CUOMO SAYS DECISION ON SCHOOLS IS COMING IN A WEEK; WHAT REOPENED SCHOOLS MIGHT LOOK LIKE

From Newsday's coverage of Governor Andrew Cuomo's latest presser:

Cuomo said a decision on whether to leave schools closed until the end of the academic year will be made in “about one week, so we give people some notice.”

Your guess is as good as mine as to what that means. I will say that if social distancing continues, it is difficult to see many NYC school buildings opening up for a while. However, remember how Cuomo said reopening schools is intertwined with reopening business. We'll see what happens next week.

As for what school might look like when buildings are reopened, everyone should read this NPR piece that two friends sent to me. Michael Mulgrew is quoted extensively:

A school building is not what you would call an ideal place in the middle of a pandemic," says Michael Mulgrew, the head of the New York City teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers. So the first order of business, he says, is "How do you make sure there's a plan in place to make sure the people walking in are not spreading anything?"

Ideally, he says, this is accomplished by widespread and frequent testing for the coronavirus. But Mulgrew also points to the safety measures being taken right now at the city's 100 "regional enrichment centers" that provide child care for front-line workers. These include wearing masks, temperature checks, hand-washing, frequent sanitization and social distancing rules enforced even for very small children.

Denmark reopened after a month with class sizes of 10. The ideal recommendation for NYC is 12.

Maria Litvinova, a researcher at the Institute for Scientific Interchange in Turin, Italy, has modeled how school closures reduce the spread of illness. She argues that without treatments or a vaccine, "there is no such thing as 'safe' reopening."

Still, in an attempt to balance safety with the impact on families and the economy, she also recommends reducing social contact by putting children in the smallest groups possible. Assuming there is sufficient testing and contact tracing to reduce the spread of infection, "it's better if that student's been in contact with one group of 15 students versus 100 students."

Based on the typical size of a classroom in New York City, 12 would be the most children you could accommodate while maintaining social distancing, says the UFT's Mulgrew. At the International School in Denmark, they are grouping kids in classes of 10.

[NEA President] Lily Eskelsen Garcia points out that her membership has been asking for smaller classes for a long time. "The doctors say 39 sweaty bodies in a classroom is not healthy and safe — by the way, it never was. But in this case, it might spread an infection that kills people."

Mulgrew's suggestion on staggering schedules:

Reducing class size this drastically would probably mean staggering schedules. By way of example, Mulgrew suggests that one group of kids might attend school on Monday, Wednesday and Friday one week, then Tuesday and Thursday the following week. 

Elementary schools will go back first if the UFT President has his way. Kids live closer to schools generally and stay with one teacher for most of the day at the elementary school level. Passing time between periods will be a big social distancing problem in secondary schools.

As for calendars:

To make up for the learning lost while schools are closed, there have been suggestions of starting school sooner, or continuing through next summer, or both.

"This situation is going to be like what is often called the summer slide, but on steroids," Virginia's superintendent of public instruction, James Lane, told NPR. "I think there will be opportunities for us to discuss different ways to approach calendars." This means, among other things, renegotiating union contracts. And while districts are rewriting calendars, Litvinova says, they should probably prepare for having to close schools again when and if outbreaks recur, until there is a vaccine.

There is lots of room for union concessions on work rules. The UFT looks like they will have their seat at the table which is often when they are at their worst.  We should probably expect a different world when school buildings reopen. If they are not safe, don't expect the UFT to advise you to walk out of them.