Manuel Urena, 02m529 – Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School
Maximillian Re-Sugiura, 02m630 – Art and Design High School
Michael Fram, 02m531 – Repertory Company High School for Theatre Arts
Michael Lerner, 01m696 – Bard High School Early College
Michael Stanzione, 02m489 – HS of Economics and Finance (O2M489)
Michael Wilson, 02M437 – Hudson High School of Learning Technologies
Patricia Minaya, 02m316 – Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women
Philip Santos, 02m425 – Leadership and Public Service High School
Robert A. Gentile, 02m420 – The High School for Health Professions & Human Services
Seung Yu, 02M475 – Stuyvesant High School
Siv Boletsis, 02m427 – Manhattan Academy for Arts and Language
Stephen M. Noonan, 03m299 – The Maxine Greene High School for Imaginative Inquiry
Watfa Shama, 02m047 – “47” The American Sign Language and English Secondary School
Chancellor Creates Staffing Crisis
Can Carranza and de Blasio do anything else wrong? Question sounds rhetorical – but it has an answer. Yes, yes they can. On Wednesday night they sent out Blended Learning and Fully Remote Teaching and Learning and instantly blew to smithereens opening plans in hundreds of schools.
Here’s what the document lays out:
There will be three kinds of teachers:
- Teachers teaching fully remote students, called the Fully Remote Teacher (this does not mean the teachers are remote, just the students)
- Teachers teaching the in-person part for students in a blended learning model, called the Blended Learning On-site Teacher
- Teachers teaching the remote part for students in a blended learning model, called the Blended Learning Remote Teacher
- Virtual Content Specialists would be teachers without a teaching load – I don’t think there will be any.
And that’s where the problem begins. A student in the blended learning model will have an in-person teacher, who is teaching the same hours, with the same student load, as a fall 2019 teacher would have. And that student will also have a remote teacher. Where is that remote teacher coming from? Let’s think about high school
High School
Think about Cathy. Cathy taught five sections of US History last fall. This fall she is the Blended On-Site Teacher. And she is once again assigned five US History sections. On Monday she will see one-third of her students in person, in all five sections. On Tuesday she will see the next third of her students in person, in all five sections. On Wednesday she will see the last third of her students in person, in all five sections. And on Thursday she is back to the first group. Cathy has a full teaching load (could be 170 students), and a full schedule (25 periods per week).
In fact, everyone in the school could be teaching the same the number of students as back in 2019, and the same number of periods. There is NO ONE to teach blended remote.
Reality? Some people with comp-time jobs could be returned to the classroom. The school could reduce the total number of sections, since some kids are going remote. Of course that will require the creation of some fully remote teachers as well. It is not though nearly enough to make up the deficit.
Elementary School
And in Elementary School? Imagine a grade with 150 students in 5 classes. 60 have opted remote. That’s two fully remote teachers. The math works. But for the other 90 kids, their three teachers see a third on Monday, the next third Tuesday, and the last third on Wednesday, then back to the first group. Who is doing the Blended Remote Teaching? Instant staff shortage. Crisis.
Blended Remote Workload
One thing the DoE did, in the Blended Model FAQ they released at the same time, is make it okay for the Blended Remote Teacher to teach DOUBLE the class-size limit. Desperation sucks. The move is mean, both to the faculty and to the kids. And it is stupid. It doesn’t solve the initial problem – there are not enough teachers to double the teaching staff, even if they can squeeze more kids into a remote blended class.
How would it work if there were enough staff?
Cathy teaches US History. Jay teaches US History. On any given day Cathy teaches 1/3 of her students. Let’s pretend her classes are small, 33 kids each. So 11 are with Cathy, 22 are with Cathy’s Blended Remote Teacher. Jay also has 33, 11 with him, 22 with his Blended Remote Teacher. Sounds like four teachers? Nope. The Department of Education has found a way to save personnel. The Blended Remote Teacher for Cathy is Helen and the Blended Remote Teacher for Jay is Helen. Helen is the Blended Remote Teacher for 10 classes (combined into 5). Helen seems to have 44 students at a time, which the DoE says is ok, and somehow the UFT agreed to.
This does not save very many teachers. It also does not make much sense. It is a bad idea for all 69 people involved, especially the 66 kids.
Humorists and Carranza come up with the worst ideas for school
Coordination
There seems to be a complicated protocol for sharing content and information between Blended Learning On-site Teacher and Blended remote Teachers. As in the ICT model, which the DoE abuses, collaborative planning is hard and takes real work. The DoE is allowing half an hour each morning.
What Were Schools Planning?
That’s an interesting question. The models laid out in the Blended document, they were explained, more or less, by Michael Mulgrew to UFT members, as early as the June UFT Town Hall and Delegate Assembly. But the DoE never put anything in writing, and schools were ignoring Mulgrew’s instructions. Many schools were offering live teaching in person, and only asynchronous remotely, without an extra teacher. Your class was going to be your class.
Were There Problems with Schools Plans Before?
Yes. By having teachers plan simultaneously for remote and in-person instruction, the amount of preparation was going through the roof. We already learned from the spring that remote preparation, remote grading, etc, takes much more time than normal teaching. To look at Cathy’s example, from above, she would be preparing five in-person lessons, and five similar lessons, but modified to be delivered remotely. And Cathy was teaching five sections of one class. Most high school teachers teach sections of more than one class. Or maybe Cathy’s school was clever, and told her not to worry about the remote kids, just to assign them textbook reading. Not good.
Did the Unions Agree to This?
Apparently the UFT agreed with the DoE on this. Here is what Carranza wrote to principals:
Dear Principal,
Thank you again for your heroic work during this extraordinary time as we prepare to reopen our school buildings.
I am excited to report that the DOE has reached an agreement with the UFT over work rules for teachers regarding blended and fully remote learning. As we all recognize, a new paradigm for instructional programming is needed to provide students with appropriate learning opportunities under the social distancing parameters and the constraints we face. This new agreement with the UFT addresses key questions about how we can make that paradigm work in practice.
You will find instructional guidance and a preliminary FAQ…
The UFT shared the documents with me, suggesting I share them with my members. I hear the UFT is calling meetings to explain this to Chapter Leaders. Somehow I have not been invited to any such meeting.
The CSA responded to the Mayor and Chancellor differently:
We applaud your administration for its focus on science throughout this pandemic. We ask that you also focus on the math.
Anything Else?
Well, yes, there’s a lot more. That’s for later.
Open Letter: Prioritize Instruction AND Safety
This petition gets it right. Read it here (or read it below, but the numbering is a little weird.) And then sign here.
August 25, 2020
TO: Mayor Bill De Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza,
We are two weeks away from the beginning of the school year and the DOE has yet to provide clear actionable support for instructional planning and programming for the hybrid and remote classroom models. Instruction, the engine of the classroom, has been overlooked, and overshadowed by the daunting task of creating protocols for physically returning to school buildings. What has been promised to families and paraded before the media is not possible to enact. I am a high school teacher with 20 years of classroom experience. I want to go back to my building and teach. But we are not prepared. Opening the school year now, using the Chancellor’s plan, means going back with inadequate staffing for both models, which will result in fragmented lessons, teacher burnout and diminished learning for all students. We urge the Mayor and the Chancellor to open schools remotely for the first semester. Allow teachers the time to focus on developing quality online instruction first. Then when it is safe, and we have developed a tenable plan, we can go back to our buildings for in-person instruction.
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- Schools have not received the guidance or programming support needed to create a coherent plan for day-to-day instruction.
- Principals had to choose one of the city’s proposed instructional models before they knew the number of students that would be in full remote. This means that they had to guess how many cohorts they would be programming and choose a model based on this estimate.
- Principals were given no instruction or guidance on how to program staff for these cohorts. For months there has been no guidance from the Chancellor or Central on who would teach the fully remote students. The Chancellor promised parents that, where possible, the remote cohort would be taught by teachers from their child’s school, but he provided no plan to principals for how to do this. There is still no explicit guidance on ICT instruction.
- Principals are told to be creative, yet are given arbitrary parameters that restrict creativity. The message from Central is that the Chancellor wants uniformity. Hence they were discouraged from creating their own model. They cannot get creative with the courses they offer because there has been no word as to whether the State exams will still proceed, and so students must be in those courses and the content cannot be changed. When principals and community members tried to think of other spaces they could use, the city didn’t respond. Only on August 24th, after months of organizing, did the Mayor announce principals could submit a plan for outdoor space, giving them four days to submit, in order to have it approved by September 4th. Remember that the first day of school is September 10th.
- The DOE did not provide explicit guidance for programming until August 24th, less than 48 hours before schools are expected to notify families with their cohort report days.
- Schools have not received the guidance or programming support needed to create a coherent plan for day-to-day instruction.
- Teachers are being set up to do too many jobs with extreme time constraints. As a result the quality of instruction will be compromised and teachers will burn out. Here are some of the expectations for teachers.
- The hybrid model requires that teachers spend their workday teaching in-person, but students spend the majority of their learning online. Students are in the building two days a week, but learning online the rest of the week. The teacher will be unable to provide live instruction or support, because they will be teaching the other rotating cohorts that are in the building. It is physically impossible to be in two different places at the same time. The lack of coherence in programming will result in lack of coherence in instruction.
- The hybrid cohorts rotate, so teachers must plan for and help students keep track of rotating schedules, rotating assignments, and rotating deadlines. The rotating cohort means that the instruction and support teachers provide must rotate also. So a teacher must plan to teach Cohort A an introductory lesson, but the following day when they are teaching that same lesson to Cohort B, they must also be providing instruction and support to Cohort A to move on. Then when they are teaching Cohort C in-person, they must also continue monitoring the progress, and providing feedback and support to Cohort A, and, at a different checkpoint, to Cohort B. For teachers and students, a lot of their work time will be spent simply deciphering a complex schedule. This time will come at the cost of instruction.
- In addition to teaching the hybrid cohorts that are online and live, teachers are ALSO teaching the fully remote cohort. This cohort will need a separate curriculum that allows for different pacing of instruction to devote more time for teachers to build trust and get to know students individually in the remote setting. This cohort may account for 40% of a teacher’s roster. Last semester taught us how much work it takes to keep students engaged, supported, and accountable to a community in the remote model. Yet, this is being tacked on to the teacher’s already very full workload.
- Teachers have professional responsibilities outside of developing and delivering instruction. Some of these include department meetings, grade team meetings, staff meetings, professional development, and parent outreach. Yet there is no time provided in the schedule. Instead, teachers are supposed to find time. This will come at the cost of instruction.
- The sample teacher schedule that the DOE has released does not reflect the professional requirements of educators. Parceling out times such as 30 mins in the morning for collaboration, and 20 minutes in the afternoon for parent outreach is a willful misunderstanding of the work that goes into educating students.
- The current plan does not meet the academic or emotional needs of students.
- Teachers will have less time to develop high-quality instruction, which will exacerbate existing inequities. Parents of affluent means are already pulling together to supplement their children’s learning by hiring tutors and enrolling their children in external programs. Students from lower-income families, primarily our BIPOC students, cannot afford to do so, widening achievement gaps.
