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Monday, September 14, 2020

Top Executives at the NYC DOE Quit

UPDATE November 14, 2020

DISTRICT 2 Superintendent Donalda Chumney leaves the NYC Department of Education for a new position in Norwalk, Connecticut next week.

Donalda Chumney




                                 Tomas Hanna and Cheryl Watson-Harris are leaving NYC's DOE.[NYPOST]

                           

                                                                 Ursulina Ramirez


                                                            Cheryl Watson-Harris


                                                                          Alison Hirsh

UPDATE September 21, 2020:

                                                          Karin Goldmark

Karin Goldmark leaves her post at the NYC Department of Education to work for Joe Biden 

Top NYC Education Department officials quit as city braces for unprecedented school year
By , NEW YORK DAILY NEWS 
SEP 10, 2020


As the city attempts to pull off a school year full of unprecedented challenges, top Department of Education officials are heading for the exits.

Ursulina Ramirez is set to step down as the DOE’s chief operating officer next week. Earlier this summer, Cheryl Watson-Harris quit as first deputy chancellor. Tomas Hanna, who was chief human capital officer, also jumped ship.

While Mayor de Blasio named a replacement for Watson-Harris last month and there’s another official acting in Hanna’s role, it wasn’t immediately clear how Ramirez’s vacancy will be filled — and whether the departures will hamper efforts to keep kids safe as in-person classes start Sept. 21.

“All of the mayor’s glossy plans and all of his glossy announcements — they’re nothing without key staff to operationalize them,” said Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the Council’s Education Committee.

He said the loss of Ramirez — who helped oversee plans to teach kids through a mix of online and in-person learning — is an especially grievous blow.

“Now more than ever, you need to operationalize things in a safe way,” Treyger said. “It’s not clear to me how they plan to fill [Ramirez’s] position, especially with two weeks left to go before school reopens for kids.”

Ramirez nodded to huge challenges ahead in an email to DOE staff last week.

“It’s been hard for us all — but also inspiring for me personally to be part of a brilliant and focused team of colleagues whose sole mission is to ensure safe, healthy conditions for learning and teaching,” she wrote on Sept. 4.

“Though there’s more work to do, more impact to have, I leave proud of what we’ve done together,” added Ramirez, who is expected to take a job at a nonprofit.

Hanna, who ditched the DOE for a Pennsylvania school district in June, went heavy on the cliches in informing staff of his departure.

"Justice and equity are essential to the success of any workplace and any public school system,” he wrote staffers on June 30. “Thank you for all you do and will do.”

Rank-and-file DOE staff are left shaking their heads over the streak of departures among upper management.

“What do we not know that they know about what’s happening next?” said a staffer who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation. "It’s not sending a great message and I think there’s just a general feeling of malaise at this point.

"People are like, it’s clearly only going to get worse,” the person added.

The threat of a rare teacher strike prompted the mayor to delay the start of the school year by about two weeks. Concern about safety measures remains high. And staggering tax revenue losses may necessitate payroll cuts across city agencies, officials have warned.

Still, the official DOE line maintains all systems are go for the start of the school year.

“We have incredibly strong leaders with dedicated teams at all levels of the DOE who are focused on our common goal of a safe and successful school reopening," spokeswoman Miranda Barbot said in a statement. "We have tremendous confidence in our staff as we begin this school year.”

The departures of Ramirez, Hanna and Watson-Harris, who’s now CEO of a school district in Georgia, come amid a wider exodus from the de Blasio administration.

Kathryn Garcia resigned as sanitation commissioner earlier this week, as did Dr. Raul Perea-Henze, the deputy mayor for health and human services. Dr. Oxiris Barbot stepped down as health commissioner last month, after a series of battles with the mayor. Several staffers recently quit Hizzoner’s press shop.

De Blasio went on the defensive when asked at a Thursday press conference if New Yorkers should be concerned about the departures.

“I think you’re leading the witness,” he told a reporter. “No, of course not – this is a huge operation with a very deep bench. There’s plenty of talented people here. There’s plenty of leadership.”

But Treyger said the recent exists show unease as the mayor struggles with multiple crises.

“There is shaky confidence in City Hall,” he said. “The DOE is not immune to that. I think a number of agencies' confidence in City Hall has been rattled in the course of the year.”

The DOE staffer said colleagues are bracing for more high-level departures.

“The sense is we’re in for some very dark and bleak times,” the person said.

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Santiago Taveras and The New York City Schools That Did Not Close

 


Santiago Taveras
The New York City Schools That Didn’t Close; 

What Can We Learn From Regional Enrichment Centers?

