A close-up look at NYC education policy, politics,and the people who have been, are now, or will be affected by these actions and programs. ATR CONNECT assists individuals who suddenly find themselves in the ATR ("Absent Teacher Reserve") pool and are the "new" rubber roomers, people who have been re-assigned from their life and career. A "Rubber Room" is not a place, but a process.
NYC Mayor wins a "Who Are You Kidding Award" for 2021. Bill DeBlasio, as Mayor of the City of New York, has control over the New York City Department of Education which is out of control. Ergo, Chancellors Richard Carranza and Meisha Porter win the Award along with Mayor De Blasio.
UPDATE: We should include NYC Chancellor David Banks. We now give the Who Are You Kidding Award to him, Mayor Eric Adams - and everyone in the offices of power in NYC 2024.
Mayor Bill de Blasio gives a news conference outside Phyl's Academy, Wednesday, March 24, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (Mark Lennihan/AP)
The NYC DOE is not kidding. They REALLY mean that they do not want any bad data to be made public. This might make the NYC Department of Education look bad. I mean, look worse.
Here is what I think, courtesy of Rick Kick, Editor (you should buy this book!):
I have given the "Who Are You Kidding Award" to several Chancellors:
The new academic year’s fourth week has just ended, yet America’s largest public school system still refuses to report the number of students in attendance. Preliminary numbers are promised at the end of the month, supposedly earlier than ever before, and that the public should be grateful for getting that much data that quickly.
Really?
Every weekday, the Department of Education delivers, and Mayor de Blasio boasts about the attendance rate — 87% on Thursday — without any numerator or denominator. Is that 87% of 1.1 million students, the pre-COVID tally? Is it 87% of last year’s 960,000, which included more than 600,000 fully remote learners? Or 87% of a much smaller number? The first week of school, the DOE told us it was too early because too many families were still settling in. While there may be some volatility, it’s been a month.
Meanwhile, only Wednesday did educrats reveal the number of kids whose parents have let them get COVID tests — a critical data piece of information, since a random 10% is swabbed weekly, with results triggering partial and full classroom closures. Of roughly a half-million elementary-age students, just 192,705 have signed forms — meaning we’re getting a very incomplete picture of COVID inside schools.
While we’re on the subject, last week came news that only about 300 medically vulnerable kiddos are getting at-home learning (there’s no remote option anymore, just limited at-home instruction for at-risk kids who qualify). That’s a tiny fraction of the 3,000-5,000 Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter expected. Why have these 300 been getting just an hour a day of instruction, far less than what remote learning provided last year? The DOE says it’s rolling out longer-day, small-group instruction for some of these youngsters. Why only now, and why can’t kids get one-on-one for more than an hour a day?
The City Council is mulling bills by Mark Treyger demanding the DOE publish basic indicators. If the mayor signs it, it won’t take effect for another 30 days. New Yorkers deserve the truth now. It’s embarrassing we even have to say this.
Shaun Donovan speaks during a virtual announcement of his candidacy for the 2021 New York City mayoral campaign in the Bronx. | Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo
We are in favor of validating a policy of school choice - public or charter - and allowing kids with Special needs - autism, ADHD, 2e Twice Exceptional, etc - to have the right learning environment and support. Thus, we believe in the Specialized High Schools' existence and that the test to get must remain, but be given to all students, and not denied to anyone. When I was President of the PTA at Booker T. Washington MS 54, I did a small amount of research into who took the exam at any of the middle schools in Harlem, and we found that Guidance Counselors told students that the SHSAT was "not for them".
Additionally, kids starting kindergarten and through middle school should have the same opportunity to take classes with Gifted Education curricula similar to other students already in a G&T or Honors Program. The segregation starting in kindergarten has to stop. The standard of excellence should be raised for all students, not lowered or dumbed down so that all students are "equal" at a common level of accomplishment.
Every child is unique and deserves his or her path to his/her personal best.
I don't believe that the huge entity known as the NYC Department of Education values individual achievement and the needs of students over the desire to silence and retaliate against employees and parents who are too outspoken and/or who make complaints about anything happening/not happening in their schools. Sadly, this won't change soon enough.
Shaun Donovan is the latest mayoral
candidate to call for permanently eliminating middle school admissions screens
but said he wants to change the Specialized High School Admissions Test instead
of scrapping it.
