The Kid’s public-school principal sent an end-of-year message indicating that, if the New York City Department Of Education declines to provide reopening guidance by mid-July, he’ll survey parents to determine our priorities for safe reopening.
That such decisions could be left up to individual administrators is insane, but that’s CoronaWorld.
The DOE already surveyed 300,000 families; three in four said they’d prefer kids in school buildings in the fall if virus protections are taken. Most don’t feel great about it (only one in four said they’d be “very comfortable”).
But parents have to go back to work; for one thing, federal unemployment benefits are set to run out this month. Some are convinced by news that corona-consequences for kids don’t seem that bad; the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends getting kids back in school, too. For families facing this dilemma, which will disproportionately affect the poor, families of color, and women — well, sending kids back seems OK, I guess, fingers crossed, don’t step on any sidewalk cracks.
Mayor de Blasio said any family will be able to do remote learning full-time; that might help wealthy families who can keep a parent home or hire a tutor, but for most it’s not a solution. (For one thing, it’s an educational disaster for most.)
Following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, the DOE said many NYC school buildings can keep students physically distanced only by holding a third of classroom capacity — 10 students instead of 30. Does that mean one week at school, two weeks at home? One day, two days? No one knows.
De Blasio’s plan (“we’re going to hope and pray in the meantime that the scientific community makes progress on this disease”) sounds not much different from the president’s (“I think that at some point that's going to sort of just disappear. I hope”). Meanwhile, Gov. Cuomo, never missing a chance to big-foot the mayor, reminds us all that school buildings will open only if he approves.
Meanwhile, one in five New York City teachers could seek medical accommodations requiring them to stay home to teach. With city budgets crunched, the DOE will face a hiring freeze this year; hiring more aides or teachers is off the table.
A friend with a child at The Kid’s K-8 public school posted on social media a column decrying the situation, not just in New York but nationally; my friend wrote, “My heart is breaking.” Herewith, the ensuing conversation:
Friend 1: “I am just sitting and waiting for guidance. I am trying to prepare for something, but we have no idea what that is. I have to prepare for everything, just in case that’s what is chosen. I can’t even think what all the possibilities are, never mind prepare for them. And the school and district have been silent.”
Friend 2: “We just wrote to our school district basically saying this. We are in the suburbs. What’s the plan? Can we get some tents and some volunteers to supervise kids?”
Friend 3: “Great idea except they are untrained, unvetted, unfingerprinted. You cannot just plug in warm bodies when you are talking about children. I can already see the NYPost article when some kid is sexually violated behind a tent or some child with behavioral challenges is harmed by a frustrated college student who does not know how to handle. Teachers are not babysitters and tents with ‘camp counselors’ will not cut it.”
Original poster: “I respectfully disagree. They can background check, and kids having social time with their peers during school hours is hugely preferable to them sitting at home alone while their parents are working all day.”
Friend 3: “I am a DOE employee. Background checks take 6-8 weeks. Training in management of children's social emotional needs and how to lead a group of children safely is a sequence of 2-3 classes. How much are they paying these college students in tents? What benefits do they get? What liability insurance will cover them if a child is injured or dies in their care? All it takes is one kid with a peanut allergy. This is never going to happen in a system with 1.1 million kids: I am not sure it would even be legal. Also, students with special needs have to be given the same access to this tent: blind children, autistic children, children in wheelchairs, children who bite when agitated, children who are oppositional and defiant. Which volunteer is going to be in that tent?”
Original poster: “I don't discount everything you're saying, but I do think this type of thinking is what is paralyzing the DOE from coming up with solutions. Every solution is going to have obstacles, but to spend all the time focusing on the obstacles is going to result in 1.1 million children losing another year of education. That should be way more horrifying to contemplate than a peanut allergy or a lawsuit.”
Friend 4: “Where there is a will and funding there is a way. We don’t actually care about finding a solution. If this was a problem for rich white guys, we would have solved it months ago.”
Friend 3: “The challenges in a large urban public school system are myriad. From a disabilities rights perspective, you cannot offer a half day of school that fails to apply to a significant percentage of every school's population. These are not dismissable obstacles. The sense that the DOE is throwing up its hands does not do justice to the complexity.”
Original poster: “It is a perfectly legitimate utilitarian argument to say I would prefer one child die of a nut allergy so that 1.1 million students, 70 percent of whom are impoverished, receive a year of education. Politicians are making these judgements all the time, especially right now. And to pretend that for education’s sake we can’t tolerate a single child dying, but for capitalism’s sake thousands can die—that’s lunacy. But it’s what is happening right now in FL and TX, who seemed to think bars are worth lives, but educated children aren’t.”
Friend 3: “I am just saying college kids in tents are not going to achieve the goal of educating impoverished kids.”
Friend 4: “What this would allow is for kids to attend school only part time so that social distancing measures could be maintained, and then have the ‘camp’ be used as sort of an after-school program to support online learning and socialization. More importantly, it would provide full-time childcare so parents can get back to work.”
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