Parentadvocates.org, Betsy Combier, Editor, September 14, 2020

In a cold, drizzly Monday morning in late March, Santiago Taveras left his home in Teaneck, New Jersey, before the sun rose. Traffic was light as Taveras merged onto the George Washington Bridge, crossed over the Hudson and Harlem Rivers into the Bronx, passed the shuttered Cardinal Hayes High School, and steered toward a big, boxy building in Mott Haven. Already, the city had begun to feel like the national epicenter of what people would come to call the pandemic. The previous week, the city had implemented shelter-in-place rules, shutting down offices, restaurants, and schools. Ninety-nine people had died in the city so far and another twelve thousand New Yorkers had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, fifteen percent of them in the Bronx. Taveras’s wife, Alexandra, had fretted as he left the house that morning, wearing a dress shirt and slacks. What if he caught the virus? What if he carried it home?

Santiago Taveras


The New York City Schools That Didn’t Close

What can we learn from regional enrichment centers, which hastily opened just before the peak of the coronavirus pandemic?

By Casey Parks, The New Yorker, September 14, 2020
In a cold, drizzly Monday morning in late March, Santiago Taveras left his home in Teaneck, New Jersey, before the sun rose. Traffic was light as Taveras merged onto the George Washington Bridge, crossed over the Hudson and Harlem Rivers into the Bronx, passed the shuttered Cardinal Hayes High School, and steered toward a big, boxy building in Mott Haven. Already, the city had begun to feel like the national epicenter of what people would come to call the pandemic. The previous week, the city had implemented shelter-in-place rules, shutting down offices, restaurants, and schools. Ninety-nine people had died in the city so far and another twelve thousand New Yorkers had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, fifteen percent of them in the Bronx. Taveras’s wife, Alexandra, had fretted as he left the house that morning, wearing a dress shirt and slacks. What if he caught the virus? What if he carried it home?


Taveras, a Dominican who was born in the Bronx, is six feet three and, as he often points out, weighs about three hundred and fifty pounds. He has worked for the New York City Department of Education for thirty years as an elementary school teacher, assistant principal, high-school teacher and principal, student-support manager, and deputy chancellor, among other roles. Now he was taking on a role for which there was little if any, precedent in the department’s hundred-and-seventy-eight-year history. He would open a temporary school in the middle of a worldwide health crisis.

Around 5:30 a.m., Taveras parked his Toyota Sienna minivan outside of the Mott Haven Educational Campus. Most of the city’s 1.1 million schoolchildren would stay home that day, as they had every day the previous week, but a deputy chancellor and a team of administrators had rushed to put together a plan for what they’d begun calling “regional enrichment centers”—schools for the children of essential workers. Department officials had warned Taveras that they weren’t sure how many students would show, or when. Fourteen thousand families had registered to send their children to one of ninety-three centers. The night before, officials had assigned a hundred and seventy students—ages three to fifteen, nearly all of them the children of health-care workers in the Bronx or Harlem—to the school that Taveras would oversee.

He stepped inside and found that the custodial staff had arrived before he did. The lobby reeked of bleach and disinfectant, which he found reassuring. He walked the building’s halls, looking for classrooms with sinks. Most of the doors were decorated with children’s art: skylines, butterflies. Some of the desks still had notebooks in them—supplies that students left behind before lockdown. One classroom had the remnants of a bean-growing project. Normally, the Mott Haven campus holds half a dozen schools; it sits on six and a half acres, and when it opened, a decade ago, architects called it the largest single school-construction project in New York City history. Even if hundreds of kids came today, Taveras thought, he’d have plenty of space to house them.

Half a dozen paraprofessionals arrived, some wearing gloves, goggles, and face shields. By 7 a.m., a school nurse stood in the entrance, waiting with a no-contact thermometer for the first families to arrive. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would not issue recommendations for face masks until April 3rd, so the children who barrelled in were barefaced and beaming, ready to return to school after a week off.

“Welcome,” Taveras said, bumping elbows with the kids. “I’m Big Santi.” He spaced the kids out as they came in, careful not to fill any classroom with more than nine children. He sent four- and five-year-olds to a room on the north end, then he directed nine- and ten-year-olds toward desks that still bore other children’s names.

The parents were mostly nurses from the Montefiore, Harlem Hospital, New York Half a dozen paraprofessionals arrived, some wearing gloves, goggles, and face shields. By 7 a.m., a school nurse stood in the entrance, waiting with a no-contact thermometer for the first families to arrive. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would not issue recommendations for face masks until April 3rd, so the children who barrelled in were barefaced and beaming, ready to return to school after a week off.