Admissions
screens, which include high-stakes tests among other metrics, can have an
outsize impact on a student’s academic career. But they are increasingly seen
as among the worst culprits in perpetuating notorious segregation in New York
City schools. While less prevalent than middle school screens, the SHSAT has
become a symbol of the type of test that has historically helped bar Black and
Latino students from the city’s eight elite high schools.
The de Blasio administration is removing
admissions screens at all middle schools for a year and plans
to administer the Specialized High School Admissions Test at the end of this
month. Donovan said, as mayor, he would end the middle school screens
permanently.
"I think fundamentally we do need to ensure that the screens
are permanently lifted but we also have to recognize that eliminating screens
is the first step," Donovan told POLITICO. "An open lottery alone
isn't gonna lead to more diverse schools without more intentional efforts
beyond that and so the screens is only, from my perspective ... a first
step."
As part of his education
plan, which POLITICO previewed and will be released today, Donovan
said he would put in place district-wide policies at the middle school level
such as the weighted lottery approach currently being used in District 15 in
Brooklyn — which is among a handful of districts that has a school diversity
plan in place, while several others are in the process of developing those
programs.
At the high school level, Donovan would continue the elimination
of geographic priorities — tying a student to the area they live in — which the
city is also abandoning temporarily this year. He also said he would change the
high school admissions system to include mechanisms like weighted lotteries to
ensure schools are more representative of students from all demographic groups.
As to the admissions process at the city’s specialized high
schools, Donovan said the specialized high schools represent eight of roughly
400 public high schools, arguing there needs to be a much broader policy and
change to address a broader set of schools.
The SHSAT has become a focal point of the fractious debate over
segregation in city schools. Opponents argue it’s led to abysmal admission
rates for Black and Hispanic students compared to their white and Asian
counterparts. Supporters say eliminating the test will blunt the academic rigor
of the elite schools.
Last year only 470 Black and Hispanic students were admitted to the eight
schools, compared to 1,072 white students and 2,305 Asian students. Black and
Latino students make up 70 percent percent of the city’s 1.1 million students.
"I am open that there could be a revised test, I don't know
that we necessarily need to get rid of it completely,” Donovan told POLITICO.
“But clearly there have to be changes and I think that needs to be done in
partnership with students, teachers, families and make sure... that we're
creating metrics that really look at the ways that the changes are driving
greater integration at other specialized schools.”
Donovan, who grew up in Manhattan, said he went to private school
but said he has had experiences working and volunteering in other schools.
"I started volunteering in a homeless shelter in college and
working in housing and homelessness and came back to the city and worked in the
South Bronx, in Central Brooklyn and a whole range of other communities that
really were deeply challenged in the 1970s and 80s," he said.
Donovan, who worked in the Obama White House and Bloomberg mayoral
administration, pointed to his work at the national level, including efforts
with former Education Secretary Arne Duncan and John King around the
"Promise Neighborhoods" program that supports cradle-to-career
efforts in low-income communities, as well as his work with Geoff Canada of
Harlem Children's Zone.
Donovan is not the first 2021 candidate to call for an end to
middle school screens, but his early adoption of the position signals the
weight his campaign is placing on education policy.
After the city announced it would temporarily
eliminate admissions screens at middle schools, mayoral
candidate Dianne Morales, who served as CEO of Phipps Neighborhoods, a social
services nonprofit in the Bronx, said she would permanently abandon screens if
elected mayor as a first step to desegregating schools.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams recently released a policy
book outlining his plans but his education agenda does not
mention admissions screens or other school integration issues. Other mayoral
candidates like Comptroller Scott Stringer and former sanitation commissioner
Kathryn Garcia have not yet indicated where they stand on admissions screens.
As part of his plan, Donovan also wants to establish a School
Diversity and Integration Office within the city’s Department of Education to
come up with a comprehensive integration approach. He wants to add diversity,
integration and inclusion metrics to annual school quality reports and create a
new publicly available equity report card for the city and each community
school district.
He also called for expanding the number of seats in
high-performing, integrated schools and supporting community-driven integration
plans.
