Thursday, May 07, 2020

HOW WILL IT BE ENFORCED THAT SCHOOL BUILDINGS ARE SAFELY REOPENED?

I know everyone is completely freaking out, justifiably so, because Governor Andrew Cuomo has appointed Bill Gates to reimagine schools in New York. We thought we were done with the Bill Gates' education hobby. I will join in with any plan to oppose Gates on NY schools. His track record with small schools, teacher evaluations based on testing, and Common Core is atrocious.  If anyone needs a reminder of how terrible online schools are, go to this Network for Public Education page. No teacher or parent or student wants to reimagine school the way Cuomo and Gates do. Thousands of emails have already been sent to the Governor opposing his reimagination of public schools. Send one yourself, please and sign this petition opposing permanent online schooling.

At the city level, our completely moronic Mayor Bill de Blasio doesn't seem to know there are billions of dollars that can be cut from the budget without threatening to layoff city employees. Other politicians are already shouting from the virtual rooftops about the abundant waste that can be found before workers such as cops or teachers are let go. Gates, Cuomo and de Blah Blah are all worth publicly resisting.

 It is not a pretty picture at the present time and we must collectively be engaged in the struggle. That said, if Cuomo and Gates don't completely kill brick and mortar public education by September, educators and students may have to go back into school buildings and there could very well be a second wave of COVID-19 headed our way although I pray it does not occur. If the second wave hits, who is going to ensure that faculty and kids are safe when we return to schools?

Do any of us trust the Department of Education or the City of New York to get the reopening right?

I listened super-carefully yesterday to Michael Mulgrew's hour-long interview on Talk out of Schools on WBAI with parent activist Leonie Haimson. I am not sure why there were no phone calls on Wednesday's program as usually the phones are open for callers on Talk out of Schools. Maybe it was recorded. Mulgrew doesn't like tough questions as anyone who goes to a UFT meeting that he runs knows so I wonder if no phone calls were a condition for his appearance.

Leonie did ask Mulgrew about reopening the schools. He answered in typical Michael Mulgrew form: a huge roar that was completely toothless. I tried to transcribe his words when he was asked about reopening around the 4 minute mark. I listened a number of times to make sure I got what he was saying down accurately. This is not quite a transcript of his answer on reopening but it's close enough:

The UFT is putting a big push on what's needed to be in place to reopen schools. It is complicated but certain conditions were NON-NEGOTIABLE. Whatever the rules are, have to be followed. The city was not following the rules before we closed down. The state had put out if there were any positive tests, schools had to be closed for 24 hours and contact tracing had to happen. They said every school would have to have cleaning supplies and go through a deep cleaning on a nightly basis. None of that happened; it happened here or there. The first school was closed; they did contact tracing. That was the last piece of evidence we had. Then it became more frustrating because we received more and more reports; we pushed them back at the city. Custodians were telling us they did not have supplies to do what the city was asking them to do. We had positive test results the city was ignoring because they said now they were only going to recognize positive test results if they came from the State Department of Health, which from an actual person getting the results takes days to get back those results. This is not negotiable. This has to be followed. If it isn't, we're going to work with parents to go after those people that aren't doing this.

You heard it from the UFT President. We are going to work with parents and go after people that aren't following protocol. A few seconds later he said these things would have to be addressed immediately.

But what if they are not Mr. Mulgrew? We all know safety protocols won't be addressed properly in many buildings.

We now have Mulgrew admitting in even greater detail that in March the UFT knew multiple buildings were infected but the UFT didn't do anything to stop the kids and staff from going in. They never advised people to get out of dangerous situations. By the time in March he is referring to, we knew what had happened in China and Italy with COVID-19. We were aware this was deadly. How can the UFT knowingly letting us go into work to get sick be acceptable to anyone? I know I keep harping on this but the UFT's inaction was beyond disgusting.

What's just as bad, maybe worse, is Mulgrew hasn't changed in how he will handle it in the fall. The UFT will demand that the DOE cleans up buildings, checks everyone's temperature and does contact tracing. If they don't, we'll hide behind the parents.

I have a suggestion. How about posting something like this when school buildings are reopened if building protocols based on medical science are not followed?

WARNING: The UFT has found this school building is unsafe. We are strongly advising every employee and every student not to enter this building until it is safe. We will continue to educate remotely until the building is deemed safe by scientific experts.

Some lawyerly types can adjust my language appropriately but I believe protecting our lives and the lives of the students is the most important reason the Union exists. For any of the caucuses or independents, can you get behind a resolution saying the UFT will strongly advise its members to keep out of infected school buildings?

