In this article that appeared in The Atlantic, political reporter Grace Rauh rails against the failed leadership of Mayor Bill de Blasio for his inability to open the public schools safely.
To be fair, equal blame for the chaos and confusion surrounding the reopening of schools must be allocated to Chancellor Richard Carranza, who appears to be overwhelmed.
School openings have twice been announced and postponed.
Remote learning has been riddled with technical problems, unequal access to technology, disrupted internet service, and a host of other issues.
Many parents, like Rauh, are furious.
She writes:
For weeks now, I’ve been the unpopular parent on the playground predicting with certainty for anyone who cared to listen that our children would not enter a public-school building in New York City this year. And sadly, I may be proved right. For the second time this month, Mayor Bill de Blasio has delayed the start of in-person school, largely because of a staffing shortage.
New York City has done what seemed impossible in April: It flattened the coronavirus curve and now boasts a positive-test rate of about 1 percent. In theory, the low case-positivity rate might have meant that public-school principals and teachers would feel comfortable opening up this fall. Many do not, however, and the mayor has utterly failed to overcome the problem.
He could have spent the summer months convincing the stakeholders that staggered schedules—with some kids learning at home each day—smaller classes, and improvements to air-circulation systems, along with commonsense precautions such as masks and frequent hand-washing, would be sufficient for an on-time start. He could then have worked with the Department of Education to make sure that these precautions were in place and that teachers knew what to expect.
Alternatively, he could have decided weeks, if not months, ago to start the school year completely remote and announced that the city would gradually move toward in-person learning if conditions allowed for it.
But the mayor chose neither of those paths. He set deadlines that he refused to put in the work to meet, sowing chaos and ongoing frustration for families and teachers alike. How on Earth did he not foresee a staffing shortage? De Blasio has failed our kids and is teaching them a lesson about political leadership that I hope they never forget.
Our children have endured six months of hardship and fear and Zoom calls and canceled plans, and far too many have lost loved ones to this virus. The start of school, though, was a bright spot on the horizon for my family and so many others.
But even as I told my children that September 10 (the first first day of school) was right around the corner, I tried to manage expectations. As many New Yorkers have discovered since the start of the pandemic, our mayor has not demonstrated the ability to manage large-scale operations or the energy to get things done. To put it bluntly, de Blasio doesn’t know how to lead New York City. Even worse, he doesn’t seem to care. At his news conference on Thursday, he did not apologize for the delay and asserted, oddly and insensitively, that because most public-school parents are low-income and live outside of Manhattan, they “understand the realities of life” and are “not shocked when something this difficult has to be adjusted from time to time.”
De Blasio worried about a teacher shortage, which was predictable. It is hard to have social distancing in classrooms that are already overcrowded. The only way to reduce class size to safe limits is to hire many more teachers, thousands more in a system with 1.1 million students. Union leaders (teachers and principals) worried about safe schools, lack of ventilation, lack of cleaning and safety supplies.
A staffing crunch has forced the country’s largest school system to delay reopening school buildings for the second time. Estimates are that the city needs thousands more teachers — it’s not clear how many — to fill virtual and in-person classrooms.
The problem was brewing for months, with plenty of warnings from principals and experts. In the end, similar to previous big decisions, Mayor Bill de Blasio repeatedly brushed off concerns until the last minute, further eroding the public’s trust in his reopening strategy.
Now, principals and teachers say they’ve lost precious time that could have been devoted to improving instruction for a year unlike any other, and it’s unclear whether another delay will even solve the staffing conundrum.
Just two school days before buildings were set to reopen, de Blasio announced Thursday the city would instead pivot to a phased-in approach. Now, pre-K students and those with significant disabilities will be the first to return to classrooms on Sept. 21. Elementary school buildings open on Sept. 29, and middle and high schools two days later on Oct. 1. Full-day remote learning will start for all students this Monday.
Parents and students alike are sick of remote learning. Teachers are fearful for their health. Leadership involves planning and acting on the best information. That hasn’t happened.
Stay tuned.
If De Blasio had any sense (he does not), he would find a way to pin this disaster on Carranza and fire him on that basis.
exactly. it is on carranza
Interesting how De Blasio takes all the blame, not Carranza. It demonstrates why most mayors in the past did not want mayoral control.
The buck stops here. When Truman said that people admired the sentiment, but when de Blasio does that, they see it as a sign that he lacks any sense. Probably a sign that the Republicans’ long effort to make us all cynics (and thus no long value good government) is working.
My son’s school has 70 kids per “class” (remote).
My son’s remote “classes” have 70 students in them.
FLERP: Oh my gosh!! Is that some kind of videoconferenced class [I can’t imagine how]? Or a combination of presentations or what: do tell.