Parents and children gather in front of City Hall to protest the closing of NYC schools on Nov. 19. [photo:Mark Lennihan/AP]
Everyone is being harmed and blamed for the COVID-public-school-complex blunders.In NYC, people have set up walls around their opinions and refuse to negotiate. This is not good for anyone, of any age. But when there is institutional mismanagement such as we see in New York, where people who have a different opinion are threatened, hit, even killed, there has to be a serious concern. We are for school choice. Public school is not the best learning environment for all young minds. See what is happening to gifted children. They are being punished. The test for the SHSAT, the Specialized High Schools, has not been scheduled yet by the Department of Education, an agency that has shown very little support or respect for any young person learning far above the average student. Mayor Bill de Blasio's remote learning for some, then all, then some, then none, then only special needs children and elementary grade kids, doesn't work. Many teachers have been given their accommodations until the summer, so there is a very large number of schools that simply do not have the staff and teachers to give in-person education. Many homeless children do not have the internet. No one really knows how many. Meanwhile, many charters and religious schools have remained, and continue to remain, open, with appropriate precautions. Others have stayed closed through at least January, with all staff on board. We need good management and Chancellor Carranza is just not giving this to us. It will be another year before we can vote de Blasio out. Let's get politicians removed from public education by removing Mr. Carranza and Mayoral control and putting in an educator with a successful business background, as Chancellor.
City principals are set to clash with parents who haven’t submitted COVID-19 testing consent forms but still want their kids in class when schools reopenMonday.
The Department of Education has stressed that students who lack the document can’t participate in building instruction.
“In order to come to school in person, students need to have a consent form on file — there is no grace period for this rule,” DOE spokesperson Nathaniel Styer told The Post.
Parents who oppose the DOE’s in-school testing format are refusing to submit the forms and threatening lawsuits if their kids are barred from buildings.
“The decision by the Mayor and the DOE to force parents to consent to have their school-age children tested for the Covid Virus as a condition of attending school is outrageous, immoral and a violation of their constitutional rights,” read a statement from a group called Parents Opposed to Mandatory Testing.
They’ve also disallowed families from providing results from private doctors, asserting that kids need to be tested at the same time on school grounds to establish representative samples.
Debates over the consent forms have erupted on social media, with some parents arguing that the tests are harmless and necessary to curb outbreaks while others counter that their children should not undergo the procedure in their absence.
City principals have been calling families in recent days to remind them of the requirement.
“If a student arrives on their first day of in-person without a consent form in hand or submitted online, you must call their parent or guardian that day to collect consent immediately,” according to guidance provided to principals by the DOE.
City Hall has not provided updated consent form data for several weeks and Mayor Bill de Blasio said this week that he did not have current figures on hand.
As of mid-November, the DOE had collected 117,000 forms from 335,000 kids enrolled in the city’s blended learning model.
Since the reopening of schools is occurring in phases, only 190,000 kids are eligible to return to their school buildings next week.
It remains unclear how many of them have yet to submit the consent forms and intend to arrive at school buildings Monday.
The DOE asserts that random weekly testing of students is critical for the successful reopening of schools — especially amid rising citywide infection rates.
“Testing is quick, safe, and necessary to keep schools open and we will follow up with families to make sure they fill out the form in order to return to buildings,” Styer said.
De Blasio said Wednesday that he expected a rush of consent forms to be submitted this coming week.
Only 117,000 of the 335,000 city kids enrolled in the city’s suspended blended learning program have provided COVID-19 testing consent forms, the Post has learned.
Grand opening, grand closing. A Queens elementary school was forced to close just one day after resuming in-person classes this week due to several COVID-19 cases, sources told The Post....
City principals are set to clash with parents who haven’t submitted COVID-19 testing consent forms but still want their kids in class when schools reopen Monday. The Department of Education...
The Department of Education has extended staff COVID-19 medical exemptions for the rest of the school year. The accommodation was granted Thursday to about 35,000 DOE employees, allowing them to...
NYC Chancellor Richard Carranza, Mayor Bill de Blasio, UFT President Michael Mulgrew
In New York City distrust reigns. No one believes anyone anymore.
The Mayor, Bill de Blasio, says his wife should get $millions of dollars for her organization ThriveNYC which is supposedly established to keep people happy and sane. Evidently this was, and is, untrue, at least according to multiple stories on the internet. ...Which is what this entire post is about.
Who do you believe?
Parents do not believe the Department of Education; educators at all levels do not believe their unions (UFT and CSA).
But the one thing everyone is in agreement with is that every person must look out for their own safety and that of their loved ones, 'cause no one else can be trusted to do it for you.