- Teachers will have less time to provide one on one feedback, less time to read IEPs, less time to differentiate instruction, less time to get to know students individually, causing all students to suffer, especially our students with special needs and MLLs.
- Programs do not support trauma informed practice. Overly complex and inconsistent schedules will be confusing for families and students, and especially challenging for our students with special needs and ELLs. In the fully remote model last semester, teachers were able to build structure and consistency for most students, and help them manage and organize their time to work independently. By fragmenting our time with the proposed models, these supports will be reduced dramatically and could be triggering for students experiencing trauma from the pandemic.
- With the in-person restrictions, we can provide just as much support remotely. It is misguided to imagine that in-person socially distanced instruction will be more culturally responsive, engaging, or robust. With in-person instruction there won’t be group work, intimate reading groups, or face to face conferences. In the hybrid model, students in the building will still be required to work online, because teachers cannot approach them physically to give them feedback on their work. Teacher feedback will still most likely happen through a screen.
We all want students to safely return to the building and for classes to meet the needs of all learners. But we cannot wish it into reality. We are not prepared, because neither the Mayor nor the Chancellor has given us the support or resources to prepare. We are asking you to respect our professional expertise and listen to us.
The current plan for opening is one of confusion and chaos. Instead of stretching teachers impossibly thin and diluting instruction for all, we should invest in remote learning, for the safety of the community, and to enable teachers to meet the academic needs of all our students. The movement forward must be centered around safety AND instruction. Our students must come first. Please help us put them first!
Signed,
Sarah Finucane, English Teacher, Department Chair – The Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice
How should we talk to people who are afraid?
UFT members have begun to talk about job actions, especially after Michael Mulgrew mentioned them on tv.
There are people who are excited – I don’t get that. Job actions are last resorts. They mean that all other means have broken down, and that something is very wrong. And yes, today something is very wrong.
There are people who are expressing reluctant support for what is necessary. Put me in that camp. In fact, subdivide that camp into those who will do whatever Mulgrew recommends (not me), and those who are pro-union, but have a healthy distrust of the leadership. Here’s something I put on social media:
Many of you know I take issue with the UFT leadership, strategies, priorities, how the union is run. I talk about those things to push the union to be better. But if we take action, we all take action. This is not anonymous. The pledge has to be open. If we go out, we all go out together.
But then there are people who are scared. People who are expressing doubts. Even people openly contemplating not following the union’s lead if there is a job action.
I have seen people called names for this, called scabs. Accused of putting the rest of us at risk. And that is completely wrong. It is two weeks away. People are expressing doubt, not crossing picket lines.
Two questions: Who is expressing doubt? What should our response be?
Who
- There are untenured teachers afraid of being fired.
- There are teachers who live paycheck to paycheck, terrified of not being able to pay bills.
- There are teachers who have no idea what a union is, a byproduct of the decline of unions in the US, and the non-existence of the UFT in some schools. This has been a crisis since the day I started blogging, a crisis of weak chapters.
- There are teachers who hate unions, but not so many teachers are like that.
- There are teachers who believe that there is no risk to opening schools. I guess they survived the choloroquine and ingesting bleach, because they must still exist.
Especially the first three groups, which are by far the largest, we need to speak with. We need to explain. We need to change their minds.
How
- Open discussion. It is okay to be afraid. Every sane person feels at least some nervousness about what comes next.
- Acknowledge that the fear is legitimate. Losing a paycheck can be hard.
- Not knowing what comes next is scary.
- Emphasize the danger that reopening poses to all of us, all of our students, and to the entire City.
- Talk about solidarity. Talk about standing for each other.
- Let the nervous person speak.
- Review history. How have unions protected vulnerable members in past strikes. How has this union protected vulnerable members.
- Admit uncertainty where it exists. Being a know-it-all is bad. Being a know-it-all when the people around you can tell that you do not know it all can be damaging to the point of view you are trying to represent.
- Answer questions.
- Don’t answer questions when you don’t know the answer.
- Be patient.
And
Remember, the person can be wrong today. Our goal is to change their mind, not belittle them. And we change minds by engaging in thoughtful conversation, not by bullying.
Open discussion MUST continue in all chapters and at all levels of the UFT, even after this crisis passes.
A culture that believes that information and instructions flow in one direction, from the top down, is destructive to our union. We would be in a much stronger position today if that culture did not infest our organization.
NYC is not ready to open schools – It’s not just about testing
Mayor de Blasio insists schools will open for students September 10.
The UFT says not so fast.
The CSA (principals union) has called for a remote opening.
The UFT wants to open, but only if a safety checklist gets met.
Mulgrew:
We have a responsibility to try to reopen school buildings because the infection rate in New York City is so low.
OK, but…
I mean I would rather teach in a classroom than in a Zoom. It’s not even a close call. Face to face teaching is actual teaching. Zoom is a pale imitation.
But a “responsibility to reopen”? I don’t know. I think we met the “responsibility to try” and it didn’t work.
We had a “responsibility to try”, we did try, and it did not work.
There are limits. When the UFT proposed “blended learning” it sounded tricky. After working with schedules for weeks, it was pretty clearly a mess. I am talking about programmers, schedulers. Not politicians. Not union officials.
We tried. Blended will not work.
Today? Blended learning creates more questions than answers. Who is teaching the students when they are at home? How do we maintain continuity if different parts (cohorts) in the same class get different in-person lessons? How do we maintain similar content for some classes that are occasionally in person (blended) and some that are fully remote? How do we prepare lessons that are remote for some students and in person for others?
These questions are exhausting. All-remote in the Spring was exhausting for teachers. Some nearly collapsed. But this intricate dance will be far more taxing. I’m seeing bad signs that the actual amount of preparation necessary (hours, not number of classes) will go through the roof, as many teachers will have to nearly double their preparation.
How much content are we teaching? We need an answer for either blended, or for remote. Although blended is a bigger concern, because we will probably get less done.
What happened to State 3 – 8 testing for 2020-21? To the regents? To the AP exams? How are we planning without knowing those answers?
Lunch was a problem. Someone proposed “Instructional Lunch”. Having kids remove masks, in the same classroom that everyone will be in the rest of the day, and eat. And, we hope, they will not talk. How is that safe?
We tried. Lunch will not work.
“Each school community knows its own school best.”
Planning was devolved to 1800+ individual schools, individual principals. Every aspect of planning was devolved. DoE Central retained the right to say no, but did not retain any planning obligations. They did retain obligations to deal with ventilation and supply PPE – two promises that as of today are unkept.
Detailed entry plans are lacking. Schedules do not specify who is dealing with blended kids on remote days. Teachers do not have space to do their remote teaching while in school. There are not even plans to pick up lunch trash. There are not plans to deal with kids who come on the wrong day. There are not plans to ensure hands are frequently cleaned. There are not plans for social distancing in stairwells, hallways, bathrooms… There are not plans for dismissal.
We tried. Leaving 1800 principals to make 1800 plans will not work.
So Mulgrew has his Harvard Checklist. It’s all good stuff. I don’t think the mayor can meet it, even if he tried, in just two weeks.
And if the City does not do the stuff on Mulgrew’s Harvard Checklist to make the school’s safe, I will support the measures the UFT proposes, and urge others to do so. If we take action, we take action together. Including, if we go out, we go out together.
But we have been trying on safety. It does not look like the Mayor will make the schools safe.
We have been trying. As of today the Mayor’s safety plan is not adequate.
But even if the Mayor’s safety plan were adequate:
- Blended will not work.
- Lunch will not work.
- Leaving 1800 principals to make 1800 plans will not work.
“Instructional Lunch” Should be a Deal-Breaker
“Instructional Lunch” is a rally bad idea. It is a huge flaw in the NYC Department of Education’s blended learning plans for September. Students in most schools will not go to a cafeteria (where the whole school would mix, theoretically letting a spread event involved the entire student body). Instead, students will eat lunch in their classrooms while a teacher teaches.
The blended learning plans call for masks – except for lunch. A dozen or so children in a room with an adult will remove masks, and eat lunch. The DoE documents don’t mention that they will eat in silence, but I assume that’s because they want to make the principals the bad guys.
Here’s Mulgrew’s description (from an August 8 email to members):
Instructional lunch for students: Using the Breakfast in the Classroom model from elementary schools, many students will have instructional lunches to maximize their class time and minimize their contact with children outside their own class groups. Since not all types of instruction can happen during student lunch, school communities should discuss the types of instruction that can effectively happen during this time. You will still have a duty-free lunch, so in many cases a different teacher will teach your students during the instructional lunch period.
Imagine being the cluster teacher assigned to cover “Instructional Lunch” all day.
Later clarification has the teacher in the back of the room, looking at the students’ backs as they eat.
What is the motivation for “Instructional Lunch”?
The Mayor and Chancellor desperately want to open schools. Hell, most teachers would rather teach in person. Damn straight I would.
So they say, schools will open, but kids have to eat. And they can’t eat in the cafeteria, so they have to eat in the classroom.
Which is where smart people should be saying “slow down there Bill. If kids have to eat in the classroom, then we need to rethink this.” But nope, the smart people weren’t there. If kids have to eat, it has to be in the classroom.
And then they threw us a bone – “But we can make lunch a class, and shorten the school day – teachers can get out half an hour early.” Someone thought teachers would gladly risk our safety, the safety of our students, of our colleagues, if only we were allowed to leave school thirty minutes early. Why would they think that? It’s insulting that anyone thought we were that dumb.
How did the plan for “instructional lunch” develop?
In the DoE’s June 9 Powerpoint “SCHOOL BUILDING RE-OPENING PRELIMINARY PLANNING OVERVIEW“, they envisioned closing common areas.
In the July 2 “SCHOOL BUILDING RE-OPENING BRIEFING” (which I wrote about here) Carranza first floats “Consider holding lunch in classrooms to minimize interaction between groups of students. We will be soliciting feedback on how to best structure lunch planning..”
On July 31 the DoE published Instructional Principles & Programming Guidance which were really, really bad, and included the “Instructional Lunch” for the first time. The UFT may have been part of the discussion – if so this was a pretty bad mistake – we have to talk about that, but at another time.
How does “Instructional Lunch” compromise safety?
As people eat, mask off, they generate droplets and aerosols. Droplets may spread to neighbors. Aerosols may remain in the air for a prolonged period, and reach people seated further away. Given enough time, and airflow, there’s no reason to believe that aerosols in on corner of a classroom can’t reach any other corner.
And time works against us. After lunch we remain in the room, and continue instruction. Pathogens in the air linger. The longer the exposure, the greater chance of infection. Unlike a restaurant, where patrons are one-hour-and-out, students and teachers stay in the room the entire day. And even if the class’ teacher is not present during lunch – another teacher is, and at immediate risk. And the class’ teacher returns, and gets to share the air for the rest of the day.
I’m assuming, for the moment, that no one except the instructor (who presumably is masked) speaks during lunch. Speaking adds velocity to droplets and aerosols, helping them travel further, faster, and increasing the level of risk. And I do not believe that it is reasonable to assume that the majority of school children will be able to remain silent during lunch – traditionally the most social time of the entire school day.
