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Saturday, September 12, 2020

Principals Blast the NYC DOE For Handing Out Safety Equipment That is "Cheap Black-Market Crap" PPE

 


The dysfunctional thermometers and smelly wipes supplied to NYC schools to battle COVID-19.


First, we hear that teachers with disabling conditions are not getting remote-only accommodations;

Second, we hear that no teacher can teach remotely if they are healthy but live with another person who is not, or elderly parents, etc;

Now we hear that the so-called "safety gear" given out to educators and staff and anyone else to fight against getting COVID-19 is not high-quality stuff and doesn't work.

This is outrageous.

Betsy Combier

betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ Blog

Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

Principals blast NYC DOE for supplying schools with ‘cheap black-market crap’ PPE

Doree Lewak and Susan Edelman, NY POST, September 12, 2020

It’s PPE to die for.

The city Department of Education is supplying schools with defective thermometers, “low quality” masks, and smelly wipes, a disgusted Queens principal told The Post.

“The s—t they gave us won’t protect us — not the students, teachers or parents,” fumed the educator. “Every principal in NYC is banging their head against the wall.”

“The “cheap, black-market crap” includes touchless, electronic thermometers that registered temperatures at 40, 50, and 60 degrees.

“You’d be dead,” she said. “We keep taking each other’s temperatures like we’re clowns.”

The school leader, who asked for anonymity to avoid repercussions, said the two dozen thermometers sent to her school had no batteries, so she ran to the store and spent nearly $300 of her own money to power them up. They were better left uncharged.

“Why are they spending millions on black-market thermometers with no name brand?” the principal asked, adding that the directions are printed in Chinese. “These are supposed to keep us safe?”

“I really believe this is black-market items from China bought in bulk — hundreds of handheld thermometers we’ll be throwing in the garbage,” the heated supervisor said.

After recognizing the handheld thermometers were faulty, she said, the DOE installed electric thermometers on the walls in the lobby to check students upon arrival.

She is also disgusted by the DOE’s disinfectant wipes.

“They don’t have the high level of alcohol that’s supposed to protect our hands from bacteria.

“I wouldn’t wipe my ass with it,” she said.

“You can smell the wipes — they smell off. You pull out one and they all come through the middle — and they’re exposed to the outside, exposed to bacteria, making them useless.”

The face masks sent by the DOE are “low-quality crap. They look like fake s–t,” she said.

A Brooklyn principal agreed with his Queens colleague.

“The wipes are cheap, smelly, and sticky,” he said.

The thermometers came without batteries, which the DOE has yet to provide,  and “have to be calibrated.”

Masks, he said, are “the cheapest, lowest-quality type.”

The DOE also sent two 30-by-30 inch plexiglass shields for desks and counter tops. “It’s not enough,” he said.

The Post reported last month that some teachers were pleading for masks, hand sanitizers, thermometers and other PPE on donation sites like Donors Choose.

At his daily press conference the next week, Mayor Bill de Blasio played a video touting measures the DOE was taking to protect students from COVID-19. It said the DOE had ordered 4 million face masks, 3.5 million bottles of hand sanitizer and 80,000 canisters of disinfectant wipes, among other supplies.

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