Teachers at Grace Dodge Educational Campus in the Bronx rallied on Tuesday to call attention to safety concerns about reopening school buildings. Teachers are worried ventilation is not adequate in the cafeteria, where they say the windows don’t open and the air conditioners don’t work.Courtesy photo/Cristobal Vivar
New York City’s education department on Tuesday released room-level inspection reports for the ventilation systems at every single public school and found most classrooms are safe to reopen, but most school bathrooms are not.
Mayor Bill de Blasio promised the records would help school communities understand all the precautions put into place for Sept. 21, when students are slated to return to in-person learning for the first time since the pandemic forced the country’s largest school system to close its doors last spring.
“The ventilation issue was: Was there proper air circulation, in combination with all the other health and safety measures? And what this inspection regimen was trying to determine is which classrooms had that,” de Blasio said at a press conference. “I don’t think it’s a lot more complex than that.”
Since school buildings were shuttered in March, a growing body of evidence has shown that the coronavirus can linger in the air. That has made proper ventilation a key line of defense, in addition to mask-wearing and social distancing. Experts say that classrooms need to have fresh air coming in, and stale air being pulled out — which can usually be accomplished with fans, powerful air filters, open windows, and, in spaces where all that is not enough, portable air purifiers.
City leaders have offered little explanation for how they are determining that ventilation is up to par and whether buildings are safe to reopen. The reports released Tuesday include a breakdown of whether each space in a building has at least one functioning window, and whether the mechanical components of the ventilation system are working in that room. There is no determination included in the reports of whether a particular classroom is usable.
That information is a good starting point, said William P. Bahnfleth, a professor and the chair of the Epidemic Task Force at The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, which has issued ventilation guidance for schools that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has adopted. He wishes the reports also showed the amount of outdoor air circulating in each space has been measured, and compared against the size of the room and the number of teachers and students expected to be inside.
“They don’t go to the extent of verifying that the outdoor air supply and filtration are what you would hope they would be,” Bahnfleth said of the reports. “You would hope that a building that is going to be occupied would be checked more thoroughly.”
Lorraine Grillo, the head of the School Construction Authority, or SCA, suggested the city is working with unions to conduct “engineering-type” inspections along the lines that Bahnfleth recommends. But she did not provide specifics.
Grillo said those returning to school “can feel very confident that the union, as well as SCA and school facilities, have been working very hard to make every classroom safe.”
Not everyone is convinced.
When Principal Rashid Davis saw the education department’s list of schools with ventilation issues so serious that they cannot immediately open, he was surprised that his school, P-Tech, the Pathways in Technology Early College High School in Brooklyn, was not on it.
He thought about P-Techs ongoing effort to overhaul the century-old school’s ventilation system. He recalled the construction noise and dust that would float inside classrooms when the building’s windows are open, and the scaffolding that blocks fresh air from coming in.
“We should be on this list,” Davis emailed his school community late Monday and attached P-Tech’s own ventilation inspection report. It spans three pages and shows not a single space has a working supply or exhaust fan to promote air circulation.
Davis raised the alarm in an email to senior city officials, and said a raft of union and education department leaders came to his building Tuesday morning to hear his concerns. They promised the building’s fans would work by the time students arrive. He’s worried not only about classrooms, but also hallways and bathrooms, and wants to know what criteria are being used to keep the building open while shuttering others.
“We don’t know that,” he said. “And without knowing that, it’s not as transparent as they are saying.”
Without such details, some educators said they are taking the matter into their own hands. Melissa Williams, for one, ordered a simple wind speed meter. Since Williams, an occupational therapist in Washington Heights, has an accommodation that allows her to work from home this school year, she handed off the $30-device to a colleague who planned to use it to check the airflow in her own classroom.
“I do not feel safe with my coworkers going into my workplace,” Williams said.
At the Grace Dodge Campus in the Bronx, which houses three schools, teachers were told they could use the cafeteria for their own lunch breaks. That’s worrisome for Israel Soto, a union representative and social studies teacher at the campus, who said the space has neither functioning air conditioning nor windows that open.
Soto and his colleagues at Crotona International High School rallied outside the building on Tuesday morning to highlight their safety concerns and demand that the school year begin with remote instruction only.
“There’s no ventilation,” Soto said of the lunchroom, adding that the campus has faced maintenance issues for years. “We’ve been saying it, that’s the sad part. It’s not that it has not been known.”