Yes, videoconferenced classes, back to back, from 9 am to 2:30 pm solid, with no breaks, including for lunch, which he eats at his desk during one of the “classes.”
He’s miserable—told me today that school is terrible because you can’t talk to anyone, you make no friends, you can’t really ask questions, your teacher doesn’t know who anyone is, and you don’t learn much. No school at all would be 100 times better—he’d learn more and wouldn’t be as depressed. We’ve decided we’re taking him out of school earlier in the afternoon so he can play more hockey—it’s something he enjoys so the school can go screw itself if they have a problem with it.
Exactly.
But can he choose someone competent to replace Carranza?
Maybe Farina can come out of retirement once again.
I am the Executive Director of a community-based organization that implements NYC’s DOE Pre-K For All Program. Through much planning and collaboration among staff and families, we opened as planned on September 9th. For weeks prior, I reached out to various offices within the DOE, inquiring about their promised delivery of critical PPEs and cleaning supplies. I could not get a response. I only received our shipment, seven days after reopening because I took to twitter as well as relied on intervention from the City Council. Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza are not ready and we are all paying the price.
Aren’t you anti-union, running a pre-k that won’t allow a union? I have read articles where you are very angry that de Blasio won’t pay your non-union teachers the same as union teachers. Maybe if your teachers were unionized, they would have pressured you not to open without the PPEs and cleaning supplies, but it seems you decided that your teachers’ lives were not important.
Why didn’t you delay the opening instead of putting your staff’s lives at risk, and since they were not unionized there was really nothing they could do?
A lot of very wrong assumptions here. Not anti-union at all. Through many virtual meetings, we decided collectively to reopen and have worked very hard to do so. I consider the health and safety of all in our community to be is our first consideration and to suggest otherwise is purely defamatory. I firmly believe in equal pay for equal work, regardless of the building that such work is performed in.
My sincere apologies. I was interested in reading more about what you mentioned in the post, and I came across a quote from you that said “Today, Mayor de Blasio granted long overdue parity to only those that work in unionized child care facilities and has completely dismissed the rest of us.”
I absolutely support the people who work in child care facilities getting paid a good wage. I misunderstood and thought you were someone who supported conservative anti-union politicians who was demanding that the city pay her non-union employees the same as they pay the union workers.
I, too, believe in “equal pay for equal work” but without a union, that can mean everyone gets really low pay and they get fired if they complain about it. Unions negotiate better pay and safe work conditions. One the reasons that schools delayed re-opening — and why they then delayed the in-person re-opening — is because the union held firm against re-opening until it was safe. Presumably your pre-k was absolutely safe despite not having that PPE and cleaning supplies delivery so that is why you re-opened without it. I assume there were public schools that were not safe without that PPE and cleaning supplies and that is why they delayed re-opening.
Apology gracious accepted. Never conservative and never antiunion. I want you to know that we had a very limited supply of PPEs, which was enough to get us started, thanks to our local Councilmember and State Senator.
Alas, the same story here in Washington. Until it is proven by science that COVID19 is NOT spread by aerosols, or there is a safe vaccine, my grand children are not returning to school. My oldest grand daughter is in 9th grade. She does not understand why the district couldn’t have spent the summer preparing everyone for on line school and re-open gradually if and when it is safe to do so, while continuing the option to stay home for families who have pre-existing conditions and are at risk. The only reason we can see is political. There is a significant population that believe Trump’s lies, including half the school board, our mayor and most of the city council. Now the district is facing a huge shortage teacher shortage. She still does not have a math teacher. Thank God I’m retired. I feel sorry for the teachers who need their jobs. Even when I was teaching I had a husband who could’ve taken up the slack. We need a better government, and soon.
Ironically teachers received an email today stating the DOE is aware of problems with students using newly created DOE accounts logging in. It seems there are too many students trying to log in at the same time. Who would’ve thought?
In spite of the stumbles the City/DoE appear to be on track for a fully phased hybrid reopening by October 1, w/ over a million kids, has anyone ever tried this before? Getting kids safely back into a school setting, be it remote or in-person is crucial… easy to criticize.. a monumental task .. if we avoid a “second wave”!school can edge towards more in-person as the school year progreses
Thank you. Most parents actually understand the complexities to this and weren’t expecting miracles.
In theory, the low case-positivity rate might have meant that public-school principals and teachers would feel comfortable opening up this fall. Many do not, however, and the mayor has utterly failed to overcome the problem.”
In other words, the “problem” is only the unwarranted perception of risk by irrational teachers and principals.
Too bad everyone cannot be omniscient as Graves Raugh, being certain that the danger is all imaginary.
