Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, wrote an open letter about the steps required before schools can begin to reopen.
She wrote:
Last week, Governor Cuomo, the State Department of Health, and the NY State Education Department all came out with detailed guidance on what measures schools should take to reopen in the fall to ensure health and safety as well as provide instructional and emotional support to their students. If the COVID positivity rates of all regions of the state remain under 5%, as they do currently, schools will be eligible to reopen if they adopt the recommended protocols.
Yet nothing was said in these documents about how schools can afford the expensive health and safety measures, as well as the extra staffing and space necessary to keep students engaged in learning while attending school in person in shifts to ensure social distancing.
As the National Academy of Sciences pointed out, “Many of the mitigation strategies currently under consideration (such as limiting classes to small cohorts of students or implementing physical distancing between students and staff) require substantial reconfiguring of space, purchase of additional equipment, adjustments to staffing patterns, and upgrades to school buildings. The financial costs of consistently implementing a number of potential mitigation strategies is considerable.”
Our schools’ desperate need for more funding has been aggravated by the fact that Governor Cuomo hijacked the extra dollars that were funded by Congress in the CARES ACT to fill holes in state aid, instead of sending these funds to schools to help them deal with the additional expenses caused by the COVID crisis.
Now is the time for the Governor and our State Legislators to stand up for our schools and protect our children by providing them with the funds that are badly needed. They could do that easily by boosting taxes on the ultra-wealthy, including the Ultra-millionaires Tax (S.8164 / A.10364) on residents who earn above $5 million annually; or above $1 million annually (S.7378/A.10363); and the Pied-a-terre Tax (S.44 / AA.4540), a surcharge on non-primary residences worth over $5 million.
There is no doubt that the ultra-wealthy can afford this. In NY State, 118 billionaires saw their wealth increase by $77.3 billion during first three months of the pandemic. Michael Bloomberg saw his net worth increase by $12 billion during this period alone. All New Yorkers, including the ultra-wealthy, need to pitch in during this time of need, to ensure the health, safety and education of our kids. Below are links to your Legislators’ contact information and a script you can use. They are back in session today.
Thanks Leonie
Directions: Call your Legislators in their district offices – unless their phones are busy and then please call their Albany offices.
You can find your Assemblymember’s phone number here and your State Senator’s phone number here.
Script: Hi, my name is ________ and I am a constituent.
Our public schools desperately need more state aid to deal with the pandemic. I want to urge [Elected Name] to support the Fund Our Future package, including the Ultra-Millionaires Tax, the Billionaire Tax Shelter Tax and the Pied-a-terre Tax, so our kids can attend school safely next year. Can I count on [Elected Name] to sign onto these bills, and to ask the Legislative leaders to bring them to a vote?
Afterwards, if you have time, please enter their responses into our Google form here. Thanks!
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
phone: 917-435-9329
leonie@classsizematters.org
http://www.classsizematters.org
Follow on twitter @leoniehaimson
Subscribe to the Class Size Matters newsletter for regular updates at http://tinyurl.com/kj5y5co
Subscribe to the NYC Education list serv by emailing NYCeducationnews+subscribe@groups.io
Host of “Talk out of School” WBAI radio show and podcast at https://talk-out-of-school.simplecast.com/
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So 118 billionaires in NY made $77.3 billion in 3 months of pandemic?
That is just obscene!
The system is broken.
The biggest impediment to getting funding for a safe school opening is the fact that the politicians would rather appease billionaires than serve the safety needs of New York’s children and teachers.
Why these bills don’t stand a chance:
The Preamble
I’m guessing the private schools those billionaires attended don’t teach the Preamble of the Constitution. They just skip over all that State’s rights and separation of powers stuff and jump right to the second amendment. (If the Preamble were put for a vote in the red virus death / base states (they’re the same) it would surely be defeated)
Social Justice
These laws smack of “redistribution of wealth.” And for these guys, Social Justice is code for redistribution of wealth – so these are really laws for Social Justice ….which to them means Black Lives Matter and illegal immigration and welfare.
Cuomo has-been denying public schools several billion dollars in entitled Foundation Aid funding for years now.
He believes public schools are a monopoly.
There is no way in hell he is going to give schools the money they need to open safely
Whoops, just realized I posted this in the wrong place. Sorry.
This is no different than goofy, self-contradictory rules folks have been posting from their own district bureaucracies’ reopening policies for midschs/ hischs, e.g., soc-dist & never congregate in hall + sanitize all classroom desks between class-changes + students not to be in spaces being sanitized.
This one’s called, socially-distance in classrooms [only half previous class size allowed] + no $ for additional space + no $ for additional teachers.
Punchline: continue remote learning from home + don’t say it out loud.