Is “Instructional Lunch” even practical?
How would teaching look? What would we teach? What subjects lend themselves to being taught to children who are chewing in silence, looking away from the speaker? I’m not waiting for an answer.
Are there alternatives to “Instructional Lunch”?
Yes. We could stay all-remote. Or, if we are teaching in person, in the school building, we could shorten the day so that grab and go lunches were distributed to students as they leave the school building. And there might be more ideas.
We need to say “no” to “Instructional Lunch”
Just to be clear, the UFT safety demands are perfectly reasonable. Every one of them must be met. Testing and contact tracing and a nurse in every school are vital. But they are not enough.
“No Instructional Lunch, No Classroom Lunch” should be added to Mulgrew’s list. We should not go in while “Instructional Lunch” is still on the table.
Why We Need to Call for “All-Remote” Now
Mulgrew sounded militant Wednesday. Talked about a strike. Made demands about safety. But the message was wrong. By continuing to fight to open schools safely (which might seem reasonable) the UFT leadership is diverting us. We should be leaning, as hard as we can, on de Blasio to open remotely. Everyone, including de Blasio, notices that the UFT has not called for “All-Remote.”
1a. Parents need to know what their schedules will be, where their children will be, and when. A million parents being forced to make personal decisions (remote vs hybrid) is unfair. The City should be creating solutions for New York City’s parents.
1b. Parents need this now, not three weeks from now. The City needs time to create arrangements and options, and time to meet the needs of families.
2a. Teachers need to create plans for their classes. While some schools have managed to create a hybrid plan that makes sense, they are in a tiny minority. Most teachers in the city either do not have a set-up for their class schedule, or have one that does not make sense.
2b. Teachers need to know this now, to allow us three weeks to at least mentally prepare for fully remote planning.
3. In particular, “blended learning” in high schools is a mess; it is an idea conceived (poorly) for elementary schools. It was never going to work in high schools. We don’t need three more weeks to figure that out. We knew it in June. If I teach part of my class Monday, another part Tuesday, another on Wednesday, and the last group on Thursday, what are the kids who are not in class doing while I am teaching? What, am I saying “read section 3.4 and do all the odd numbered questions, we will talk about them in a week? It’s not teaching.
4a. The logistics planning is missing (Morning entry, etc). We are being asked to trust that principals are taking care of it.
4b. Logistics are not included in schools’ plans. If you click on the DoE’s school finder and find a school, you will see their reopening plan. But know what’s missing from those plans? Specifics. And logistics.
5a. Safety. The UFT checklist is good. The call for testing, tracing, seem reasonable. But the UFT is fixated on trying to make schools safe.
5b. By spending the next three weeks fighting to make schools safe, they will either i) cut corners or ii) delay the move to remote, disadvantaging families and teachers.
5bi) The UFT demands do not include doing away with “instructional lunch” – given what we suspect about aerosols, this is a real issue. It is not clear if UFT Safety teams going into buildings are primarily identifying unsafe conditions, or primarily finding ways to say that ventilation can be made ok. This is an issue.
5bii) While the UFT is stuck on trying to make schools safe, teachers wait. Unworkable hybrid plans get rolled out. Families scramble for every other or every third day childcare.
One district after another delays opening, or moves to all-remote. Yesterday Yonkers added itself to that list. NYC has become the outlier. This needs to change, as quickly as possible.
“We want to open, blended, but safe”
and
“We wnt to open remotely”
– are not the same message. We need to dump the first and switch to the right one, today.
No Need to Delay Reopening; Go “All-Remote” instead
Carranza yesterday threatened to delay reopening… but that would put the 180 days at risk.
So why not do what every sensible district is doing? Make the fall term remote.
The 180 days would be safe.
More and more the call is for full remote. At this point the biggest player left to get on board is the UFT, and then we can put serious pressure on the Mayor and Chancellor, like we did in March.
de Blasio is stubborn, but he bends to pressure.
Come on, Mulgrew, get on board.
UFT: Need for a New Course
Since June the UFT leadership’s position has been
- We really want schools open in the Fall
- We think blended learning is the best option for the Fall
- We will not open schools unless we are certain that they are safe.
Let’s grant for the moment, that this may have been reasonable in June. (This is more than generous; there was ample evidence that blended learning would not work, as early as June, certainly not how the DoE was envisioning it.)
In the second half of August, this is no longer reasonable. The new message must be:
- We really wanted schools to open in the Fall
- We looked closely at blended learning
- But the daily logistics will not work
- But the weekly schedules will not work
- But the safety, while there has been progress, is not close to being where it needs to be. Equipment and supplies are missing. Many procedures are not yet in place – and in some cases we don’t have a procedure, or know that we can have one. As issues arise the DoE is making up responses on the fly.
- Today is August 19. It is too late to address these items for a September, and some of them (logistics, schedules) cannot be adequately addressed
- Even the items that could be addressed, our partners at the Department of Education have not been up to the task
Schools, children, parents, teachers – all of us should be planning for a remote term. We can know now what the outline of the fall will look like, and begin filling in details. We can do work to make the fall more successful than the spring was.
The alternative – hanging on for three weeks, then pivoting suddenly to remote – will lead to chaos. It will lead to a repeat of March. It is the last-minute decision making that we can not afford to let happen.
Will the mayor listen to the UFT? In March it took a lot of voices to force de Blasio to change his mind. It took every voice. He must be aware that the UFT has not called for remote for the fall.
The UFT speaking out for remote will not necessarily change de Blasio’s mind. But the absence of the UFT’s voice GUARANTEES that the mayor will stubbornly delay. The UFT needs a new course, today.
Exposure Notification
Rating the August 13 UFT Town Hall
Technical – calls seemed to have gone out on time. Some people needed to dial in. The audio quality was fine on my end, though several callers complained about theirs. They had trouble connecting some questioners, and lost at least one partway through the question. I did try pushing the question button, and got silence, not even a “the queue is full” message. Overall the technical side was ok. It was certainly far better than the May DA. Grade: B
Pace – it seemed to me that the amount of light banter (which for people who want to ask questions is frustrating) was reduced from July. Honestly folks, it only makes one or two questions difference, but I get that you want to move ahead. Mulgrew had a longer opening report, but only slightly. My count had the number of questions drop from about 30 to about 25, which makes sense with the slightly longer report. The number of long, rambling answers was about the same, but that may have been intentional. Grade: B+
Clarity – some answers were quite clear, but many were not. There were veiled threats of doom and gloom when there should have been explicit discussion of what the city and state have already proposed. There was a direct question about teaching assignments, asking if we have an agreement in writing. Direct questions from members should have direct answers (even if the answer is “it’s complicated”). There was none. I did not get much clarification on what is actually happening now. The lines between what the UFT thinks should happen, what they’ve raised with the DoE, what they’ve agreed with the DoE – these were all left very fuzzy. There was also some weirdness around lunch – is it instructional, or not? is Mulgrew’s message “things must be safe” or “given that we are going in, this is the best we can do as far as safety”. Not clear, but I think there was a reason. The only thing that was VERY CLEAR: the UFT’s leadership wants schools to open in September if they can be opened safely, but that is not where things are now. Grade: a very generous C
Big Message – This was clear:
the UFT’s leadership wants schools to open in September if they can be opened safely, but that is not where things are now. There was lots of info about how the UFT officers and staff are rushing to address the outstanding safety issues, and making progress, but we are not there.
This was completely the wrong message. Less than one month out, with a host of really serious safety issues unresolved, with scheduling issues unresolved (and probably unsolvable), and with bumbling counterparts in the DoE, the message should have been “It is now clear that we must go fully remote in September. We have changed our approach to get us there, to allow parents to plan for it, and to allow you in the schools to start preparing”. Only the emphasis on safety saves this grade from being lower. Grade: D
Overall: Having the wrong message and not speaking clearly to members are big, big problems. I’m glad the phone lines work. If this were the July Town Hall, it would have gotten a B or B-, but it is August. There are less than four weeks left. This was not ok. Overall Grade: D+/C-
For those of you curious, here are three sets of minutes (I know there are many more floating out there).
UFT Town Hall Minutes
I’ll say something substantive, about a meeting that really was not very. But that’s tomorrow. For now, a friend took notes – and offered them for sharing:
UFT Town Hall Meeting Minutes August 13, 2020
Michael Mulgrew
MULGREW:
- Welcome and thanks. We’re getting into crunch time! GOAL: Little bit longer report, but still majority questions.
- All eyes on schools at all times. Horrors of colleagues in school districts that have no business opening.
- Our mayor seems to be ready to open schools— WE are not ready.
- Spoke to him for the first time since March. Mugrew said we don’t feel safe. We don’t think your plan is workable. We don’t have what you’ve ALREADY agreed to. We will follow CDC guidelines. Mayor put a timeline on principals to pick a schedule.
- Have your CL send your district rep any programs/ schedules that imply a mix of hybrid/ remote scheduling.
- These schedules the DOE put out were more suggestions– not really “agreed upon”.
- Hard to open school on time with this lack of clarity.
- No one is teaching 6 period/ no one is teaching 5 in a row. This all still needs to be worked out.
- We dealt with all the steps since March: to close schools, to get remote learning up and running, we got grade fairness, we dealt with evaluations. Now we are getting medical accommodations!
- In APRIL, we said: if you want to open safely in September, we have to start planning together NOW. He ignored it in May and June. Only in July did he begin to engage.
- CSA President: This isn’t going to work. We must make sure the mayor doesn’t try to blame us or pit parents against teachers. CSA and UFT agree: we cannot open NYC schools safely on September 10.
- Mayoral “dog and pony show” with the press, highlighting one school with appropriate PPE.
- Still decisions to be made but WE WILL NOT BE PUT IN HARM’S WAY AGAIN.
- NYC in a much different place. Our daily infection rates are less than 1%. Many graphs we see with high numbers are about percentage positive rates– we ARE close to the 1% daily infection rates.
- Parents are our allies/ families have to deal with the dilemma– do I send my child to school, can I afford my house? Do I know my child is safe?
- We as teachers are in a difficult dilemma. What if the mayor insists we go in when it isn’t safe?
- SOLUTION: Push the city to do what no other school district has done, hold their feet to the fire. Mr. Mayor, you want your schools open? You need to do YOUR job!
- Final decision will not be made until right before the beginning of the school year.
- 100 trained people to do “Covid” visits. Will check ventilation/ PPE/ Signage/ Custodians/ equipment and personnel (not in place in most schools) Will return to the schools in the couple of weeks before schools open and take appropriate measures to make sure the city cannot open them up.
- Must be smarter then them and do our work better than them.
- Can we open? No, I do not believe that. It’s all about the evidence. We have to show WHY it isn’t so. And the mayor must be able to show why it IS SAFE enough to open.
- Tough problems: HEROES ACT/ stimulus package has completely imploded. Without this $$, we don’t believe we can afford to open safely. City is preparing departments for layoffs.
- Other avenues to pursue. We don’t want any of our members to face being laid off. Taking care of our profession and our livelihood. Being put in jeopardy.
- It is NOT hopeless though. We have a plan. Working together, working with Albany, working on budgets, will execute quickly since we have a little time (October re: budget stuff) Multiple crises at a time!