The UFT shut down the system for a week in 1993 because of asbestos in schools. We all walked out of Jamaica High School with UFT approval in 2006 because there was no running water in the building.  President Randi Weingarten stood alongside me the next morning to make sure the school was cleaned and the water was flowing. The Union's job now should be ensuring that buildings are as safe as possible before we go back.

In the end, we have to all try to stay healthy. We must be at full strength to fight Cuomo, de Blasio, Gates and oh Bloomberg's back too. Did I forget Betsy DeVos and Trump?

27 comments:

  1. Answer: The DOE will just declare it safe just as they declare everyone is safe with 2 unarmed out of shape safety agents sitting at the front desk.

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  2. And the sheep otherwise known as NYC teachers will just walk into infected buildings.

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  3. @10:57pm...you know it. Q: Direct deposited checks? A. Yes Nyc doe teacher, "A 65 for everyone...even those absent 90% of the time". Heyyyy, it's the new normal.

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  4. They will be enforced by Punchy Mike Mulgrew. Watch out De Blasio and Carranza.

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  5. I worry that by Sept, we will have normal, crowded classes, students will be encouraged to wear masks but nothing will be done if they don't, kids will not socially distance, and teachers will be pressured to go along with it. If someone gets sick, there will be a bureaucratic process to determine if it is covid related or not, the same APPR and Danielson and testing expectations will start right back up, with the added pressure that we have to "make up for the lost time" this Spring, and all the talk of helping students who are traumatized and emotionally harmed by the lockdown will evaporate due to no funding and no extra personnel or plan. Additionally, the lockdown will be viewed as an "equity" issue that teachers are somehow responsible for harming students somehow, and there will be a 2-faced view of remote learning - one, that some teachers didn't do it well, and there will be a way to evaluate that going forward, and 2, some people and organizations do it well, and we have to be trained in it and money will be sent in to those consultants and trainers. Cuts to school budgets, but no cuts to Central. And the UFT will be there to proclaim and exclaim and sort of let it all happen.

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  6. Sadly we can't trust our Union just like we can't trust the media, government, etc. Do your best with what you have come September. Procure masks (the good ones) whenever you have the opportunity. If you're in a high risk group I would get medical documentation now, not later.

    I had given Mulgrew the benefit of the doubt previously based on the media reports at the time. In the media the first positive test was on the last day of school, Fri 3/13, at NDHS on SI. If Mulgrew really did have knowledge of positive test results that is a big problem, especially since the day before in the UFT's press release (still available at https://www.uft.org/news/press-releases/statement-uft-president-michael-mulgrew-about-spread-coronavirus) he sounds alarm about "possible new coronavirus cases". Considering that day (Thurs the 12th) a school in the Bronx was closed over a hoax it wasn't unreasonable for someone to be skeptical upon hearing of "possible cases". If Mulgrew KNEW then he should have had evidence, Drs. notes, and explicitly put it out there that there are teachers at schools A, B, C, D, ..., Z have tested positive for the virus. Even if the City didn't close staff and parents would have known.

    As all this is still very "woulda, coulda, shoulda" let's look to September. If you're sick you have to go to the Dr. and get documentation to give to your CL. The CL informs everyone there is a positive staff member. A key here is the Union needs to ensure this is confidential, that it obeys HIPAA confidentiality. Honestly I'm not sure I would trust the Union with this information. Maybe it should even be "a person in room X tested positive". (Note I am operating under the assumption students will be staying put in one room.) When I say informing everyone, that's not just staff but that's parents, media, other Unions in the school (such as custodians, SSA's), etc. Whatever the protocol may be, it's completely transparent and it ends up up to the staff and parents whether to steer clear of the building for 2 weeks or whether, let's suppose, they judge there to be a low risk if that room was on another floor and they did not spend time with anyone in that room.

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    1. TJL, There is no doubt Mulgrew knew there were cases by March 15 and still let us go to those useless PDs on March 17-19. The UFT has no stones but lots of dues money.

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  7. The Brooklyn Tech people came to the DA March 11. Mulgrew knew and told us keep going in.

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  8. We may not be able to trust the union, put our complete faith in the union, and we've never been able to, but we need the union, so we need to have a union plan. The AFT is out with a plan, the UFT is going along. Our fist step is pressure the union to fix the plan. As it stands it will protect workers. Here, what I am reading are proposals that will divide and dismember when what is needed is unity (real unity not Unity) and support (including dues). We need to either change the plan to protect ALL workers or, when this fails, educate members and advocate for unity and support and move on to a wildcat strike.