August 19 and August 20 the United Federation of Teachers leadership began work towards a school reopening job action. NYC and the NYC Department of Education had been mostly uncooperative all summer. Disagreements about safety were not close to being resolved. The Department wanted minimal testing requirements, the union wanted stringent testing requirements.
So August 19 and 20 the UFT holds a press conference, announces safety non-negotiables, and begins organizing meetings. First chapter leaders were invited to borough-wide meetings. Then members were invited to meetings in smaller groups.
My union is run top-down. Central gives instructions to the boroughs, and often directly to District Reps. District Reps give directions to Chapter Leaders – some of whom follow them – and that’s all that’s really expected. In a few chapters there is actual discussion, but in many, the CL doesn’t even communicate information from the Central, and in most the CL just communicates from Central. There is not much two-way flow of information. The idea of Officers and Reps “serving” members is paternalistic, at best. (with very notable exceptions – if you almost jumped out of your chair when you read those words – you are probably in that minority. And we are incredibly thankful to the handful of you)
So Chapter Leaders, then members got invited to meetings. And the stakes, possible job action, questions about personal safety and safety of our students, were high. Very high. Higher than at any other union meeting most of us have been to. Ever. And the reaction was not what the leaders expected. In the UFT, instructions are given, chapter leaders follow them, or ignore them. But here there were questions. Lots of questions.
Do we have to strike? (Quite a bit of nervousness)
Why aren’t we demanding full remote (Quite a few challenges to Central’s “We want to go in, but safely” strategy)
What’s the timeline? (Central had not prepared a timeline. These were designed a bit like pep rallies)
When’s the vote? There was no answer.
What steps should chapter leaders take? The answers were absent or nebulous, came from a variety of sources, but not central. I was asked to organize a chapter meeting, but not yet. And there was no follow-up to say “now” (passive voice there, intentionally so) (Central had not prepared the next steps. These were designed a bit like pep rallies)
The process gets repeated in the member meetings, but attendance is gooooood… but not excellent. And members might ask fewer difficult questions, but there is a clear “enthusiasm gap” (larger when considering the significant numbers who did not come).
What happened?
That’s easy. You should not run a union top-down. You cannot organize a strike top-down.
By August 27 and 28 it was clear to many that this was not going right. Instead of vagueness about a schedule for voting, the discussion was filtering to the members that it would be Exec Board 8/31 and Delegate Assembly 9/1, and there was no time for a membership vote. After the DA, the move would be to court for an injunction against an unsafe opening.
I was worried about what was going on. I wrote to Mulgrew and the officers, urging them NOT to skip a membership vote:
I understand that there is consideration of strike authorization votes at the Executive Board and the Delegate Assembly.
I also understand that there may not be a membership vote. I hope I am mistaken. That would be a serious error. There is the issue of democracy. but I think that is relatively minor. But the issues of member engagement loom large. Organizing a vote increases member engagement, and member buy-in. It also provides real-time feedback from the field.Are chapter leaders organizing? Is there resistance? What are the issues? The activity around organizing a vote makes a strike more effective. For members who are already on board, it makes a smaller difference; the vote increases enthusiasm. But for members on the fence, skipping the vote sends the message that the leaders don’t trust the members, or don’t care what they think. It will harden the pockets of resistance. I don’t know if support in the field is at 95%, 85%, 75%, 65% or 55%… but even at 85% we need to win more people over. A membership vote makes us – and any potential job action – stronger. I hope that I was indeed mistaken – that a membership vote is planned. But if that is not the case, I would thank you to consider the matter carefully,
And then on Monday August 31 the vote at the Executive Board was for both strike authorization, but also for 24 hours more to negotiate. And Tuesday morning de Blasio and Mulgrew and Carranza announced a deal.
Why the deal?
From the mayor’s side, there really are serious problems with the plans. September 10 (which had been scheduled to be the first day with kids) was looking like a disaster. He bought time, and he bought labor “peace” without much cost.
From the UFT leadership’s standpoint, the strike threat was not nearly as effective as they had presumed it would be, and they did not have confidence they could pull off a job action. Under those circumstances, a deal might not have been such a bad move.
It was the very threat of a job action and litigation by our union that forced this mayor to come to the negotiating table to address the issue of keeping our children and educators safe. Before that point he wouldn’t budge.
I agree with most of Mike’s reasoning and appreciate his willingness to speak openly about it. But I don’t agree with his assessment that the threat was effective (and I dismiss the UFT leadership’s similar assessment as self-serving)
What would have happened if the UFT had moved forward towards a job action?