- Must communicate and stick together! What we see in the media is insane!
- Our national union is in court today over our 2000 colleagues in quarantine in Florida; similar in GA. Huge positivity rates different than us.
- Could we be breaking the Taylor Law? Maybe. I’ll make sure everyone knows the ramifications. Also have legal avenues to pursue. Taylor Law makes it illegal to strike (unless we can prove “clear and present danger” to open every school. If we do this, employees that participate can receive disciplinary actions or financial penalties. Mulgrew has penalties, he can go to jail, but we have to decide if this is what we need to do.
- OUR medical professionals are telling us we CAN do this with the rates we have, but we have to be SO CAREFUL. We still don’t have agreement on a testing protocol (then must be customized for every building, which is why Sept. 10 is feasible. If you’re testing, screening, distancing, PPE, you may/ would be able to pull this off.
- Mayor says we have a lot of time? We have a month and a LOT to do.
- Mayor says today there WILL be a nurse in every building.
- Serving lunch in classrooms is different from restaurants how? All people, students and teachers facing the same direction– not satisfied with this answer.
- Another Town Hall in a couple of weeks.
- 2 great challenges: SAFETY AND LIVELIHOOD. Not opening schools without safety. Without additional funding, layoffs could come.
- We will make decisions at the appropriate time. We are going to take care of each other.
- Parents will listen to US– the teachers that they trust, not the mayor, not the chancellor. We can’t break that trust with them.
- I guarantee you that all decisions are being made from independent doctors advising us. Only school district who got through the last recession without a layoff.
- Understands the anger/ fear/ anxiety. Will meet again in a couple of weeks.
Q&A:
- Q: Medical accommodation: haven’t received word on if it is approved. Ones who have gotten approval indicate it said through Dec. 31, 2020. What happens after?
- A: It’s a legal thing: pushed them to change the process for medical accommodations to speed it up. Lawyers said, “people don’t have medical accommodations forever, so they should reapply”. We’re pushing back as a waste of time, regardless of whether we are remote or in the buildings. We will figure this out.
- Q: REMOTE LEARNING: don’t know what this looks like. Will remote teachers with medical accommodations have a larger remote load? Being on a camera? How will grading work?
- A: 30% of students have opted out. Only about 15% teachers have applied for medical accommodations. Yes,remote teachers will need to stream live for their students but will not attempt to replicate a normal school day. We have a teacher shortage PLUS layoffs threatened. We don’t have enough teachers to staff both remote and hybrid. Will adhere to traditional class size requirements with remote.
- Q: Ventilation/ filtration: my bldg’s report was 3 (fair), too old for HVAC system. Which forms say where we are at? How will info be made public? How will we handle it if it isn’t safe?
- MANY schools with old and poor ventilation systems. What was acceptable pre-Covid is clearly not acceptable now. Many schools will not be able to open. Because these are safety reports, they must be transparent– why we can go into schools to check things out. Don’t need and HVAC system to have proper ventilation: windows better. Don’t think because you have an AC blowing cold air in the room that your room is properly ventilatedL you need outside air. Could lead to big fights.
- Q: Mayor said by October 1, 200,000 city workers could lose their jobs. Does this include us?
- A: Yes, we’re in that pot. Our economy has been decimated by the virus. Closed establishment means they are not paying taxes. We’re facing a huge deficit. Had a surplus before but things are not looking good now without federal stimulus.
- Q: How are we going to prevent kids from using their masks properly/ maintaining social distance, etc?
- A: An agreement: (we have to train them first how to follow these new rules, IF we get to open schools; these new procedures). If they can’t follow the safety procedures, they have to go home. Simple– not messing around. The more challenging a situation, the more PPE needed. Our own nurses will do training around PPE, if we go back live. Shields might be more common than we thought; all teachers might need them.
- Q: What happens when parents don’t come to pick up sick children or children who can’t follow the safety protocols?
- A: Not a behavioral issue but a safety issue. Still working out protocols. Kid might have to be put in a “save” or “isolation” room when kids are sick or being problematic in terms of safety. We have to push it with the DOE to tell the parent– they need to follow the rules or they can’t be in school. DOE has plenty of employees, let them deal with it, especially since Tweed members with teaching certificates can be compelled into teaching service.
- Q: Can we have a buy-out to mitigate layoffs?
- A: We have requested and had conversations with the municipal labor council about this. Talks are progressing. First, if we open, we want to use this “other avenue” for funding. City is going to ask for things back– we will NOT give things back, with all the new and extra work we do. Figure out a new funding source, and at the same time, get to the place where a buyout can be favorable. Our retirement chapters have found solutions that are acceptable, pension-wise, so we will see what happens. If we do this work, we can combat layoffs, and also hire new teachers with buyouts.
- Q: Blended learning: in person teacher will not do remote learning? Principal seems to say you must teach live– understaffed school… might have to bridge classes of different grades which will require double planning? We need some ammo against principal about what the union has agreed to in terms of contractual obligations. Is there something in writing?
- A: Hasn’t even been brought up. Don’t want to entertain it. We’re not trying to recreate the school day, but we will have synchronous instruction. Live streaming? Many Ps being pressed by Superintendents to do this. If schools can figure out a way to do this where people are ok, and it works, maybe. Live streaming lessons with students and a camera is not super effective–you can’t get much worse than that. A teacher CANNOT do both remote and in person. There might be teachers who will go into the building to “tape” their lessons. Many asynchronous “taped” lessons can be super effective. Live streaming is not ok UNLESS teacher says it’s ok! (It’s not ok!)
- Q: Got a denial for medical accommodation. Said there wasn’t a “diagnosis” listed, even though there was. Some discrepancies in the way different applications are being handled.
- A: Send UFT an email immediately. The DOE used to take months to process a small number of medical accommodations– and now they are processing SO MANY. An online form to process issues with this.
- Q: Concerned about instructional lunch (HS speech teacher). “Facing the other way” is not a good way to avoid particle spread. If asked to teach during lunch, can I decline if I am not comfortable? (call dropped)
- A: With a mask, eyeballs are still open. If people are eating maskless, they NEED to have a shield to protect their eyes as well. Staff have to be able to decline if they don’t feel comfortable. If you move kids to a DIFFERENT place for lunch, you’ll need even MORE staff to monitor/ be put at risk. Instructional lunches can help speed up their school day so we can all spend as little time as possible in the building. That’s why the prep period is at the end of the day, so we can prep wherever we need.
- Q: Art teacher. For clusters: how many cohorts are we able to come into contact with in a day or in a week? P mentioned cluster teachers doing both in-person AND remote, and the in-person could be instructional lunch.
- A: For you as a cluster teacher, working through these issues. Take issue when mayor says everyone will be in a POD: this isn’t something that is feasible in NYC. This is why testing/tracing/ PPE is essential. As an art teacher, how do you deal with materials? Do you have access to an ionizer so every supply you use can be sanitized? Need to work through these details. Is there a way you could do a combination of in person and remote? MAYBE, if you don’t have a full in-person schedule.. For most, it’s all one or all the other.
- Q: CAR days if we have to quarantine?
- A: Nope, answered this, they do not come out of your CAR.
- Q: How are we as educators going to be able to help our own teachers in remote learning if their schedule doesn’t match up with ours?
- A: We should be able to find ways to take care of our own staffs as schools. Mayor announced a few weeks ago the idea of childcare for the city of NYC. If schools are open, we are the essential workers needing childcare. Haven’t heard much detail since then about it, but need to ratchet up this line of questioning.
- Q: Social worker:we travel to various DOE and community programs every day. Some have up to 13 locations. Is it safe for this to happen? Will schools even want to welcome this? When we ARE in schools we are in classrooms. Is this feasible?
- A: As an itinerant, we have asked/ DOE said they would limit the number of sites per person and have their own cache of PPE. Will come up with a plan to ensure how this works because it is risky, bringing in anyone from the outside in terms of contact tracing.
- Q:Told in spring that we had to work through spring break. Will be compensated whenever, that’s fine. Now they are saying we are all ready to start. WHERE IS THE CALENDAR?? Waiting until after they open up the building, and then there will be no holidays and breaks. This makes no sense; we’ve worked harder in the last 6 months than we ever have. Are they hiding the calendar because there are no days off?
- A: I don’t believe we are going to be ready. Mayor has made a mistake by not engaging earlier. You have to put out the calendar. “We might have to change it”… no. You’re not changing passover, you’re not changing Kwanzaa, the dates are the dates. WHat happened in the spring was horrible, especially the religious observances. We were in the midst of his pandemic where rates were over 20%– imagine if we opened up then– this is what is happening is FL. The UFT does not submit to the same bureaucracy as the DOE. We do NOT trust the DOE.
- Q: Partner is a teacher that was granted a medical accommodation. What is the story with someone who LIVES with an immunocompromised person/ medical accommodation?
- A: Don’t take a leave yet! No promises– but the number of students choosing remote is huge and will continue to go up as other states open to crazy and horrible stories. More families WILL choose remote. We are thinking about how to handle people who are primary care-givers who live with people with medical conditions to be able to teach remotely. Do we have the legal rights? Maybe not, but we are dealing with HUMANITY. We want to see what can be done to accommodate for this.
- Q: Federal IEP compliance; students mandated for ICT compliance/ ratios:
- A: DeVos doesn’t care if your kid has an IEP. We in NY are going to try to meet all IEP needs. An ICT teacher has to have access to both a general education and special education teacher. PROBLEM; don’t have enough SPED teachers already in order to be able to meet their needs. Do NOT let principals split your class into IEP/ non. Is there a SPED remote teacher that can pair with a gen ed in person? Kids must have access to both.
- Q: Paraprofessionals: how will they be impacted by how many students needs support plus contractual obligations? What if the kid you are assigned is remote?
- A: Working on these issues. Trying to ensure no one loses their jobs. Plenty to do. Paras picked up so much work and found so many ways to support students and teachers.
- Q: CAR days and self-quarantining: what if you are exposed individually by someone outside the classroom or are just not feeling well?
- A: If the quarantine is due to Covid, CAR days are not affected. If a contact tracer has put you into quarantine, it won’t come out of your CAR. If you’re sick, it just has to come out of your days. Teachers in GA have to use their own sick days if you are in quarantine, and if they run out of days, they lose pay. Disgusting ways teachers are being treated in other places.
- Q: D75. Face shields for everyone? Can teach kids to wear masks. My school with severe autism and masks might directly interfere with their disability. Is there greater PPE available for us?
- A: We have had no decisions with the DOE about D75, because the mayor drug his feet on talking about the nuances of our schools. Our medical professionals understand these issues and know what kinds of PPE are needed. There is NO way to go back into these schools safely without MUCH PPE; these parents know these students are NOT doing well in remote learning. This is all much more expensive and higher volumes of PPE. We have to go into schools and know what kinds of safety precautions each school needs– no such thing as a cookie cutter school, especially D75.
- Q: Teacher evaluations? Hearing from my P we will be having 2 evaluations.