    This is not an asbestos abatement plan for one school or even some schools. The comparison is really apples and oranges because the virus is not a material that is fixed at a work place but rather a genetic code that spread by human hosts who move through mass transportation and live in a dense metropolis. No amount of cleaning, no mask, no temperature taking and tracing regime will make it safe for workers. We need to know what right now scientists don't know because of the failure to get testing, massive scaled up testing done. Will that be done by September? That is the only thing we should be talking about.

    Also, the idea that the most vulnerable should protect themselves is a divide and dismember strategy. If it's not safe for ALL, it's not safe for any. How can we ask our older teachers to stay out of work? Are you kidding me? Our ATR problem, the biggest issue still, is also an ageism issue. Are we going to embrace this? That wold be foolish.

    Will we have a wild cat strike in September? Or will science solve this by then?
    That, it seems to me, is the choice.

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  9. Shelley, The asbestos crisis was used to show the precedent of the UFT shutting down the entire system over a safety issue. This is a different type of danger as you correctly point out. The fact remains that buildings were not safe in March 2020 because of COVID-19 and they might not be safe in the fall. We have to plan for that possibility.

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  10. any ideas about excessing- when are teachers going to find out if they are being placed into excess?
    June? july? sept?

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  11. Correction to my post Friday, May 08, 2020 12:30:00 PM

    While critiquing the AFT Plan, I wrote, "As it stands it will protect workers" but this should read "As it stands it will **NOT** protect workers"

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  12. Yes, we need to push the Plan so there is no risk. Again, we have parents and students on our side. No parent wants a child in an unsafe school. But do parents understand what safe means? Do teachers? At this point the state and city do not have a method to ensure safe schools.

    We need to also push back against tech.

    These seem to be incompatible goals but they are not.

    While we may need to continue and even expand distance learning until we know that all schools are safe for everyone, we need to protect our jobs against automation and tech that will re-imagine huge chunks of state and city budgets out of teacher salaries, health care benefits and pensions and into market share and profits for tech.



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  13. Did anybody not get the 4 days? I havent yet...

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  14. The email said the 4 days should be there by Tuesday, May 11. Today is Friday, May 7. Patience is priceless.

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  15. Are you more worried about 4 CAR days then protecting your health and everybody elses?

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  16. Here are 2 posts from (Fred Klonsky's (a retired Chicago teacher) blog. (Can also be accessed through Ednotes.) Right now there is time to plan.

    https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2020/05/07/the-risk-of-re-opening-school
    https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2020/05/08/there-are-plenty-of-life-boats-to-go-around-a-reaction-to-the-bad-idea-of-opening-up-too-soon/

    Don't forget the kids from District 75. Another option could be going to the kids homes, with the right training and PPE, for the kids with health issues.

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  17. The conclusion

    Like many, I don’t think I would feel comfortable risking my life until there is a vaccine. That’s the only way you can be 100% sure. School district have to get this right!

    NYC won't get it right and all Mulgrew will do is bark.

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  18. Trump is waving the All Clear Flag, while staff members in his own administration are getting Covid!
    Can’t wait till he finally gets it!
    Probably the only way to get him to shut up and plan effectively for the future!

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  19. He won't get it. America must suffer for what we have done by putting him, Cuomo and the rest of them in office.

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  20. "I have a suggestion. How about posting something like this when school buildings are reopened if building protocols based on medical science are not followed?"

    What about, if members believe that a building may not be safe, that members wait outside until a UFT rep (not the chapter leader) and a chancellor's rep (not the principal) come to the school and make a determination. And if they find that the building is safe, that they come inside and jointly run meetings for staff (on their preps) explaining their findings.

    jd

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  21. Don't see too many Unity Caucus know it f
    alls volunteering for that position.

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  22. Between the chaos here, teachers dying, Chaz passing (which has been devastating and I never met the man) I am getting so fucking sick of teachers asking about the 4 CAR days. THEY WILL COME, JESUS!!!! You should have picked up a day in CAR for April, May, June not like you are in such a need for it. Sorry for venting, never ending.

    September will be tough even for a 2/3 split because parents need to work and cannot expect for a child to be home 2 or 3 days a week for remote learning.

    I lost my 94 year old holocaust surviving great uncle to virus at a nursing home which Cuomo has failed! Never seen so much blood on hands from leaders, Diblasio, Cuomo, Carranza, and Mulgrew. No chance NY makes right decisions when we have leaders who are incapable from doing their jobs correctly. Liberals are so smart, lucky media is on their side otherwise they should be tried and thrown in jail.

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  23. Sorry about the loss of your uncle Anon2323.

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  24. Look for the DOE to threaten teachers that refusing to go back in will forfeit the last retro payment (with Mulgrew's blessing.) That'll get teachers back to school in a heartbeat.

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