Some highlights:
In a town hall meeting with parents Tuesday, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza described the “very successful” cleaning process as implemented in the Regional Enrichment Centers the city operates for the children of essential workers.
“There are three or four people who have a spray bottle and a rag with disinfectant, walking 24-7 disinfecting rails, disinfecting knobs on doors, disinfecting common areas,” Carranza said. “We’re spraying and wiping all day long.”
The city has ordered “electrostatic disinfectors” — similar to what the MTA uses to clean the subways — which Carranza said “adds a whole other level of very sophisticated cleaning devices to what we're doing.”
“Add to that the additional sanitary or sanitation supplies that we're providing to every school classroom — disinfecting wipes, disinfectant sprays, towels, pumps with disinfectant,” he added. “So we are very much preparing for a very cleanly environment in every one of our schools.”
The head of the custodian engineers union pointed out this level of cleaning likely requires more staff, yet there hasn’t been any additional funding allocated yet and a hiring freeze remains in place.
“The problem is, I don't see that the budgets they provided to us are sufficient to provide the extra services that they are requesting of us to open – all the cleaning and disinfecting“, said Robert Troeller, Business Manager of the Local 891 custodian engineer union, in a phone interview. “It’s basically the same funding levels for staff that we had last fiscal year. Yet the staff is expected to do all this extra work. And I just don't know what's going to happen.”
There are about 8,000 employees who work in the public school system as custodians, handy persons, fire persons and engineers, Troeller said, and the city’s $640 million budget for this department remains the same as last year.
“I do realize it's going to be a little bit less crowded with a third or half the children (there) depending on the building. But to simply expect the same crew to accomplish all this extra work. It's very difficult. Very difficult and very stressful,” Troeller said. “Then, on top of that, they intend to feed the children in the classrooms all of their meals. Well, suddenly every room is the cafeteria. The amount of cleaning required increases tremendously.”
A little later:
A custodian at a large public school building in Brooklyn, who asked to stay anonymous because he wanted to keep his job, said there aren’t clear expectations yet: "I don't even know right now exactly what they want us to do."
A deep cleaning typically means the custodians will do their regular sweeping, mopping, taking out of trash, but also disinfect every surface: desks, tables, seats and seat backs, door knobs, he said. Back in March when schools first shut down, they were doing this with spray bottles with a bleach solution.
He says his school has enough cleaning solution to get to or through the winter, though that's probably not true of other schools. "If I have to, I'll go buy a bottle of bleach. Or I'll get $25 from my coworkers and go to Costco and get a case.”
The task at hand seemed enormous, he said.
"We're trying to wrap our minds around it ... are we going to get extra hours, extra man power?” he wonders. “We're going to try to do our thing, best we can."
Any thoughts on what the head of the union and a Brooklyn custodian stated?
18 comments:
Toronto schools just announced students are returning to classroom full time. That’s the difference between how America and Canada handled the crises. NYCDOE is so inept .
It is very simple. The schools will not be safe. Carranza will say that they are safe.
I trust the custodians about cleaning house.
Carranza never cleaned house at central. It is a filthy mess.
We all knew the doe would lie and tell the public everything's clean and safe. The important question is will teachers let the lie stand or will they grow a pair and stand up for the truth that could very well save their loved one's life? I sadly don't think they will.
What both are saying makes sense. Does the DOE believe a "deep cleaning" can occur on top of the current custodial responsibilities? You would think that a new cleaning methodology would have been shared with the union and its members already. Once again the DOE is doing more talking and no actual planning. Buy your own bleach, spray bottle and cleaning cloths because you will have to do your own "deep cleaning". It's a new day.
ABC 7
"NEW JERSEY SEES INCREASE IN CASES
Coronavirus cases are on the rise in New Jersey, as the U.S. has surpassed 150,000 coronavirus deaths with hot spots continuing to pop up across the country. The Garden State has reported 2,000 cases over the past four days, and Gov. Phil Murphy is blaming indoor house parties for the growing numbers. In fact, it is possible that the average daily cases per 100,000 residents metric keeps increasing, the state could mathematically be eligible for its own Tri-State Travel Advisory within two weeks."
But NY will keep cases down based on what?
The last week we were in the building, this is how they deep cleaned...The custodian took a dirty rag and wiped the door knob.
That sound about right 5:23. We are so screwed.
A new article in chalkbeat states how NYC DOE will handle cases of coronavirus that spring up in school. According to the article, the school will stay open but only the classroom will close down. The article failed to mention what you do with a high school student who has 7 different classrooms.
4:48 -
Case counts don't matter. Reality is 99.7% recover after getting the virus. We now know this after many months of studying the virus throughout the world. Unfortunately you have an irrational fear similar to someone who doesn't ever want to go swimming in the ocean again after hearing about a shark attack. Life is always full of risk. You take reasonable precautions and you carry on. If you are this gaslit over the virus then you really need a shrink not a custodian to wipe down the desk
Hey Educat, how old are you, sounds like you are 20 something, Guess you have no worries or older family members to be concerned about or at least don't care to be concerned about. Look a little further into your numbers, where is the stats that say less than 1% do not recover after getting the virus?
ROFLOL
This post made my day!
The schools will not be cleaned and sanitized, there will not be a nurse in each school, kids of all ages will not put a mask on all day, ventilation will be poor, principals will not have answers to their list of concerns, etc.
Carranza does not deviate from anything that the mayor wants.
Recover. Likely. You will live,sure, but may never be able to correctly breath again. Or you might suddenly develop a high risk of stroke, chronic inflammation or years of chronic fatigue. You might live but still spend weeks of your life hospitalized. This virus has the very real potential to change your life as you know it!
The DOE cut custodial funding in my school. By a lot. Bet they did this throughout the city.
7:16: Are you for real? If your kid went to school with 99 other kids and you knew 1 of the children in the school would die that day, would you still send your kid to school? Also, the statistics show it's a 5% mortality rate. My cousin died from it. I'm sure if you lost someone in your family you would be speaking a different tune.
10:32, first and foremost I'm sorry for your loss.
The 1 out of 100 and 5% figures you cite are simply false. Even the case fatality rate, which only divides the number of deaths by the number of confirmed (not actual) cases, is lower than 5%.
Since Feb 1, 32 kids 14 and under have died from COVID. About 12,500 have died from other causes (by the way, this is typical, you can look up other years.) Drownings annually take hundreds of kids, as do motor vehicle accidents. However no one (at least no one sane) wants to ban all cars (again, except the Jane Jacobs "unsafe at any speed" types) or destroy everyone's swimming pool. All this is out of 61 million kids in the US.
Here are some of the sources:
COVID data: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku
Child mortality data: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/child-health.htm
Population of 14 and under in US: https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/101-child-population-by-age-group
So yes, I'll be sending my child, as the odds are less than 1 in a million, not 1 in 100.
By the way, we can repeat the same exercise for adults, particularly 55 and under. It's not 1 in a million, but it's still quite remote.
I can't blame people for being afraid with all the fear being pushed by the media and tech companies that profit from it. I don't want to insult anyone and tell them they need a shrink. What we do need is someone to explain to the people the actual relative risk without either pulling the wool over the people'e eyes or telling them the sky is falling in, and also explaining the pros and cons of the alternatives.
If it's so safe, why are they allowing for accomodations and allowing kids to do remote learning. Right there, they are admitting it's not safe. I'm going by the reported figures. Based on the reported figures it's 5%. If there are more cases then there probably were more cases. IF it's so safe he would allow for indoor dining and movies. Why don't you send your percentages and figures to the mayor and governor?
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