- A: Don’t know. We’re busy figuring out how we can open safely. If we open, we will have to figure this out. We have no agreement on ANY evaluations– our contractual agreements are completely invalid in this situation.
- Q: With the number of children remote/ in person/ parents opting in/ opting out/ different times to opt in? Changes in rosters and such?
- A: Hasn’t been clear guidance even to principals now on the 13th of August. Yet, they were told to “program”. We usually have initial programming done in June, preferences, et cet. Everyone is under a lot of pressure. If principals get crazy on us, we have to push back. Parents can’t “opt back in” until Thanksgiving– can’t have too many people popping in and out of remote/ in person at random. UFT doing everything we can to tamp this down. We are still saying IT IS NOT SAFE. He said 25% chance, and it gets worse each day that goes by without clarity. Good meeting with CSA. Got the nurses we have needed for years today. Going to get uglier as we get closer because that’s the only way stuff can really get done.
- Q: Family member is hesitating to apply for accommodation as it is her tenure year. Might get assigned a different school, and if she’s not in the building, might it affect her tenure?
- A: No way we can solve all the problems. Don’t want to have teachers serving students in another building. We will make sure no harm comes to a teacher (ie an untenured teacher denied tenure due to a medical accommodation).
- Q: Last Q: If we go all remote, is there any training to guarantee continuity across the city? Any word on retro?
- A: We will have to coordinate together and have to have an extended period of training for any scenario. All teachers MUST have coordination with their colleagues before we teach. Schools MUST have a standardized curriculum– might be multiple teachers teaching the same content so we all have to be on the same page. All schools must have educational platforms with scopes and sequences up and running– we’ve got people that have been working on this since May! Our retro and our raise? Let’s put it all together. City will come to us to ask to give stuff back– we expect that we will. We have another plan, another way to try to solve that problem. Why would we, after everything we’ve been through, what we are walking into in September, we do not give them a DIME back. If you wanna change my mind, I’ll listen. We’ve worked too hard for this– it’s OUR school system, not the mayors. WE know their families. We will continue to go above and beyond, but we do not work for free. We are the ones who kept our school systems going and we are going to keep it going and keep it safe. More challenges, but we will get through this as we take care of our students and each other. Thank you and please send in your questions. Get some relaxation in because come the end of this month? Buckle up.
Two Course Adjustments for the UFT
I disagree with the union leadership, on any number of things. I’m pro-union. And I believe that the leadership can sometimes adjust course. So I am asking today about two course adjustments, confident that the vast majority of UFT members would like to see them happen.
Can we say “We do not think blended learning will work”?
I thought from June that blended learning was a mistake. I don’t think it will work in many schools. It was absolutely not designed for high schools. When I met with some teachers and union officials, including Mulgrew, I said this. They did not agree with me. Mulgrew thought we should leave some grades at home, or some classes at home (not ok, as it turns out, with Carranza), but they would not say “Blended won’t work.”
In fact, lo and behold, Mulgrew sent out an email to members on July 8:
We believe a blended learning model, with students in class on some days and remote on others, balances our safety concerns with the need to bring students back.
So we disagreed. But now, with five more weeks of evidence of DoE inflexibility and incompetence and refusal to collaborate, can we say that blended learning will not work for reopening this fall?
It is possible to say that we wanted blended to work, but that it was just not possible in this timeframe, with this administration. See, not so hard.
Can we say “Schools should not open for in-person instruction in September?
Yesterday a group of principals in District 15 came out against a September 8 opening. They were looking for a transition. Then the CSA issued a statement, calling for schools not to open.
A more realistic, phased-in approach would instead welcome students for in-person learning toward the end of September, following a fully remote start to the year.
Mulgrew appeared to support the principals. But take a look at his statement:
The UFT has said repeatedly that we cannot re-open schools unless they are safe for students and staff. The principals union — whose members will be responsible for enforcing coronavirus safety protocols in the schools — now believes that school buildings will not be ready to open in September. We need both safety and sanity in this crisis. Will any parents be willing to put their children in a school whose principal believes the building is not ready to open because it is not safe?
Notice what he does not say? He doesn’t say “We should not open schools September 10.” If it is an omission, that will be easy to correct. If it is a tactical maneuver, it’s time to adjust that course.
It is possible to say that we wanted schools to open, but that it is not possible in this timeframe, with this administration. See, not so hard.
Let Schools Prepare!
Yesterday the Mayor and his Chancellor lied, and deceived, and omitted, and lied some more. But one of his Chancellor’s lies is not getting attention, and that’s a shame, because it was a whopper. Carranza said that 85% of teachers are planning for blended learning.
It’s not true. Teachers are frozen with uncertainty. Those who know their classes (most of us) do not know what mode we will teach in. Most teachers are not planning for blended learning.
In-person
This is what we have done in the past.
Remote teaching
This is what we tried to do in the Spring, with three day’s planning, and we had very little idea how it would turn out. Some teachers already had strong remote experience. Others figured things out quickly. Most of us muddled through, and tried to make improvements as we went – but that was hard – as the NYCDoE took away our only break, when many of us had planned to reflect, discuss, revise.
We learned some things. Preparation for remote learning is very different than for in-person. Grading moves much more slowly. And assigning classwork and assigning homework felt like different categories for the teacher, but both felt like “screen-work” for the students, and became overwhelming.
We modified what we assigned, and need to modify more. We altered what kind of work we did in class, and what we assigned for homework. And we need to further consider those things. Assessment was hard, and we are looking at alternate methods (both procedure, and assessing through other-than-tests).
And we need to know if there will be state tests, or if we can slow down. Remote teaching moves more slowly than in person.
Hybrid or Blended teaching
So this might be every other, or every third day, or even every fourth in person, and the rest of the time remote. This is by far the most challenging, because we do not know the mix of activity. We do not know if we will be doing both the in-person and the remote instruction. We are wondering about today’s lesson being in-person for one group (which would suggest certain activities) and remote for other students (which would suggest other activities).
We also have coordination between all-remote and blended classes. And coordination (maybe?) between two instructors for one class, if there are separate instructors for the in-person and the remote parts. (Mulgrew and Carranza seem to disagree about this.)
Blended, if it happens, will require the trickiest planning, and will involve the greatest challenges with implementation.
Which do Teachers plan for?
Teachers have our classes – but we do not know which to plan for. And the planning for all three is different (actually, forget in-person for now, it is not happening anytime soon).
At my school, teachers are assembling committees to review best practices from the Spring – what worked, what did not work. While we faced the same problems that schools did across the city, we did have quite a bit of positive feedback from students on many of our classes (flexibility, mix of instructional modes, some in-person lessons), and some negative (very heavy workload, especially at the start, too much live instruction, too little live instruction). I know, some of this seems contradictory, but that’s the nature of learning something new through experimentation.
But no matter what we find, no matter what teachers in any school, anywhere in the city find, we will not know what to plan for until we are convinced an actual decision has been made.
And while the vast majority of educators in New York City (unsurveyed, but true) believe we should be all-remote, we are caught waiting. We are waiting for Bill de Blasio, all bluster, to back down, the way he backed down Sunday afternoon, March 15, after days of pigheadedly insisting he would put teachers and students and all New Yorkers at risk by keeping schools open.
We are waiting.
What do schools plan for?
Schools can begin thinking about what it would mean to bring students into the building, but just start. Our ventilation systems? We don’t fix them, the DoE does. Temperature checks? The DoE sets the protocols. PPE? The DoE delivers – or as many suspect will happen – doesn’t. Sanitizer? The DoE is stockpiling it. Special Ed? The DoE promises information.
Schools can write plans for teaching, but they get caught waiting for approval. I am my school’s programmer. I know where I should be, during a normal year, with schedules. I am not there. I talk to other programmers. They are (vast majority) not there. Blended schedules and remote schedules look very different from each other, and require many specific decisions. Most schools are gathering information, and waiting.
I have heard Michael Mulgrew say we are preparing for both blended learning and remote learning. I am not sure who “we” is, but I’m pretty sure he’s not talking about anyone I know.
Look, here’s what has to happen. Mr. Mayor, you are going to surrender. The only question is whether you, Mr. Mayor, surrender today, and let us start planning, or whether you wait until September 7, and make the coming chaos even worse. I don’t know that you have any legacy at stake. Maybe just a touch of compassion?
OPC vs jd – who would you choose?
So pretend for a moment that you are an NYCDoE principal and that you need to get September ready and you can have an outside helper, and you have it narrowed down to the Overpaid Private Consultant (OPC) that the DoE uses, or me (JD)… and all you have to go on are these little bits that each of us wrote about entry into buildings. Read on, and prepare to make your choice.
Overpaid Private Consultant
Checklist for General Student Entry Procedures
(from the 2020 – 2021 School Year | Reopening Playbook for Principals)
playbook-for-principals-2020-2021-school-reopening – p22
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-
- Yes, our school entry procedures align with health and safety measures related to temperature checks. Yes, I have referred to Health Policy for up-to-date guidance on temperature check protocols.
- Yes, our school (and campuses if applicable) has assigned sufficient staffing to accommodate multiple points of entry should identify these multiple points of entry, ensure that students report to classrooms, and avoid shared spaces at the beginning of the day.
- Yes, sufficient staff to ensure that students are supported in maintaining physical distancing and using PPE supervises each point of entry.
- Yes, this includes staff presence outside the school building to support students and families lining up for entry.
- Yes, either I, as school principal, and/or the Building Response Team (BRT) Leader in collaboration with BRT have identified staff.
- Yes, the staff assigned to morning entry and dismissal only include administrators, school aides, deans, and clerical staff, School Safety Agents, and Circular 6 staff.
- [IF APPLICABLE TO YOUR SCHOOL] Yes, guidance staffing entry and dismissal at District 75 sites to follow.
- Yes, if possible, school counselors and social workers have been assigned to morning entry or designated locations to support any students exhibiting signs of distress.
- Yes, our school ensures all students (or their families on their behalf) have completed a health screening before entering the school; refer to “Daily Health Screenings” in the COVID-19 School Health Policy. Yes, I am aware additional guidance is forthcoming.
- Yes, we have recommended our students arrive with their own face coverings, and if they do not have a face covering, one will be provided before entering the school building.o Yes, our school has a plan to implement a single file line up with six feet markers and identified traffic patterns with directional markings.
- Yes, signage identifying the morning entry protocols and outlining the four DOHMH core actions is conspicuously posted at points of entry and within the lobby. Yes, my school has taken into consideration the fact that signage will be available in multiple languages.
- Yes, upon entry to our school building, students are directed to their assigned classrooms (six feet from one another) and have the ability to collect breakfast (grab and go) at entry.
- Yes, students clean their hands with sanitizer or with soap and water after entry and before entering class.
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jd
What needs to be in an entry plan?
(from this here blog post)
Time; Number
An entry plan must include time that each entry begins, and how many students are entering. For example, a 6 – 8 school of 1350 students, might be operating in three cohorts, of 450 each. Bringing in 450 all at once would likely cause the crowd to smoosh together. Perhaps the school brings in 150 7th graders at 8, 150 8th graders at 8:30, 150 6th graders at 9:00. That’s the beginning of a plan. Has your school begun a discussion that looks like that? No? Probably very few have.