Given the very tight tolerances for scheduling (unworkable, actually) a school might not be able to function, even if everyone shows up. But 30% staying out (beyond those with accommodations) might have shut a school. And the real number would have been higher. But how much higher? Some schools, maybe not all, but probably most, would have been unable to function. A strike, even with the preparations looking half-assed, would probably have shut the system.
A strike might have shut the system, would probably have shut the system, but without any guarantee. And a few entire schools might have kept working – a few at first. With time a weak strike (and there would have been time) could have easily become weaker.
But even if a strike had been effective in shutting the system, a weak strike would have done incalculable damage to the union in the long run. It would have divided us. It would have made members bitter at members and further diminished trust in the leadership. A short term win was possible. But a long term, expensive loss was in the cards.
Couldn’t there have been a better threat?
Yes. But that would have required a different approach.
Open discussion. Organizing for a job action requires that members talk to each other. Members need to convince themselves and convince each other. Most of our chapters do not engage in open discussion of union issues. That should change. But that’s hard. The UFT has developed a culture where asking hard questions or disagreeing is treated as disloyal. It will take a conscious effort to end that. I mean, in fact, it is disloyal to the membership when one of us knows there is a potential problem, but says nothing. But how do we get to the place where showing loyalty to the union and the membership comes before showing loyalty to an officer?
Time. Any kind of organizing takes time, but especially when we need to get 100% or close to 100% on board. Starting August 19? Come on. And it is not just now. Union decisions have to allow members time to figure things out. To talk. To schedule. But three weeks to go from zero to strike was not adequate.
Sharing information. Real discussions require real information. And holding information back from the membership should be considered incompatible with leadership. It’s not just now. This organization speaks to the Mayor, to the Chancellor, to the Press before it speaks to members. That’s bad. At the Chapter Leader meetings two weeks ago CLs asked “what’s next?” and DRs said they didn’t know – because UFT Central was not sharing information. At the DA Peter Lamphere asked where we could read the agreement. You know what? The UFT leadership has asked members and delegates to vote on agreements in the past when we did not have them to read. (Here’s an example) That’s wrong.
Knowledge of strike organization. No one in the leadership of the UFT has led a teacher strike. Almost none of the school-based membership have been involved in a strike. We went into this without experience. But other AFT locals have had those experiences. All layers of our leadership, in better days in the future, should learn from locals with strike experience. For officers and reps arranging trips and seminars should not be too hard. Workshops in NYC for chapter leaders and chapter activists would be useful. And they, in turn, could bring the knowledge back to chapters.
Goals. This gets really specific. But the UFT leadership’s goals were wrong. Early on, maybe late May or mid-June, they decided that NYC schools could open in September. I have written about the fixation on blended learning, and on compromising all sorts of stuff to make it happen. The UFT leadership, before this talk of job action, had already given up on the one clear issue that had a chance of uniting the membership: keeping our schools remote. Look, members agreed with Mulgrew that the “schools should be safe” and that we needed “better testing” – but those were not enough.
So they cut a deal. We cut a deal.
What’s in the Deal?
Random testing, of a pretty big chunk of staff and students (UFT had wanted 100% before school began)
Delayed opening, teachers 9/8, remote for sign-in purposed 9/16, full instruction 9/21
(Vagueness warning) – some ability for a chapter to have safety issues addressed before going into a school
Is this a sellout?
This deal? No. Each one of those points is something we should want. Better testing. More time to prepare for the year. And some ability for chapters to walk out.
We can be disappointed that it is not nearly enough. It is not.
But we also know that we averted a risky strike that could have weakened us in the long run.
Of course, there is more. We still have plans that won’t work. We have unnecessarily risky maskless instructional lunch. We have 1800 plans devised by 1800 principals, some of whom I wouldn’t trust to tie their own shoes.
We also have to address the individual school safety issues. This has been dumped onto individual chapters – potentially dividing the strength of the union. We need to see how aggressively UFT Central and the Borough Offices pursue violations, and how actively they encourage and support chapters standing up.
Are we done?
This is not the last deal for this year. If schools open September 21 there will be huge problems and issues all over the City. But we have a few more days. We want to teach. We want the teaching to work, as best as it can under these circumstances. And we want to keep all of us, ourselves, our families, our schools, our colleagues and our students, safe. We will ultimately need to be remote.