“Welcome,” Taveras said, bumping elbows with the kids. “I’m Big Santi.” He spaced the kids out as they came in, careful not to fill any classroom with more than nine children. He sent four- and five-year-olds to a room on the north end, then he directed nine- and ten-year-olds toward desks that still bore other children’s names.

The parents were mostly nurses from the Montefiore, Harlem Hospital, New York Presbyterian/Columbia University, and Lincoln Medical Centers. Some of them were crying; nearly all of them looked exhausted. The city was weeks away from reaching its peak infection rate, but already, Taveras said, he could see “it” in the parents’ faces. “It wasn’t even necessarily the hours,” he said. “It was what they were seeing at work.”

Taveras walked every parent down the well-lit basement hallway that he’d commandeered for the center. He pointed out the hand wipes and the bottles of disinfectant that city officials had sent over the weekend, and he spread his arms wide to show that custodians had spaced each desk six feet apart. Kids rushed to pick their spots. Their parents lingered. At 10 a.m., Taveras led the last of them through the sterilized lobby and out the exit doors. Then he returned to a classroom, washed his hands, and doused them with disinfectant. “I said to myself, ‘If these people are putting their lives on the line, at least let me make sure that their kids are good.’ ”

By the second week of March, many parents, teachers, and elected officials were asking Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the city’s public schools. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo had confirmed the city’s first coronavirus case on March 1st. School attendance had plummeted. Three dozen infectious-disease experts signed a letter, delivered March 12th, urging the Mayor to act. But de Blasio resisted. New York’s schools, he said, were “interrelated deeply” with its health-care and mass-transit systems. Leaders of 1199 S.E.I.U., the city’s largest union for health-care workers, had urged the Mayor to recognize that closing schools would leave many of them with no one to care for their children.

“We are worried about a cascading effect,” de Blasio told MSNBC’s Joy Reid, on March 14th. “You’re not going to have a functioning health-care system if the folks in the medical field, the doctors, the nurses, the techs, everyone has to stay home with their kids.” De Blasio told Reid that he was “trying to hold a line,” but, behind the scenes, a group of education administrators had begun acknowledging what would become a months-long debate. For some students, school is the only place where they can eat a warm meal or access medical care. Schools provide clothes and psychological support. For hundreds of thousands of families, they provide child care that is otherwise unaffordable. And back in March, even for families who could afford it, there seemed to be little child care available at all.
It started to register,” Karin Goldmark, the deputy chancellor for school planning and
development, said. “We are going to have to do something so that people can still go to work so that they can save the .lives of New Yorkers.”


 

  Goldmark, an administrator who normally manages the department’s building utilization
Karin Goldmark

—“Basically, I do for space what the C.F.O. does for money”—agreed to take the lead in" creating a network of emergency child-care centers. On the afternoon of Friday the 13th, she started brainstorming with the help of other D.O.E. departments. By Monday morning, New York City schools were closed, and Goldmark had a plan.

She’d spent the weekend calling the health-care-workers’ union to find out where their members lived. When the union sent her a list of popular Zip Codes, she started casting for buildings in those neighborhoods. During a regular year, students attend classes in a wide array of structures. Some have high ceilings and windows that open, but others contain narrow hallways and broken H.V.A.C. systems. Goldmark began her search with a detailed checklist. She wanted A.D.A.-accessible spots with a mixture of indoor and outdoor space, and she preferred large, new buildings, like the ones at the Mott Haven campus. The centers planned to serve three hot meals a day, so Goldmark searched for schools with big kitchens, places wide enough for cafeteria workers to stand far apart from one another.

The department initially limited enrollment to children whose parents were health-care workers, transit employees, or emergency responders. They allowed some Sanitation Department staff to apply, but, even with those caps, Goldmark knew that she’d need at least five thousand Department of Education employees to volunteer at emergency centers with no promise of additional pay. Most of the city’s seventy-five thousand instructors would be working from home, teaching their students remotely, so Goldmark assembled a motley crew of high-school principals, paraprofessionals, and social workers.


 

Midlevel administrators like Taveras volunteered, and Ursulina Ramirez, the department’s chief
Ursulina Ramirez

operating officer, (who quit her position at the NYC DOE on or about Sept. 17 2020), agreed to run a center in Queens temporarily after the original appointee fell sick just before it opened.

A few hours before the centers opened, Goldmark was still assembling her team. At 10 p.m. Sunday, a school official called Juliette Giorgio, a retired teacher and social worker who had spent thirty-three years in the department, to ask if she could be at P.S. 128, in Queens, by seven o’clock the next day. Giorgio retired last year to take care of her mother, who has Parkinson’s and dementia, but she didn’t hesitate that night. She arranged for a home health aide to stay with her mother and reported to the Queens center the next morning.