Doors
Will your school be using one entry door? More doors would allow quicker entry, but see “Post-Entry” below for complications. Also, multiple doors require more staff.
Gathering Location
An entry plan must include where the children are prior to entry. What if your school always had kids come hang out in the playground or school yard? Issue, right? Ever try to keep middle schoolers from touching each other? Who will keep them socially distanced in a school yard? Or perhaps they should be lined up from the moment they arrive? (I was getting to that). A six foot distanced line for 150 students is about 900 feet (almost 0.2 mile). That’s approximately one full avenue block in Manhattan, or 3 1/2 short street blocks. Is there adequate sidewalk space? Are there issues with driveways? Perhaps the street could be shut off from 7:30 – 10:00 for entry, and a zigzag Disneyland-style (but with much more space) line could be constructed. Maybe there is a nearby parking lot? The least of the problems are putting down marks and cones.
Line mechanics
A sidewalk line with markings doesn’t have to be reset each day. Blocking off driveways does. Blocking off a street and putting up cones or stanchions and ropes does. That’s not the hard part, but it’s part. Much more challenging, as students arrive, moving them to the right spot, and getting them to stay there. Assume our 900 foot line has been folded so that it is 150 feet, zigzagging about 25 feet in the street (making a rectangle). There is work to do monitoring the line (from outside the line), maintaining spacing, moving students forward. These are serious assignments. If a person assigned is a teacher, this is not prep time.
Entry duration
I have no idea how long it takes to bring 150 students into a building while maintaining social distancing. I am here assuming that 30 minutes is more than enough time – but do I know that? No. And see “Post-entry” below, which could slow things down. If 30 minutes are insufficient, the “stagger” might need to be greater. I can’t imagine that less than 15 minutes is possible.
Post-Entry
As a student enters the building, the DoE requires they wash hands. Where are your bathrooms? How will the student reach the bathroom? How long will hand washing take? Will you create a line outside each bathroom? How long can the line be before you cause crowding / lose control? Remember, social distancing must be maintained in the hallways and lines and bathrooms, not just the classroom. The answers to some of these questions may lead you to slow entry, to keep the numbers under control. Also, if you are using multiple entries, how will you coordinate to prevent pile-up in the hallway?
Wrong Day Richard
Students will arrive on the wrong day. It will happen by mistake. It will happen intentionally. The student might miss school. The parent might seek to drop off the child because there is no one to watch her. How will the school verify that the correct students have arrived? What will happen to the student who arrives on the wrong day? And here, I’m sorry, the answer can’t just be “call the parent to come pick him up” – where will the child stay in the meantime? One option in regular times that is not an option today: no mass preps in the auditorium without violating social distancing.
Mr. Principal
You Choose
Which one of these authors would be more helpful?
OK, so I have had my little fun. Let’s get serious for a second.
On a serious note, Scanning Schools
I did not address scanning schools. I skipped them (and campus schools) because they include complexities I know less about. But I also skipped scanning schools because they are more accustomed to details procedures related to entry, and vitally, to rhythms related to entry. I don’t think a scanning school will have an easier time getting things right, but I think they will have an easier time correcting mistakes. That being said, I would have never written what the DoE’s overpaid consultant did at the opening of a completely separate scanning session:
Yes,I am aware that given the reduction of enrollment on any given day, the process of scanning should be manageable under this new practice of morning entry.
which is ridiculous, insulting, and a little bit threatening to the principal of the scanning school, who needs to “check off” that any problems were caused by that principal’s incompetence, not by a problem in the design imposed by DoE Central.
The NYCDOE’s Reopening Playbook for Principals
This is the playbook Carranza gave principals.
Think getting your opponent’s playbook might give you some insight, help you defeat them?
I’d like to believe that – but I don’t see much here. Please though, take a look, and share what you find. I’ll take a look too, and get back to you.
Without further comment at this time: playbook-for-principals-2020-2021-school-reopening
How many NYC parents chose “blended learning”?
This is easy.
There are 1.1 million students in New York City.
The mayor and Chancellor want blended learning (hybrid) to take place in September. The Mayor has been boasting about it. The Chancellor has been boasting about. The Mayor and Chancellor have been pushing hard. There is not a strong, centrally organized resistance*.
.Which means the Mayor and the Chancellor have been able to rig things.
June Survey Results
| How comfortable are you going to in-person school every day this fall, if there are health and safety measures like social distancing? | Citywide Average |
| Very comfortable | 25% |
| Mostly comfortable | 31% |
| A little comfortable | 27% |
| Not at all comfortable | 17% |
Does the chart look unfamiliar? Yes – I have easy access to 6 – 12 data. The k – 12 data I believe is even more wary.
You probably know, the Mayor and Chancellor dishonestly added the first three categories to claim a very high rate wanted to go back. They included “A little comfortable” – how is that honest?
We could also add the bottom three, and claim that the vast majority have questions.
Or we could do what most math-y people do, and make Very comfortable = 3, Mostly comfortable = 2, A little comfortable = 1, and Not at all comfortable = 0, and take the average. The citywide 6 – 12 average was 1.64. My school’s average was 1.79.
Why do I write “was”? Because these surveys were filled out in June. People are more nervous today.
Every Family Selected Hybrid!
Well, that’s obviously false. Some want remote. But the Mayor and the Chancellor rigged the results. By making hybrid the “default” they could claim a high number of parents are choosing hybrid.
Why didn’t they report 100%? Because they knew you wouldn’t believe them.
Has anyone selected hybrid?
Yes. 109,000 families have selected hybrid. That is about 10% of the total.
We could add to them the other million parents – that’s kind of what de Blasio and Carranza did – claiming that the default was a choice. But that’s not honest.
When do parents select remote?
Any time they want. So far 212,000 have chosen remote. That’s almost 20%.
What about the 70% of parents who have not yet spoken?
We do not know what they will do. The Mayor and Chancellor have dishonestly claimed they are choosing hybrid. They have not made a choice. We can’t say that they are choosing remote either.
Here’s part of an email I received the other day:
And FYI, from a parent’s perspective (albeit elementary school child), we chose hybrid for now, because at any time we can switch to remote, but only at specified times can you move from remote to hybrid. We’ll be … making our decision most likely in early September.
How did they get just 30% return on a survey?
It was not a survey. There was not a deadline.
The DoE kept changing what they said it was. Safer that way to make any claim they wanted to after the fact.
This was an opt-in to blended learning.
Opt-in to remote learning can happen at any time.
So how will we know what the actual number of families opting for remote is?
Keep looking for updates. The number will rise every week. The biggest jump will happen at the start of September, right before school.
That is, if the Mayor and Chancellor’s really dumb plan to try to open is still in play. With some luck and hard work we have switched to full-remote well before then.
(* The UFT president also wants blended learning to take place in September – at least that is what he said in a message to members, and has not retracted or contradicted that. However the UFT president has been expressing doubts based on safety. This needs to be the subject of a longer post.)
Six thousand school doors
That might be the number of public school doors in New York City. There are over 1800 schools, but some are in leased buildings, and some are “campuses” which in New York means one building shared by several schools. In the rest of the country a campus is one school spread into several buildings. The New York City Department of Education claims 1557 buildings. That’s from a survey from last year, the number is probably pretty close to reality.
My first school had eight doors. Or was it six? My current is a leased building, but has two doors. I’m guessing four might be near the average, which is how I get 6000. If you told me I was wrong, that it was actually 5000, or 9000, I would not be shocked. But we get the idea. The NYCDOE has in the neighborhood of 6000 doors to the streets.
It’s a good thing that we do not need a separate hybrid plan for every door. That would be a lot of plans. But we do need a separate hybrid plan for each school. And at nearly 2000, that’s still a lot of plans.
You know what every plan needs? Every plan needs to include doors. Let’s talk about that for a moment. Let’s talk about morning entry.
Friday July 31 New York City had an outline, not a plan, as one of Cuomo’s aides accurately pointed out. Then Friday they submitted a new plan. Last Friday they turned in 32 pages. Small towns were turning in over 50. Yonkers was over 100. This Friday the NYCDoE turned in 109 pages.
Are there any English teachers reading this? Let me know if you’ve heard this story before. This one is 109 pages – but 33 are a list of every school in New York City, and another 18 are title pages and index – sound familiar? – large font, generous margins, most sections end with 5 lines eating up a full page?
But there is enough content this time that just maybe it will be considered a Citywide plan. OK, so what does it say about doors? Hmm. Check that. What does it say about “entry”? The word shows up five times:
- Every school will be required to ensure that all individuals stay at least six feet apart at all times, including at building entry…
- Students and staff will need to thoroughly clean their hands as soon as possible upon entry to the school building.
- Afterschool program staff who work at a location or school other than where they are supervising afterschool activities/coaching are required to follow daily entry protocols upon arrival to the afterschool site.
- The BRT will be responsible for managing and supporting the school’s response to any incidents related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes collaborating with the principal to plan
and execute morning entry plans. - When BRT is activated to address COVID-19 related incidents (“COVID-19 activation”), team members will assume the following additional responsibilities: BRT Leader: serves as the point of contact for all team members during entry, dismissal,… Special Needs Coordinator: For the purpose of COVID-19 activation, manages the school staff assigned to conduct temperature screening at each point of entry.
Point of entry! Those are doors. They mention doors! Not 6000 times, but they mention them. And what is the plan for the doors? “Every school will be required to ensure…” “Students and staff will need to thoroughly clean their hands…” But how do we maintain 6 foot separation? How do we line kids up to use the bathroom to wash hands before going to class?
The DoE still has an outline! They have guidelines! It’s not a plan.
This matters. A solid entry plan does not guarantee that a school can operate just fine (I doubt many will be able to), but lack of a solid entry plan guarantees that social distancing will be massively violated before a single student has planted their behind in a socially distanced classroom chair.
What needs to be in an entry plan?
Time; Number
An entry plan must include time that each entry begins, and how many students are entering. For example, a 6 – 8 school of 1350 students, might be operating in three cohorts, of 450 each. Bringing in 450 all at once would likely cause the crowd to smoosh together. Perhaps the school brings in 150 7th graders at 8, 150 8th graders at 8:30, 150 6th graders at 9:00. That’s the beginning of a plan. Has your school begun a discussion that looks like that? No? Probably very few have.
Doors
Will your school be using one entry door? More doors would allow quicker entry, but see “Post-Entry” below for complications. Also, multiple doors require more staff.
Gathering Location
An entry plan must include where the children are prior to entry. What if your school always had kids come hang out in the playground or school yard? Issue, right? Ever try to keep middle schoolers from touching each other? Who will keep them socially distanced in a school yard? Or perhaps they should be lined up from the moment they arrive? (I was getting to that). A six foot distanced line for 150 students is about 900 feet (almost 0.2 mile). That’s approximately one full avenue block in Manhattan, or 3 1/2 short street blocks. Is there adequate sidewalk space? Are there issues with driveways? Perhaps the street could be shut off from 7:30 – 10:00 for entry, and a zigzag Disneyland-style (but with much more space) line could be constructed. Maybe there is a nearby parking lot? The least of the problems are putting down marks and cones.
