UFT Town Hall August 13, 2020

by special guest Mindy Rosier

UFT President Michael Mulgrew: Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for taking the time to be here. Now we are in crunch time mode.
 
Today the report will be a longer but still majority of Town Hall will be for questions.

All eyes are on schools right now. Its a horror in other states. So disgusting. Putting teachers and parents in a bad position.
 
The mayor says we are ready. We are not ready. I spoke to the Mayor. I was very clear and straight. If the buildings are not safe, we will not open. We are going to follow the original CDC guidelines. We have a mess because the Mayor put the timeline on the principals for their plans.

What we want to do is look at the schedules. We want to get kids and teachers out soon as possible from the buildings.

Nothing's been agreed upon. We are thinking about things because we will need to plan for when we do open.

Nobody is teaching 5 in a row. Principals were given so little direction. This is why, we started in April to push for planning.

When we started this challenge in March, with little support, we got it done. We dealt with everything. We worked with the state to make sure that no one would be harmed and people can be granted tenure despite Covid. 

Medical accommodations are starting to be granted which is very important.

Back in April we told the Mayor if you want the school to open safely we must start planning. He ignored it through June and then in July, and now says I want it now.

We worked closely with the CSA yesterday.  The president, Mark said we can't do this. Everyone is doing the best work with intelligence and integrity. CSA sent a letter, that was supported by the UFT, that we cannot open by Sept 10th safely. The Mayor then did a dog and pony show press conference at a school. We already visited schools and they do not look like what he showed yesterday at the press conference. We called that out in the media. He must listen to us or we will not open. We won't be put in harm's way.

Everyday we look at what the daily infection rate and positive rates and will continue to monitor. I know many want to just call it. Can't do that. There are lots of legalities to work through plus parents depend on us and we don't want to add added stress on them. Horrible choices. In school, are they safe? Or should we keep them home? It's a dilemma.  What are we going to? Put my family at risk?

We need to push the city to do everything it needs to do, to make sure our schools are safe. You need to do your job. They will be held accountable. The final decision won't be made until the beginning of the school year. He thinks he has the time to fix things.

We have over 100 trained people to check the schools for Covid. We know there will be schools that won't be able to open. We need to check on PPE, custodian supplies, money, is their enough custodial staff, how's, ventilation, etc. We will take appropriate action if they try to open them and we determine them unsafe.

We have to be smart. We have to be diligent and we need to do things better than them.

Do I think we will open? No. Its show-me time for everything. I'm betting on us, not them.

We are also facing other tough problems. The federal government on the Heroes Act has completely imploded and fell apart. Without the stimulus money we don't think there would be money for all the PPE needed in the schools. The city now is preparing every agency for layoffs. This government can't even get this right. It came down to politics and that's why it failed. We have other avenues to pursue. We don't want any of you to have to face the fear of losing your job or being laid off.

Safety, profession, livelihood--these are the three things we are working on. Everything is in jeopardy but all is not hopeless. There are plans with other unions in figuring out things to try to stop the cuts. We have a plan and we will work quickly. This is just as important as safety. We never have just one crisis or one problem. It's not going to be easy. We will communicate and stick together. What we see everyday is insane in all of those schools. In Florida, 2000 teachers and students needed to quarantine. Georgia has 3000 in quarantine. 

We have to look at our facts here. Is there a possibility in breaking the Taylor law? Yes, but there will also be other avenues to pursue.

Lawyers told me, that for the school system, we would have to reach a clear and present danger to legally stop the opening. If we feel the whole system isn't ready, we will do this together. This is a conversation in itself. You can be terminated, financially penalized of two days out of your reserve, court would deem a person a participant if they are not in school, I could even go to jail. There are lots of decisions.  


At the same time, our medical professionals are saying we can open, but we have to be very careful. We still don't have a testing protocol. Each school would be customizing things for their buildings as they are all different. If you're doing all testing, the  screening, PPE, social distancing, etc. you would be able to pull it off. However, It comes down to the Mayor and the DOE. They say they have a lot of time. No we don't.

Mayor now says we will have a nurse at every school. We talked to nurses. There are many questions. In terms of other things, we can get to a agreement on what we need to keep it safe.

There will be another town hall in a couple of weeks.

Safety is about holding the feet of the Mayor and the Chancellor to the fire until the schools have everything in order or we don't open.

Without this federal package, without the money, the city will start layoffs.

We are all feeling the stress. I understand the fear. We have a path, we have a plan, and we will make things happen, and be there with each other. We will take care of each other. We went through more than any school system in the US.
 
We are the ones that have to face the parents. They are going to listen to you, the teacher, the counselor, the secretary in the office. We won't say it's safe until its true.

I'm guaranteeing you that we are trying to protect you. No one will lose the ability to take care of their family during this time of the worst recession in history

We won't have the answers for everything which is why we must stick together!
 
Questions: 


Q- I applied for medical accommodations  and didn't get notification yet. Those that did, said that accommodations would be good until Dec 31st. Then what?

M- We sped things up with this accommodation. The lawyers probably said that people don't have these conditions forever, so they making people reapply after December.  I promise you we will be having more conversations about this.