“There’s a lot going on now about fear,” Goldmark said, alluding to the ongoing debate about how to reopen all of New York City’s public schools safely, which recently resulted in de Blasio, under pressure from the United Federation of Teachers, delaying the first day of in-person instruction to September 21st. “But people stepped forward at that moment. It was people who were willing to put themselves at risk in order to serve the city. They were just, like, 'People need us, so we’re here'

Taveras volunteered because he missed being around children. He hadn’t worked full time in a school since 2016, when he was removed as principal of DeWitt Clinton High School, in the Bronx, after an investigation found that he had changed grades for four students without following proper procedures. He’d spent the last three years working as a climate-and-culture specialist, doing therapeutic crisis intervention and conflict resolution for the high schools in Districts Seven, Nine, and Twelve, a job that takes him into schools but doesn’t allow him to form day-to-day relationships with young people. By 10 a.m. on the first day, he had twenty kids, a little crew that reminded him of the children he had taught in his first job, at Central Park East 1 Elementary School.

Other centers sat empty that day. A school nurse from the Bronx told the Web site Gothamist that she’d woken up at 5 a.m., driven past signs warning her to stay home, then waited alongside two dozen other staffers for families who never showed up at a center on the Upper East Side. For some families, the centers felt like a last resort. Joan Curcio Williams, a physician who was working sixteen-hour days at Elmhurst Hospital Center, in Queens, said that she hesitated when hospital staff e-mailed her about the centers. “The idea of going was scary,” Williams said. “The first wave of students were going to be the children of first responders, people who were tremendously exposed. You’re basically making a decision that you’re going to trust in the system.”
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Sunday, September 13, 2020

UFT President Mike Mulgrew is Angry, and Confirms Why Members Are Right To Fight The Department of Education

UFT President Michael Mulgrew
Youtube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJBzW5-0Ilk&fbclid=IwAR2rOakOEEzMLaI6-L9dKHYCW_1CVJBPZSmr9QAMXk8-rRAIMqIrqgD576g

 I congratulate UFT President Mike Mulgrew on a great youtube rant on Friday afternoon, September 11, 2020.

He points to the fact that the NYC Department of Education has not been honest with the protections promised for teachers in NYC schools.

He cites a lack of transparency by Department heads, who should not be hiding very important COVID-19 illnesses and job vacancies. And more

My only comment would be that he asks everyone to rely on their chapter leaders. I wish that I could agree. However, although most chapter leaders do a spectacular job, all are not given job protection by the UFT when a principal doesn't like being exposed for doing something wrong.

It's so easy to argue that someone is guilty of "incompetence" or "misconduct" when what the Principal really is doing is trying to remove a great teacher from the school payroll after he/she blows the whistle for something that the principal did that was wrong, or in an unlawful manner. Throughout the past 20+ years of doing advocacy work for teachers, educators, staff, parents, and students I have seen cunning moves by DOE administrators that are expertly designed to disguise prejudice, discrimination, aggravated harassment, etc. These ugly moves make the challenge of defending the victim all that more difficult. But not impossible.

Please, Mike, make Chapter Leaders immune to prosecution and/or retaliation while they act in line with their CL duties? 

Thank you,

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

This is what you could use to back up a legal action to teach remotely and/or sue the Department of Education:



Michael Mulgrew - Message to UFT Members - September 11th, 2020

Teachers union, medical experts, elected officials, and parent and community groups: Individual schools deemed unsafe must remain closed

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





The DOE’s plan fails NYC students and teachers – a Teacher’s Letter to Anyone Listening

Officials renew calls to close ‘unsafe’ NYC school with air flow 





by Susan Edelman, NYPOST, September 12, 2020


While trying to bolster confidence in the planned school reopening, the city Department of Education won’t reveal a full list of schools where teachers who returned to work last week have tested positive for COVID-19.

The DOE also would not say whether parents or guardians at the affected schools would be notified.

As the number of teachers who test positive grew — at least 24 as of Friday — some co-workers say they were not notified or contacted by city disease detectives when staffers reported the infections.

Lynn Shon, a teacher at MS 88 in Brooklyn, tweeted Saturday that she and fellow staffers heard for the first time that morning from the city’s Test & Trace program — four days after being exposed to a colleague who tested positive for COVID.

“It’s unacceptable the lag between when we were exposed and when we were directly contacted by the city,” Shon told The Post.

