October 21, 2020
Dear Colleagues,
Thank you for your ongoing commitment and service to the 1.1 million children in our schools. If you weren’t out there, people from my office would have to be, and if you’ve met any of us you know well that we instinctively recoil from anything resembling actual work. Of course we don’t want to actually teach after spending months, years, or perhaps decades sitting around our offices.
Earlier today, the State of New York has made some important announcements regarding areas of the city that have been experiencing elevated rates of COVID-19 transmission, including where your school is located. As you know, your school is in a high risk area, which is just one reason you will never catch my ass near it, not that I’d bother anyway. Nope, I’ll be sitting in my office with a mask handy in case anyone manages to get past my secretary.
Here is today’s update for your school:
1. Your school continues to be designated in the yellow zone.
2. Pursuant to State guidance, your building can remain open, and if anything happens you can bet we will be there, albeit not literally, with thoughts and prayers.
3. An important precautionary step is mandatory weekly testing of a random selection of staff and students in the school building. Mandatory testing is completely voluntary, and if you fail to give consent we will place you on unpaid leave. We will consider that your contribution to Making Tweed Great Again.
4. In order for us to test you for COVID-19, we need your consent. This is completely voluntary, except if you don’t volunteer we won’t be paying you.
I thank the many of you who have already submitted your consent for COVID-19 testing. For those who haven’t, we thank you. Since we now no longer have to pay you, some of your salary will be dumped in the pot of money we now have to pay out on October 31st, while the rest will be in what we call petty cash. We keep a barrel of it in my office.
The test is easy, quick, and safe, and will be administered to a randomly generated selection of students in grades 1-12 and staff each week. You may register online, but frankly we’d be just as happy if you didn’t, because we really do not wish to pay you. You know that well, of course.
We know you likely have questions, and we encourage you to call HR and spend hours on hold, hoping in vain that someone will pick up your call. It might even be me sitting there and refusing to pick up. You never know!
Thank you for your service. You can imagine how much I must appreciate it. After all, I just tried to weasel out of paying you almost a billion dollars. Sadly, I now have to pay half, and will likely have to pay the other half this summer. This might seriously cut down on the quality of gala luncheons around here, and damn it I love me a gala luncheon.
In summary, screw you guys, I’m going home.
In unity,
Richard A. Carranza, Chancellor,
New York City Department of Education
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