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| It's essential to children and teenagers to interact with both peers and authority figures, but not at the expense of people's lives. (Photo credit: Stephan Jeremiah) |
Ideally, the best scenario would be for all children to return to their classes and interact personally with teachers and friends. This cannot happen safely now or in September. It is unfortunate that adequate planning has not been done to provide effective remote learning programs, despite excellent teachers' best efforts.
Online curricula, attendance data, and grading/assessments are confusing, useless, or not applied. We don't know how many students are actually doing any work and we don't have accurate numbers of teachers who are doing live teaching. Let's give teachers a chance to learn the latest techniques for on-line teaching, and let's honor their concerns about the health and safety of students, staff, and themselves. The lives of teachers, staff, and students must take precedence over any other concerns.
If you work for the NYC DOE and you are interested in applying for accommodations and or remote teaching, go to these links:
Info on working remotely (to avoid Covid 19).
And reasonable accommodation:
I think that all full-time general education teachers should refuse to go into a classroom until all safety measures are clearly in place. Strict guidelines for the safety and welfare of guidance counselors, therapists, and special education staff and educators at all levels should be put into place so that children who need these services get them.
These actions can all be placed into the category of "accommodation" which is now and has been in recent times, falsified, not complied with, or delayed in many schools throughout New York City. Let's put a stop to fudging the books to look good.
A basic problem is that there is no effective leadership, and I emphasize the word "effective". Mayoral control guarantees this, as Bill de Blasio has shown all too well.The NYC Department of Education right now is a disaster, both in terms of financial as well as employee accountability. Student violence is rampant, and personnel decisions are made on the basis of who you know rather than merit, and yes, what race you are.
I work in the area of educator discipline, and I know how unfair, political, arbitrary and capricious the process for discontinuing and/or terminating tenured or untenured educators really is, and I write about it because I do not work for the DOE.
Richard Carranza was chosen for political reasons, not because he was or is a magic bullet to erase the inequalities within the public school system in New York City. He is way out of his league here, as is our Mayor.
Step number one for providing "effective" management in times of COVID-19 is the re-design of the supply chain/allocation of money and resources. For instance, student funding is based on "seat time", i.e., the actual bodies filling chairs in each classroom. This needs to be reviewed and changed to fit the present circumstances.
We also need to get rid of excessive administrators whose responsibilities are duplicative of others at the same level and create two new positions at the top of the DOE:
1. A business analyst whose responsibilities
include: removing fraudulent spending; re-designing school budgets so that
unnecessary expenditures are put into essential service provision or discarded,
and setting a clear path for cost-effective management of the $34 Billion
dollars handed over to the NYC DOE every year.
2. An education planner who refuses to buy into the cancel culture left-
or right-wing anything, and for the first time in memory puts kids first with
valid policies for learning that allows all children, from all across the
special needs spectrum including gifted
and talented as well as 2e
children what they need to achieve their personal bests. People so visibly
on one side of the political spectrum need not apply. Politics does not belong
in education that is color- gender- and age blind. Diane Ravitch - we value
your service, but we need people who are not so narrow-minded in helping
children that they don't value ideas contrary to yours.
Both new people and their recruits should be given the right
to investigate, manage, and implement programs and guidelines appropriate to establish the business side of the NYC DOE as a well-run entity for decades to
come. These Directors or co-chancellors (or whatever their titles) must be held
accountable to the public by monthly online summaries with details on everything they are doing, and this
transparency must be the desired goal for all parties in the mix.
Use the NYC
DOE money to hire a full-time accountability wizard whose sole job is to find
accurate data for public view in a timely fashion. Give this person immunity
for whistleblowing, unless he/she falsifies records intentionally.
Establish personnel safeguards so that no one can be fired because of
personal jealousy, individual dislike, or any other improper probable cause.
New people and their recruits should be given the right to investigate, manage, and implement programs and guidelines appropriate for the implementation of the business side of the NYC DOE. These Directors or co-chancellors (or whatever their titles) must be held accountable to the public by monthly online summaries of everything they are doing, and this transparency must be the desired goal for all parties in the mix. Use the NYC DOE money to hire a full-time accountability wizard whose sole job is to find accurate data for public view in a timely fashion. Give this person immunity for whistleblowing, unless he/she falsifies records intentionally. Establish personnel safeguards
so that no one can be fired because of personal jealousy, individual dislike, or any other improper probable cause.