Line mechanics
A sidewalk line with markings doesn’t have to be reset each day. Blocking off driveways does. Blocking off a street and putting up cones or stanchions and ropes does. That’s not the hard part, but it’s part. Much more challenging, as students arrive, moving them to the right spot, and getting them to stay there. Assume our 900 foot line has been folded so that it is 150 feet, zigzagging about 25 feet in the street (making a rectangle). There is work to do monitoring the line (from outside the line), maintaining spacing, moving students forward. These are serious assignments. If a person assigned is a teacher, this is not prep time.
Entry duration
I have no idea how long it takes to bring 150 students into a building while maintaining social distancing. I am here assuming that 30 minutes is more than enough time – but do I know that? No. And see “Post-entry” below, which could slow things down. If 30 minutes are insufficient, the “stagger” might need to be greater. I can’t imagine that less than 15 minutes is possible.
Post-Entry
As a student enters the building, the DoE requires they wash hands. Where are your bathrooms? How will the student reach the bathroom? How long will hand washing take? Will you create a line outside each bathroom? How long can the line be before you cause crowding / lose control? Remember, social distancing must be maintained in the hallways and lines and bathrooms, not just the classroom. The answers to some of these questions may lead you to slow entry, to keep the numbers under control. Also, if you are using multiple entries, how will you coordinate to prevent pile-up in the hallway?
Wrong Day Richard
Students will arrive on the wrong day. It will happen by mistake. It will happen intentionally. The student might miss school. The parent might seek to drop off the child because there is no one to watch her. How will the school verify that the correct students have arrived? What will happen to the student who arrives on the wrong day? And here, I’m sorry, the answer can’t just be “call the parent to come pick him up” – where will the child stay in the meantime? One option in regular times that is not an option today: no mass preps in the auditorium without violating social distancing.
Takeaway?
Maybe a school could use my list, or a better one, and answer these questions and be completely ready. Maybe they could write it up and put it in the NYCDoE’s actual plan that eventually gets submitted to New York State (because their 109 pages, actually 58, large margins, lots of half pages, big font, – it’s still an outline/guideline, not a plan). But coming up with the entry plan for each school is not enough. There are logistics issues, and few schools have even started. There is a real space problem with Wrong Day Richard. And there are staffing issues, and staffing is already a problem. Even with a good entry plan, this hybrid approach is wrong. And we do not have 1800 good entry plans for 6000 doors.
– – — — —– ——– ————- ——– —– — — – –
Oh! There’s the first day! What were you going to do the first day? We can talk about that another time.
6 in 10 with Kids at Home are not Confident that Schools Can Safely Reopen
I get commercial pieces in my in-box. I usually don’t reprint them (maybe I never have?) but this one is from a fairly reliable source – Consumer Reports – and it is highly relevant.
Pay close attention to the section on the “racial divide” – the New York Times would have you believe that getting Black and Brown children back into school is a civil rights issue – the Times, that great self-appointed voice for justice. Actually, Black and Hispanic families with children are most OPPOSED to sending kids in today.
Majority of Americans “Very Concerned” About Spread of Virus in Their Communities
YONKERS, NY — The dawn of the new school year finds Americans sharply divided on how K-12 schools should best reopen, according to a new nationally representative survey from Consumer Reports, the nonprofit consumer research, testing, and advocacy organization. A majority of Americans with school-aged children in their homes (62 percent) say they are “not too confident” (30 percent) or “not confident at all” (32 percent) that schools can prevent the spread of COVID-19 among students, teachers, and staff if they reopen for in-person classes.
The CR American Experiences Survey was fielded between July 9 and 20, following the surge in cases being reported across the nation. It included questions on the pandemic’s impact on consumers’ attitudes, behaviors, and finances. In broad terms, respondents are growing increasingly concerned about the potential threat posed by COVID-19 to their communities, and many reported taking some sort of action in response to the growing number of cases, and deaths, across the U.S.
Among all Americans, about a third (35 percent) of Americans think schools in their local area should remain closed with students taking all classes online, another third (33 percent) think they should open partially with students splitting time between in-person and online classes, about two in ten (19 percent) think they should reopen fully for in-person instruction, and the remaining 13 percent are unsure. When comparing the 35 percent of respondents who have preschool or K-12 aged children living in their household to those without, there are no significant differences in opinion on school reopenings.
“Like many other issues involving COVID-19, we see deep divides among Americans on the question of if and how schools should reopen, reflected in the difficulty school administrators are facing finding consensus among local parents on the best path forward,” said Consumer Reports’ Chief Research Officer Kristen Purcell. “And this does not just affect families with school-aged children, it’s a community health issue. Americans without school-aged children at home are also divided on how schools should reopen.”
Racial Divide on School Reopenings
White Americans are more likely than Blacks and Hispanics to prefer full school reopenings with in-person classes (24 percent white versus 7 percent Black and 10 percent Hispanic), whereas Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than whites to prefer that schools remain closed with students taking all classes online (57 percent Black and 52 percent Hispanic versus 25 percent white). Among whites, the most commonly chosen option for school reopening, selected by 37 percent, is a partial or hybrid model blending some in-person learning with classes taken online.
Rising Level of Concern Over COVID-19
Most Americans continue to be concerned about the spread of COVID-19 in their communities, and the percentage of those who are “very concerned” has spiked. A majority of Americans (82 percent) remain concerned about the continued spread of the disease in their local area, including 53 percent who are “very concerned.”
While the portion of Americans “very concerned” was unchanged from the survey findings for the May to June timeframe, the July survey results show a dramatic increase—up 12 percentage points from 41 percent in June. July’s survey results continue to show levels of concern varying significantly across different racial/ethnic groups, with Black (73 percent) and Hispanic (64 percent) adults more likely than white adults (47 percent) to say they are “very concerned” COVID will continue to spread in their communities.
The rising level of concern might explain why more Americans say they personally are following recommended safety measures most or all of the time compared with last month. For example, 72 percent now say they “always” wear a mask at indoor public spaces (up 18 percentage points, from 54 percent in June). The change was largely driven by people in the Western states, the Midwest, and the South (up 31 percentage points, 20 percentage points, and 16 percentage points, respectively), which have reported an uptick in cases. Black and Hispanic adults are more likely than whites to report wearing a mask most of the time or always when in an indoor public space (93 percent and 93 percent versus 81 percent, respectively).
Financial and Emotional Impacts of Pandemic
Early in the pandemic, lost wages hit Hispanics particularly hard, as shown in our April results. While more Hispanic Americans still say they’ve lost wages during the pandemic compared to whites, July’s survey results indicate that racial and ethnic gaps on this financial impact measure have narrowed to some degree (lost wages were reported by 26 percent among whites, 27 percent among Blacks, and 34 percent among Hispanics). However, both Black and Hispanic adults are more likely than white adults to report cutting expenses to pay their mortgage, rent or other expenses (26 percent and 28 percent versus 16 percent, respectively). Black adults are more likely than whites to report falling behind on their rent or mortgage (14 percent versus 6 percent), with Hispanics landing in between (9 percent). Similarly, while the percentage of adults reporting experiencing anxiety or depression held steady in July at 38 percent, reports of depression and anxiety continue to be especially high among women (45 percent) and the lowest-income Americans (43 percent).
About Consumer Reports American Experiences Survey
Consumer Reports’ American Experiences Survey (AES) is conducted monthly to track consumer attitudes and behaviors over time. It was fielded by NORC at the University of Chicago to a nationally representative sample of 2,031 US adults. The margin of error for the sample of 2,031 is +/-2.95 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. The survey was conducted from July 9 to 20, 2020. Interviews were conducted online and by telephone, in English and in Spanish.
About Consumer Reports
Consumer Reports is a nonprofit advocacy organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. For 80 years, CR has provided evidence-based product testing and ratings, rigorous research, hard-hitting investigative journalism, public education, and steadfast policy action on behalf of consumers’ interests. Unconstrained by advertising or other commercial influences, CR has exposed landmark public health and safety issues and strives to be a catalyst for pro-consumer changes in the marketplace. From championing responsible auto safety standards, to winning food and water protections, to enhancing healthcare quality, to fighting back against predatory lenders in the financial markets, Consumer Reports has always been on the front lines, raising the voices of consumers.
AUGUST 2020
© 2020 Consumer Reports. The material above is intended for legitimate news entities only; it may not be used for advertising or promotional purposes. Consumer Reports® is an expert, independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to work side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. We accept no advertising and pay for all the products we test. We are not beholden to any commercial interest. Our income is derived from the sale of Consumer Reports® magazine, ConsumerReports.org® and our other publications and information products, services, fees, and noncommercial contributions and grants. Our ratings and reports are intended solely for the use of our readers. Neither the ratings nor the reports may be used in advertising or for any other commercial purpose without our prior written permission. Consumer Reports will take all steps open to it to prevent unauthorized commercial use of its content and trademarks.
Some District 75 Concerns
A (different) teacher contributed these words. He prefers to remain anonymous)
It is nearly impossible to practice social distancing when most, if not all, of our students require hand over hand prompting with everything from washing their hands, to wiping their bottoms to completing classwork. These children unfortunately won’t wear masks so the classroom is going to be extremely unsafe; yet D75 is telling parents they can come to school 5 days per week. Many of our students are in diapers and paraprofessionals are required to change their diapers in unventilated bathrooms.
Like many community schools, our classrooms are also unventilated but they are much (much!) smaller than any regular DOE classroom.
A very challenging part of our day as D75 educators is when a child is going into crisis; we often get bit, spit on, kicked…you name it! The scary behaviors not are spitting and biting; that is so unsanitary for everyone in the classroom (reminder: they don’t only spit on the teachers who will be provided some sort of PPE).
During fire drills our students need their hands held at all times and they need to be in close proximity to an adult. The same goes for shelter in place drills/lockdowns. Since we will be hybrid we will be having twice the amount (at least) of fire drills and lockdowns since a certain number need to be conducted every single year and the kids of course need to participate so this means we will be in extremely close quarters with our students very often.
“Mr. Mulgrew, please walk this back” – letter from a teacher
Dear Mr. Mulgrew,
Today is my birthday. My 53rd. I woke with the confidence that you are fighting for our safety and for our quality of life as NYC teachers. I believed you when you said in our town hall a few weeks ago that because remote and in-person teachers must be in “lockstep”, we would need extra co-planning time and that you were advocating for four periods of instruction and then to send the kids home, giving teachers the rest of the day for co-planning. If there must be mask-to-mask teaching, that made some sense. But today I woke up to this letter from you and all I can feel is bereft; abandoned; hopeless.
For the four months we were teaching remotely, I spent close to an hour a day contacting families and several hours a day tracking down students who for myriad reasons were not attending my office hours or synchronized classes. Now I have 20 minutes. I will have 30 minutes of “prep” to co-plan with colleagues in the morning. 30 minutes is barely enough to set an agenda, as you may recall. It certainly is not enough to plan in “lockstep”. I will be expected to teach straight through the day, and if I am an art teacher or something similar, I am expected to teach in a classroom full of kids without masks who are focused on their lunches and their friends. If I am not one of the unlucky teachers trying to instruct while kids eat, then I get to walk back into a room where aerosols are hanging in the air, as per the University of Minnesota research. Then I get to bring home all of the droplets I have walked through and breathed through my NOT N-95 MASK, risking everyone in my household, and use my other 30 minutes of prep (plus countless hours) to actually plan, grade, co-plan, and prepare.
