NOTHING TONIGHT FROM SITUATION ROOM FROM SCHOOLS MY CHILDREN ATTEND; PHILLY STUDENT DIES OF COVID AND STAFF STAGES SICKOUT; JANUARY REGENTS CANCELED

My wife and I usually receive nightly emails from the schools our children attend from the Situation Room notifying us about COVID-19 infections in their respective school buildings. We received daily emails over the last week and regularly all year when there were infections. Today: Nothing. There were 7 cases reported yesterday. Those seven cases from yesterday didn't just disappear. Clearly, the system of testing and reporting COVID has fallen apart. The UFT reaction: Send an inadequate email update listing what are probably inaccurate numbers.

If the UFT is basically out to lunch, we have to protect ourselves and our families.

On Sunday, we put out the DOE Personnel Memorandum 1 which covers excused absence without loss of CAR days. 

This is what we said:

There are record numbers of daily COVID-19 infections in NYC. I think everyone needs to know the procedures on COVID for employees. Personnel Memorandum 1 came out in September. We have copied it in full below. Please read it and follow the guidelines closely.

Here is a link to CDC's Covid-19 symptoms. It could be as simple as a headache or runny nose. Be safe everyone.

In Philadelphia, the staff at a unionized charter school has taken it into their own hands after a student died of COVID-19. They staged a sickout.

From centredaily.com in Pennsylvania:

Last week, a Pennsylvania high schooler died after contracting COVID-19 in early December. Alayna Thach was a 17-year-old senior at Olney Charter High School in Philadelphia. She loved to sing, dreamed of being a life coach, and was a big fan of the K-Pop group BTS, her obituary said. Alayna was an honor roll student who was touring colleges shortly before she died and was scheduled to get her COVID-19 vaccine in January, McClatchy News reported. She’s survived by her parents and her two siblings.

And on Dec. 20, her death compelled at least 40 teachers at Olney Charter to call out sick in protest against the school’s COVID-19 protocol, which they say didn’t do enough to protect Alayna or other students and staff, Fox 29 reported. The school denied it wasn’t enforcing COVID-19 safety protocols strongly enough, saying in a statement to McClatchy News that “Olney has a very strong set of safety protocols in place, and we are dismayed by the teachers’ attempt to manipulate public opinion in the wake of the tragic death of an Olney student.”

But the mass “sick out” happened after staff and students had already pleaded with the school’s administration to hold classes for the rest of the semester online, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Sarah Kenney, a 10th grade African American History teacher at Olney Charter and vice president of the local chapter of the Alliance of Charter School Employees, said lunchtime was particularly troublesome at the school. Without social distancing or assigned seating in the cafeteria, contract tracing proved difficult, she told The Inquirer in a Dec. 17 story. “There isn’t really a good protocol for how it all works,” Kenney told The Inquirer. “We think it’s safest to be virtual until they can come up with a plan for increased safety, just to ensure that something like this never happens again at our school.”

The AFT, to nobody's surprise, is not standing with the teachers and denying they organized a sickout.

Condolences to the family of Alayna Thatch. I hope and pray that this situation does not happen anywhere else, but especially in NYC. Stay out if you don't think a building is safe or if you have symptoms. Don't wait for the UFT or DOE to save you. They have shown over and over they don't care about UFTers or students. 

In other news today, January NYS Regents Exams were canceled by the State Education Department.