As Graves Raugh intimates,it is surely just silly that principals and teachers have concerns about the safe reopening of their particular schoolss, despite a ” low case positivity rate “*
(which hinges on the accuracy of tests, which can have a significant false negative rate,
Good afternoon Diane and everyone,
I hope you can read this article from the Albany Times Union. It is funny and absurd all in one. I’m a teacher and I can tell you that what is happening with the so-called “hybrid” model is completely absurd and undoable and completely crazy (as I thought it would be). Most days I just laugh at the absurdity and let a lot slide. It is truly NUTS.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/X-rated-intrusion-forces-security-changes-in-15584824.php
Well, at least it makes teaching sex ed easy for the health teacher.
Just put on the vids and let em roll! (The vids and the kids)
What’s wrong with that?
As famed climber Hermann Buhl said to his climbing partner (Kurt Diemberger) as Buhl mistakenly walked off a precipice in a whiteout on Choglisa, “Done for…”
We, like Buhl, are done for.
😀 I especially liked this part: “In the younger grades, teachers struggled to manage large online classes filled with parents piping up with their own questions… in the first week, his daughter’s virtual classroom was frequently disrupted by parents saying things like, “I wasn’t paying attention” and “I went to the bathroom and now I don’t see what we’re working on.”
World War II lasted for about six years for the United States. When that war ended an estimated 70-85 million people had perished.
The Vietnam war lasted for 19 years. How many died on both sides in that war? Not until 1995 did Vietnam release its official estimate of war dead: as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war in addition to the 58,220 US deaths.
We still have troops in Iraq (the U.S. invaded in 2003) and Afghanistan (the US invaded in 2001). 173,000-177,000 local military and police have been killed since 2001: 64,000 in Afghanistan and 48,000-52,000 in Iraq. The U.S. has lost 4,424 with 31,952 wounded in action. At least 800,000 people have been killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan.
Thanks to Donald Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic has became another war for the U.S., but a war that will not last as long as the four mentioned above unless Trump manages to stay in power and keep the pandemic lethal as long as he lives. So far, the casualty list for COVID-19 is a bit past 200,000.
If you are tired of what it takes to survive, get over it. Wear a mask, stay home as much as possible, and keep a safe distance from others. So much simpler than being in a war zone not knowing when someone is going to shoot you, and if you you are going to step on a IED, get hit by a rocket or mortar shell.
You might want to return to Diane’s September 16th post which is Cynthia Nixon’s Op Ed in the NYT on this topic. I saw her on Stephen Colbert’s or Seth Meyers’ show (those are the only 2 late night ones I watch, & not always), & they discussed this. I wanted to hear what she had to say, & she repeated the situation where a school’s indoor “air quality/ventilation” was measured by a piece of “toilet paper attached to a yardstick,” so if the paper moved, the classroom or wherever was deemed safe.
Toilet paper test
Toilet paper test
Is really just the best
For seeing if it’s cool
To open up the school
That pretty much sums up the unscientific approach of those who are adamant about school reopenings in the face of significant uncertainty.
The attitude seems to be “we can always close again if students and/or teachers get sick, so what’s the big deal?”
The widespread lack of knowledge of and respect for science is the death knell of our country.
I am NYC public school parent, too. We all have our frustrations. I am frustrated by those in the media like Grace Rauh and their continued shallow education “journalism”. Admittedly, de Blasio and Carranza aren’t great at their jobs, However, to me the real issue that needs to be discussed is the systemic defunding of public education both psychologically and materially over the last 50 years. In particular, I wish someone would do an expose on the “lost” years of the Bloomberg Administration. As someone commented on another post recently, in an age of budget cuts do we really have the resources for a parallel publicly-funded school system? There are school buildings in disrepair. In my district, there are local leaders who have been trying to to get the HVAC in a high school building fixed for the past six years. It was not fixed and that whole building had to default to fully remote learning this year. The impulse to blame those in front of us is common, but not productive over the long term.
Beth,
I agree completely. Cuomo and the legislature have never appropriated the funding ordered by the courts in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. People look at the overall funding and think the city’s schools are in great shape. They are not. The city needs a major capital campaign to upgrade buildings, and students need smaller class sizes.
Whether it is safe to open up schools is not even an “education” issue.
It should be decided based on science, not on whether some unscientific nitwit thinks DeBlasio has delayed openings for no good reason.
Take your pick carranza or diblasio,,,diblasio picked carranza….carranza’s claim to fame in the nycdoe is white supremacy training for all. Seems as though carranza is better suited dealing with white supremacy and early on carranza had a flurry of lawsuits from white employees at the doe offices and these cases will be popping up in courts very soon…it seems as though the end is near…send in the clowns sinatra