FOREST HILLS HS CHAPTER LEADER EMAILS CHANCELLOR AND UFT PRESIDENT ON LACK OF COVID SAFETY

This came our way late last night. We are printing it with the permission of Adam Bergstein, the Chapter Leader of Forest Hills High School.

To: M Porter, Chancellor NYC DoE & M Mulgrew, UFT President

From Adam C Bergstein, Q440 Chapter Chair

Date: Sunday, December 19th 2021

Re: Covid Mismanagement

Attn: M Porter & M Mulgrew,

I have but one question to ask. Does the DoE and/or UFT actually have a plan in place to deal with all of the Covid outbreaks happening throughout the NYC school system? Is the prevailing ideological philosophy for all NYC schools to channel their inner-ostrich and basically wait until 3 PM, December 23rd? And if so, what then will be the plan come mid-January, when Covid has another spike and numbers are exponentially greater?  Should we prepare now for the spin, and just expect an apathetic, doppelgänger of a response? And what will the administrative guidance be in three to five weeks, invariably to sit back and wait until the February recess arrives? I would like to say I’m awestruck or dumbfounded by the ineptitude, but having spent two decades working for this bureaucracy, sadly I am just inured to the distribution of the bovine fecal accumulation. 

And how does the UFT endorse and support and back these half-baked policies of the DoE? Is accountability vestigial? It’s almost like those in charge of the UFT and the DoE simply couldn’t be bothered because Covid, whilst rampant in the schools, does not directly impact any of you. How many of you work in sparsely populated offices, with ideal ventilation. When was the last time any of you spent seven hours in an over-crowded school-building (196% capacity) for five days in a row, since September? I’m no psychic, just a huge fan of the redundantly rhetorical.

And this quasi-scientific theory that schools are still the safest places to be, care to peruse any security footage of a Q440 hallway during passing? This DUOFET propaganda is just another manifestation of an autocratic Big Lie to dupe the rubes! Empirically, sending thousands of human beings into a poorly ventilated petri dish is reprehensible. The fact that you’re all completely aware of that and instead game the system to make it look like everything is safe, is malfeasance extraordinaire. Please do not feign umbrage with my accusation. I’m in a school with 4,000 humans and only 1.5% of all people are being tested weekly, that includes only 30 staff in total! Care to debate my intentional and deliberate syllogism? What is the situation with the Situation Room? How do you have a central reporting system that does not allow anything to be reported? Please See Criminal Negligence.  

The fact is that the Department of Education and the UFT could work in concert to remove all staff and students, in order to give this virus some time to run its current course. However, you choose not to out of political allegiance and a saccharine sense of propriety, that’s mendaciously feckless. Unless something changes, the actions of DUOFET are all but assuring and guaranteeing that children and adults will unnecessarily contract and spread an opportunistic and ever-mutable virus. And please, please, don’t send some Deputy Superintendent or Deputy Chancellor or Safety liaison to pram the halls in an attempt to project concern, it’s demeaning and reeks of a dysfunctionally bloated bureaucracy. 

Please be safe and always maintain a safe social distance from others. We cannot, where I work, so we'll fake it for now. 

Sincerely,

Adam C Bergstein