PLANNING FOR WHEN SCHOOL DOES REOPEN SHOULD BE A CITYWIDE PROJECT WITH A LOCAL ROLE

The hot topic on the internet is to propose what school buildings should look like before they reopen in the fall, summer, or whenever. Bloggers have some interesting thoughts.

Let's go to Jonathan and Peter. Jonathan says students' social distancing six feet apart won't be easy and will require major modifications in schools.

I don’t think there is a way to maintain 6 feet all day, but 6 as a guideline with momentary lapses might be possible.

But I didn’t discuss teaching. How do I check a kid’s work?  How does a teacher hand out a test?  How do we do a million little things that teachers do with students every day?

My answer to that is everything is going to be handed in and handed out electronically it seems.

Peter Greene over at Curmudgucation explains real problems with social distancing for kids:

What elementary students will comply with not running over to hug their best friends? What kind of play or social development occurs when children are required to play by themselves? When someone is sad and crying (an event that, I am told, occurs roughly every 22 minutes in the primary grades), which teacher is going to say, "I'm not going to hug you, and nobody else in here is allowed to, either."

On the high school level, where students take a certain delight in bucking the system, what is going to happen when all you have to do to be a rebel is get close enough to someone to touch them? And just how far will some schools go to put their foot down and discipline their way to compliance ("I'm sorry, Mrs. Wiggleworth, but Pat is suspended for repeatedly standing four feet away from other students").

And what kind of dreadful school culture grows in an environment where you are never supposed to get close enough people to look them in the eye or touch them?

I could go on and on; I'll bet those of you who are teachers have already thought of a million issues. The main point is this-- when folks like the CDC say, "Well, just space classroom desks six feet apart and have them eat lunch in the classrooms," they don't seem to understand that they have addressed roughly 6% of the issues that will come up in coronavirus school. It's going to take a huge amount of thinking through, and it would be useful (once again) if the Big Cheeses In Charge actually consulted the people who will be the boots on the ground for any such venture.

P.S. I have skipped over the part where a team of forty-seven maintenance people wipes down the entire school with bleach every half hour. Extra staff, extra people to distance around, and oh, the fumes.

All valid points by Peter and Jonathan.  Let's move onto our union leader: UFT President Michael Mulgrew. Mulgrew would not pull us out of unsafe buildings in March, but he will have a say in when and how we return to schools. We learned about his thinking in a Daily News op-ed the other day. Mulgrew states in part:

New York State already requires that incoming students have a certificate of vaccination against more than a dozen diseases, including polio, measles, mumps, hepatitis and other serious infections. The state could expand this requirement by insisting that all students and staff who are planning on attending school be tested in August for active or prior exposure to the coronavirus.

In September, medical personnel need to be available at every schoolhouse door to perform rapid temperature tests for all students and staff. Anyone with a temperature above 100.3 degrees Fahrenheit should be sent straight home, or directly to medical treatment.

Despite these precautions, since children carrying the virus may not show symptoms, it is possible that cases of the coronavirus may still emerge in the schools, where the concentration of students and staff makes it difficult if not impossible to practice effective social distance.

In such cases, the city needs to dramatically ramp up both its cleaning and disinfection protocols and the public notification procedures that are already mandated for other communicable diseases. The state will need the resources to aggressively trace those who came in contact with those who show symptoms.


Even these precautions may not be enough. Because schools have so many children in limited space, we may need to experiment with other options to adhere to social distancing, such as split schedules where students come in morning and afternoon shifts, or on alternate days.

We did this during the asbestos crisis for about a week after a delayed opening in 1993. It didn't work very well but we functioned until we were given the all-clear. But seriously, does anyone trust that the DOE will follow any protocols? Then we have the most important question that nobody that I know of in NYC has yet addressed:

What should we do if we don't believe it is safe?

The NEA suggests strikes. The AFT says to use our megaphone. Both are very reasonable suggestions.

However, at the union local level in NYC, the UFT is "strikeophobic." They would rather let us be sent into infected buildings than tell us to leave them because the Taylor Law would fine the Union if we were to strike. Dues first, Always!

Keeping that in mind, let's try to play this out. Suppose schools reopen in September but many teachers are still understandably worried. The media then reports on a second wave of Covid-19 spreading in NYC and there are cases in certain school buildings. Calling the Union if a school is deemed unsafe by teachers/parents and waiting for UFT help may take forever. Filing a safety grievance or a Public Employees Health and Safety complaint when there is coronavirus in the air may get your own kids some more inheritance as it might be the basis of a lawsuit someday but it won't help you in the immediate situation.  The New York State Nurses Association just found out how lawsuits are not the way to remedy immediate safety concerns.  Walking out of the building by yourself might be a sensible action but then one would be fighting alone. See the nurses for where that will probably lead in court.

But how about if we collectively demand that decisions on reopening be made at the school level instead of just having meaningless citywide protocols that won't be enforced?  Like so much else, this might not always be a one size fits all scenario.

When UFT Chapters or at least significant groups within Chapters, unite to exert their power, they can still have a positive influence. It may just work here but it will require an activist mindset of unionism which many do not currently possess, unfortunately. 

I believe individual Chapters should be involved in the planning for how schools will reopen. There are going to be a million issues as others have said. Leaving the protocols entirely up to the central DOE and UFT will invariably overlook a plethora of local building concerns. The parents need to be involved in planning for the reopening too. I suggest the School Leadership Teams or building Safety Committees are appropriate forums. Schools can't make up their own reopening rules but there should be a checklist of citywide protocols that have to be followed and enforcement should be left to the building level.

In the event that the building isn't operating safely or is not ready to safely reopen to the satisfaction of administration or teachers and other staff, or parents, then individual schools should be able to switch back to remote learning immediately, if only temporarily. I would suggest a huge DOE-UFT rapid response team to immediately investigate any safety claim within a couple of hours. The UFT part of the team should be made up of trusted, respected, knowledgeable (not all Unity Caucus) people.

If a Chapter can show a building is unsafe, which should not be that difficult to do, then that Chapter has to be able to walk out or not walk into that unhealthy building and go back to remote teaching and learning for the time being. The parents, in my opinion, will be supportive in most cases even if it creates a hardship for working families. At the secondary school level, I'm 99.9% sure the students will be with those teachers who say the building is not safe.

I'm trying to see how the UFT can again take on its traditional role as a check on the city and DOE. Okay, do all of you have some better ideas? This is just one suggestion. I'm sure there might be others that are better and/or more easily accomplished. I'm looking ahead but acknowledging what we are up against, including our own union's priorities. I still have no answer to Peter's hug problem in kindergarten in the end. Some of this doesn't seem to have a good response. Any thoughts?

Please no comments on how COVID-19 is overblown. Yesterday CNBC reported that Friday was the deadliest day in the USA with 2,909 deaths.  Read the story of the Queens funeral home overwhelmed by COVID-19 caskets. We can go out and pretend nothing's wrong but this is likely not going away for good for a while although I hope and pray it will.