Even in New York, adults can’t wear masks consistently. We know kids won’t. But now we’re giving them time without masks. Don’t you see how that will undermine everything else? If they can have masks off while eating while we teach, then there is zero reason for them to wear masks the rest of the time when we teach.
In short, my teaching day is longer, my preps are shorter, and I AM NOT SAFE. No day is safe when there is time spent with people who are not wearing masks. It’s that simple.
Please, this is not acceptable. Not even close. Please walk this back. Save our lives and those of our families and our students’ families.
Sincerely,
An Alternative Approach – Skip the Backroom Deals
The custodians union president advised his members to suck up the unsafe conditions, but they could leave 30 minutes early.
Actually, no. Here’s what the custodians got from their president. Seems like a real president:
h/t Jessica Klonsky
High School Students Implore Cuomo – Move NYC to Remote for September
This letter was signed by a bunch of student government leaders, representing about 15% of NYC high schools, and then by about 1300 more students and parents. They sent it off to Cuomo on Wednesday August 5, because of the August 7 deadline. That’s a shame. While the letter makes good points, the authors managed to make a different one: they excluded the majority of NYC high schools that are majority Black/Brown. I don’t think it was intentional – I’m almost certain that it was not. But this is a reminder that it is not good enough not to be racist, we need to be actively anti-racist.
In any case, here’s the letter. I hope different leadership, inclusive leadership, takes up the mantle. Being inclusive takes work. It is a pretty gross display of privilege to say “we don’t have time to include Black and Brown voices.” And there is time – when NYC failed to submit an actual plan last Friday (it was an outline, not a plan) the deadlines got pushed back.
Dear Governor Cuomo,
Over the past few weeks, Mayor de Blasio, Chancellor Carranza, and the NYC Department of Education have created a blended learning model, under which at least 33% of students are expected to attend each day and no school is permitted to conduct fully remote learning. However, this “one size fits all” model is not suitable for NYC high schools specifically. We believe that each NYC high school should be fully remote during this fall, especially schools with over 2,000 students, regardless of how other schools operate.
First, New York City high school students have longer and riskier school commutes. While most elementary and middle school students in NYC attend schools within their own districts, high school students apply to and end up in schools all over the city. As a result, over 300,000 high school students consistently commute on crowded buses and trains, thus increasing chances of contracting and transmitting the virus to their families, schools, and communities. This is especially dangerous because students between ages 10 and 19 contract and transmit the virus as well as adults do.
Second, blended learning intensifies the inequity in our education system. In this model, schools will be required to spend valuable resources on actions such as power washing and PPE replenishment, instead of ensuring that every student has access to a laptop and the internet— a necessity for students in any scenario. Seeing as current DOE guidelines call for a school to close if it reports just two positive cases, there is no feasible way for NYC’s largest high schools to go even a few weeks without reverting back to a fully remote model with no time to prepare. This will force schools to repeat the problem-ridden asynchronous remote learning experience that occurred in the spring, preventing low-income students from gaining access to whatever online learning experience is rolled out. If schools inevitably close down, we must prioritize a remote learning model from the beginning to give teachers and schools the most amount of time possible to prepare.
Even if schools manage to stay open, having both remote and in-person classes creates a two-tiered system of education. By not prioritizing funding and resources for online learning, the DOE is preventing students who attend school remotely from accessing the same quality of education or even the same teachers as their peers. In their own plan, there is not even a mention of how remote learning will work for these students. This especially impacts immunocompromised and other medically-vulnerable students, who will be forced into this inferior second tier. As a result, the DOE’s proposed model runs afoul of Title II of the ADA. A fully remote model ensures equal education for not only these students, but also District 75 students, IEP students, and students with other learning disabilities, for whom in-person learning is a necessity. The empty high school buildings in a remote model can be used to teach these students, ensuring that they can practice safe social distancing measures while not sacrificing any of their critical in-person instruction, as they would have to do in a blended model.
As you and your Administration are well aware, the COVID-19 crisis is far from over. With the threat of a second wave looming and a vaccine unlikely by the end of 2020, every policy action can determine whether New York continues on a positive trajectory, or we re-experience the horrors of April and May. If we proceed with the blended learning model, we make a massive second wave more likely. If that happens, schools across the state will be forced to quickly put together a remote learning model that lowers the quality of education and wastes the numerous resources already utilized. The virus will spread throughout the city, with us high schoolers as the carriers, and more students, teachers, and parents could suffer and die. Fortunately, over the next month, there is ample time to put together a coherent, cohesive, and comprehensive remote learning model for schools, improving upon the model used in the spring and avoiding the negative consequences of a hasty reopening. The health and educational harms of a second wave far outweigh any of the short-term learning losses that may accompany another few months of remote high school learning. As your constituents and soon-to-be voters, we urge you to supersede the dangerous order put in place by Mayor de Blasio. By doing so, you have the ability to prevent NYC from becoming what would be the definitive epicenter of any second wave in New York State.
Sincerely,
Gov, Mayor, Chanc., Pres. – keep us all alive: shut us down now
Today’s letter to Cuomo
(this is not by me, as you can tell from the opening line. The author is a teacher who raises important questions. She wrote similar letters to de Blasio, Carranza, and Mulgrew)
(The biggest question? Why not remote? Why not start work on it today? – jd)
Dear Governor Cuomo,
I have admired and respected your leadership during this pandemic, despite serious disagreements with many of your education policies, and I was counting on your reliance on science and good sense to prevail over plans for reopening school buildings. I was very disappointed by your message yesterday, which sounded much like an abdication of your responsibility, leaving to parents and schools the task of keeping COVID numbers down and people alive.
I have sent you numerous letters citing flaws and unresolved questions in NYC’s opening plans and begging you to allow teachers to do the best by our students and staff by spending August preparing to teach fully remotely. No plan put forward has begun to reassure teachers or parents that students and staff will be safe, or that hybrid mask-to-mask learning, which is FAR from face-to-face learning, is any better than fully remote instruction.
Schools have been reopening around the country and within days students and staff are sick. The University of Minnesota has demonstrated the lack of efficacy of open windows for ventilation. And ALL plans for safety go out the window when you have students taking off masks to eat together in classrooms or lunchrooms.
Not only is instruction while students are eating lunch ineffective (and no, it is not the same as grab and go breakfast which is also disruptive, because students are accustomed to and will need a reprieve during lunch), but it is inequitable and DANGEROUS to any staff in the room. Spending the day trying to teach fully masked students is risky enough, but spending time in a room with students without masks, who will be yelling across the room at each other to socialize, is simply the epitome of danger and to ask any staff member to be in such unsafe conditions is completely unacceptable.
Please, keep us all alive: shut us down now and let us use the month we have to focus on making fully remote instruction as effective as possible.
Sincerely,
Contact tracing is hard – harder if you don’t know how high school works
The NYC DoE wrote this about contact tracing:
Tracing: In the event of a confirmed COVID-19 case in a school, NYC Test + Trace and NYC Health will investigate to determine close contacts within the school. All students and teachers in the classroom with the confirmed case are assumed close contacts and will be instructed to self-quarantine for 14 days since their last exposure to that case. In older grades where students may travel between classes, this applies to all classes that the confirmed case was in.
In older grades where students may travel between classes, this applies to all classes that the confirmed case was in.
Help me out here. “all classes that the confirmed case was in” – what do they mean? The rooms? Did they mean to say “all students who shared a class with the person with a confirmed case?” + “all teachers who taught that person?”
Why am I convinced that no one working on the NYCDoE plans has ever been to a high school?
Teachers need real prep time, not release time
The New York City Department of Education has scheduling guidance. But nothing to get excited about.
A new DoE document is floating around – I’ll get my hands on a copy tomorrow. It is called “Instructional Principals and Programming Guidance.”
People are focusing on the model schedules. Since I only have screen shots, that’s what I will start with.
In the Programmer’s Group, first comment? “I love how non-programmers program” So, no, not good. Not usable for most of us.
Preparation Tiime
The worst part? Teacher prep is 30 minutes per day, moved to the end of the day, with the expectation that teachers can prep at home.
We know we never get enough time for preparation. It would have been nice, you know, pandemic, remote learning, that sort of stuff, if they had actually given us a tiny bit more prep time, since it takes about twice as long to do everything. But ok, we can save that for another day.
So instead of more prep, they are going to generously allow us to prep, for half an hour, at home?
Do these people think we are so dumb that we will overlook the serious safety problems if we can leave half an hour early? What insulting garbage.
Message for your UFT Reps
Mulgrew did good on Friday, telling the DoE and us, no we are not going to return to schools without real safety in place:
“the city’s safety proposals fall far short of anything we would agree to.”
Tell him he needs to do it again. We want plans that work, we want safety to really be dealt with. We are not sure the DoE can pull it off. But we’re sure as hell not going to smile and say ok and forget about safety in the face of this pandemic because they let us leave a few minutes early.
Email your chapter leader, your district rep, your borough rep, your VP, and Mulgrew. Let them know:
We will not trade our safety and the safety of our students for anything. We will not trade safety for time.
And
It is time for the DoE to stop insulting teachers’ intelligence, and get to work preparing for September. They are way behind.
New York City Department of Education has scheduling guidance. But nothing to get excited about.
A new DoE document is floating around – I’ll get my hands on a copy tomorrow. It is called “Instructional Principals and Programming Guidance.”
People are focusing on the model schedules. Since I only have screen shots, that’s what I will start with.
In the Programmer’s Group, first comment? “I love how non-programmers program” So, no, not good. Not usable for most of us.
Preparation Time
The worst part? Teacher prep is 30 minutes per day, moved to the end of the day, with the expectation that teachers can prep at home.
We know we never get enough time for preparation. It would have been nice, you know, pandemic, remote learning, that sort of stuff, if they had actually given us a tiny bit more prep time, since it takes about twice as long to do everything. But ok, we can save that for another day.
So instead of more prep, they are going to generously allow us to prep, for half an hour, at home?
Do these people think we are so dumb that we will overlook the serious safety problems if we can leave half an hour early? What insulting garbage.
Message for your UFT Reps
Mulgrew did good on Friday, telling the DoE and us, no we are not going to return to schools without real safety in place:
“the city’s safety proposals fall far short of anything we would agree to.”
Tell him he needs to do it again. We want plans that work, we want safety to really be dealt with. We are not sure the DoE can pull it off. But we’re sure as hell not going to smile and say ok and forget about safety in the face of this pandemic because they let us leave a few minutes early.
Email your chapter leader, your district rep, your borough rep, your VP, and Mulgrew. Let them know:
We will not trade our safety and the safety of our students for anything. We will not trade safety for time.
And
It is time for the DoE to stop insulting teachers’ intelligence, and get to work preparing for September. They are way behind.
JD2718 