Most important is putting in place new consequences for proven non-compliance. Anyone, at any level, who does not comply with agreed-upon statutes and guidelines is punished except in exceptional circumstances. As the public wants the punishment equal to the crime, mediate outcomes with a panel of people, not just one person. This panel must give a decision within a limited time-frame, 30-60 days.
Arthur - you say that it would be "inconvenient" if you got sick and died from COVID-19. Here's where I differ with you, it would be a catastrophe. A single death from this horrible disease is a disaster. Keep doing what you are doing, we need to hear from you.
Stay well.
Betsy Combier
betsy.combier@gmail.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ Blog
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials
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| Students attending large, overcrowded schools like Francis Lewis HS (above), may only be able to meet in classrooms once a week — which is insufficient for their education.NY Post/Chad Rachman |
by Arthur Goldstein, NY POST July 18, 2020
Many people argue it’s important for the social and emotional well-being of our students to be in school. That’s not even debatable. It’s essential for children and teenagers to interact with both peers and authority figures. They must practice skills to navigate our world.
It’s curious, then, that Mayor de Blasio’s reopening plan accomplishes none of the above.
Depending on how crowded schools are, most students will come to classes once every two or three days to allow for social distancing. At large, overcrowded schools like mine, they might come as little as once a week. They will sit far apart from one another. They won’t be able to interact with teachers or each other the way they usually did. It would become our sad duty to enforce not only physical separation, but masking as well. It’s hard to understand how we help students when we can’t even look at their work — let alone their faces.
The Department of Education offers an option for students to learn remotely full-time, and if my kid were still attending, I’d keep her home. The mayor’s plan is a mess, and he hasn’t considered some very important factors.
The worst thing about the plan is it utterly ignores students who aren’t in attendance. While I teach nine or ten students at a time in the building, what will my other 25 students be doing? If I repeat the same lesson for each group in the building, I won’t have time to cover even half the curriculum. With budget cuts, the city can’t afford to hire more teachers to do online what we do in class. To me, that doesn’t scream “equity and excellence” — the mayor’s mantra.
I remember the city’s miserable and inept approach to containing COVID-19 last March. I therefore have applied to teach solely online in September. At my age, 64, it would be inconvenient to get sick and die from COVID. Unsurprisingly, many younger teachers feel the same. They send me, their chapter leader, e-mails suggesting it would be just as terrible for them, their children, and their elderly parents and grandparents. This should come as no surprise to the mayor. Otherwise, why did he offer families the opportunity to opt children out of learning in buildings?
There are things worth fighting for, and things worth dying for. A barely thought-out, outlandishly stupid system that serves no one well is simply not one of them. If the mayor and chancellor were really concerned about giving students the best experience possible, they wouldn’t ask them to risk their lives and those of their families for no good reason.
Remote learning is far from ideal. It falls short of the rich experience real classroom learning provides. Still, it’s a whole lot better than what the mayor envisions. And there are some simple ways to substantially improve it:
Do real classes online. Have students show their faces instead of hiding behind avatars. Every teacher knows students who came to Zoom classes and never answered a question because they were sleeping, playing video games, or otherwise occupied. And let’s make attendance (not just checking in) and class participation requirements.
Give teachers real training instead of wishing them luck and hoping for the best. Online, we can speak to all our students at once. We can break them into groups. We can see their work in a program like Google Classroom, and comment on it live. We can watch them take tests, rather than simply hoping their smart girlfriends aren’t doing the work for them.
Use school buildings for real social and emotional needs. Let a limited number of students in to see counselors, nurses, doctors and social workers. Let them socialize safely, which they could not do in class. If technology or home conditions are difficult, let’s give students and teachers safe, quiet space in buildings to work online.
Chancellor Richard Carranza repeatedly says, “We’re building the plane as we fly it.” Let’s drop this slapdash approach and wait until it’s safe for all of us to go back to what we know and love. Premature returns to school have backfired in Israel, Hong Kong, Beijing, and South Korea, where COVID-19 made comebacks. Following in their footsteps is a bad idea for New York.
Arthur Goldstein teaches English as a new language at Francis Lewis HS.