A Bronx teacher told The Post she learned only by asking around that a teacher at a school in her building, PS 168, had tested positive. She saw staffers at that school leaving early on Thursday, but the school was open Friday.

“No notice went out. They are trying to hide it, going about business as usual,’ the teacher said.


Nequan McLean, a dad and president of Community Education Council 16 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, said he learned Thursday that a teacher at MS 267 had tested positive.

“There has been no official notification given out at the school. Everyone is back today,” he said Friday.

The parent advisory group voted 8-0 during an emergency meeting Thursday night to “take legal action” to stop the DOE from opening District 16 schools because officials did not turn over reports on ventilation and other building conditions. The group has retained a lawyer.

“We don’t feel like our schools are safe.” McLean said after the meeting. “The gloves are off. They’re telling too many lies.”

The DOE  said Friday it has confirmed 19 teachers at 18 schools have tested positive for COVID. One school, P.S. 811X, was closed on Friday for at least 24 hours, because it had two confirmed COVID cases in different classrooms.

The COVID-infected teachers started reporting to schools citywide last Tuesday before getting their test results, which were supposed to be “expedited.” About 15,000 teachers had themselves tested voluntarily, the DOE said.

The DOE refused to disclose how many school staffers exposed to the infected teachers have now been sent home to quarantine for 14 days.

“The mayor is saying nobody needs to know about these cases, which is pretty crazy,” said teacher Liat Olenick. “If I were a parent, I would definitely want to know.

Olenick is active in MORE-UFT, an activist faction of the teachers’ union, which tweeted a list of 22 schools where teachers reported confirmed cases. The list did not include PS 267 in Brooklyn, which McLean had identified as having a teacher testing positive.

Schools are set to open for students on Sept. 21. Beginning Oct. 1, under an agreement between the city and labor unions, all schools will have mandatory random testing of 10 percent of staff and students.

The plan already has some parents worried about the nasal swabbing — a procedure that can be uncomfortable — being done on their children without them being present. Kids whose parents don’t give permission will have to learn remotely, officials say.

Also in October, the DOE will launch the city’s “Situation Room,” described as a “rapid response team” with members of the city Health Department and the Test & Trace Corps aimed at detecting and curbing spread of COVID.

The Health Department failed to conduct such testing and tracing in March, when numerous teachers were likely infected before Mayor de Blasio finally agreed to close the schools. Nearly 100 school staffers have since died from the virus.

Florida Court Rules School Reopening Utterly F*cking Insane

Jamie Lynn Crofts
August 27, 2020

By Alexa Lardieri, Staff Writer, US NEWS July 20, 2020

The state reported more than 10,500 new coronavirus cases and 90 deaths on Monday.

FLORIDA'S LARGEST teachers union filed a lawsuit on Monday against Gov. Ron DeSantis over his order to reopen schools even as cases of the coronavirus rise.

The Florida Education Association is suing the governor, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, the Florida Department of Education, Florida State Board of Education, and Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez "to safeguard the health and welfare of public school students, educators and the community at large," the association said in a press release.

"The lawsuit intends to stop the reckless and unsafe reopening of public school campuses as coronavirus infections surge statewide," the release continued.

Corcoran signed an executive order earlier this month ordering all brick and mortar schools, including private and charter institutions, to reopen in August at least five days per week for all students, though the order states that parents can continue remote learning with their child if they choose.

Come August, schools "must provide the full array of services," including in-person lessons and specialized instruction and services for students with individualized education programs.

However, school reopenings are subject to the advice and orders of state and local health departments, and the day-to-day decision to open or close a school will rest locally and with the school board.

"Gov. De Santis needs a reality check, and we are attempting to provide one," FEA President Fedrick Ingram said in the press release. "The governor needs to accept the reality of the situation here in Florida, where the virus is surging out of control."

On Monday, Florida Health reported 10,508 new cases in-state residents and 90 deaths since Sunday. The state has the third most cases in the country, with more than 360,390, and it has recorded 5,072 deaths.

"Everyone wants schools to reopen, but we don't want to begin in-person teaching, face an explosion of cases and sickness, then be forced to return to distance learning," Ingram continued.

In a press conference Monday, Ingram said the lawsuit is seeking to put control and education back "where it belongs, to locally elected school board members and superintendents."


Ingram said it will be safe to return to schools once the infection rate of COVID-19 is under control and falling and the necessary resources are available.

President Donald Trump has threatened to pull funding from schools that do not reopen for the upcoming school year.

"Right now, all we have is a slogan: We must reopen schools," he said. "We need more than a slogan, we need a comprehensive plan."

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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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