Q- Remote teaching- What will things look like;  remote only, blended, & live instruction.

M- Almost 30% students opted out and 15% of teachers received medical accommodations. Those 15% can't serve the 30%. Live Instruction will occur. It will not be a recreation of the school day. We have a teacher shortage right now. Schools are not going to have enough teachers because of the social distancing and class size limits. As we get more information, I will make sure it gets out.

Q-Ventilation; My building is too old for HVAC. What report shows current ventilation status? Proof of work? What will the UFT do?

M- We already started testing schools. We are already finding problems. It's a higher bar because of COVID. We already documented issues to the DOE. If the building is not fixed, we will stand in front of them. They won't open. We have been checking out everything. Best ventilation is from the outside.  Just because you get cool air from air conditioning, doesn't mean there's good ventilation.  We have an agreed upon criteria regarding ventilation.  There will be buildings that won't be utilized at all. If the DOE decides to open all and these things are not done, there will be a big fight.

Q- The Mayor announced that by Oct 1st there could be layoffs. Could that be us too?

M- Yes. This is why the Heroes Act was so important. So many stores by UFT HQ are closed, no more tourists, etc. These businesses are not paying taxes. The city is in a huge deficit.  There is a plan, and it means we need to do our work precisely.

Q- How are we going to enforce kids on behavior, mask, etc.

M- We are going to have to train the kids. Middle school is tough. We will train kids on procedure. If they can't do it, they need to learn from home then. Younger ones will be a challenge. Doctors said more challenges, more PPE. Nurses will be training all of us. DOE is happy with that. Face shields will probably be more common.

Q- When we call parents to pick the kids up when the children don't comply? What do we do if they don't show?

M-This is a safety issue. We haven't fully worked this out with the DOE but we are all on the same page that the child will have to be reemoved.

We are going to need those sav rooms. We shouldn't be the ones to tell the parent that they will go remote. It should come from the DOE. They have staff, and they can do it. Chancellor said that any staff with a teaching license can be reassigned.

Q- Can we have a buy-out?

M- We are having conversations. We are not there yet, but the talks are progressing. If we do reopen, the city is going to ask for us to give things back. We are not going to do all of this work and give back money. It is not going to happen.

We go to this other strategy, we will get to this place if there is a good buy-out. We are looking at ramifications. With the buy-outs it could then lead to hiring new teachers. Now it is the political will to get this done by all. To get out of layoffs by doing buy-outs.

Q- For full remote, principal is playing games.May bridge classes if not enough staff and will combine classes with double planning. Is there something in writing?

M- Bridge classes are not something we will entertain. We are not trying to recreate the day but there will be responsibility for a class. Livestream doesn't work well with kids and it is not effective. You have a teacher, with a camera in front of her, with kids in the room too. Its not going to work. This is what happens when you don't give principals guidance. Think this through. They have to teach. If fully remote, they will still be responsible for their kids. Teachers were also recording themselves doing lessons and we found them to be more effective. No, no, no, principals will not make you livestream. In our contract, you can't film teachers and this violates it. We are working on this.

Q- I was denied medical accommodation. They said there was no diagnosis but it was on the letter. What happens next? Was told HR keeps getting calls.

M- Tomorrow there will be a form coming out if denied or email Michael Sill MSill@uft.org
I'm really sorry you are going through this.

Q- Very concerned about instructional Lunch. Being a speech therapist and knowing how particles move from mouths, I know it is easy to be exposed. If I teach during lunch and I feel uncomfortable can I decline?

M- With a mask only, there is a possibility of exposure because of your eye sockets. We are getting a call tomorrow from our medical experts and if they say shields, we should wear them. If we open, and if we do this, lunch has me most concerned. More risk at lunch. There's a prep at the end of the day and it is OK for you to go home. Your choice. I will get the answer to the shield question.

Q- I'm an art teacher. For clusters, how many cohorts in a day, in a week. There's no real plan yet and principal said that cluster's will be remote and in person.

M- We are working on these issues. This is why I get angry when I hear everyone is in a pod. There is no such thing as a pod in our schools because there are clusters, related service and counselors in the mix. PPE is important to your subject area. What does that mean? Do you have an ionizer? Things will need to be constantly cleaned properly.  Most people will probably be full time in person.

Q- Will I have to do double work as a remote teacher? If you need to quarantine,  what will happen to our days?

M- Your full responsibility should be what you do in school. If you have to quarantine,  it won't come from your CAR.

Q- How will we be able to assist our own children with the remote schedule? Will principals accommodate?

M- We are hoping schools will take care of their own staff. A few weeks ago, the Mayor announced child care for us. Haven't heard details and we need to ramp this up.

Q-Social worker--We travel to different DOE programs and community based programs.
Are we safe to be traveling to all the programs? When we are at the programs we are there for social-emotional support. Would they even want us and is it safe to go?

M- They want to limit the number of sites, make sure there's plenty of PPE. If there's a COVID issue, there could be a contact tracing problem. That's why they want it limited.

Q- We were told in the spring that we had to work through our break. Now they say we are ready, etc. If we are so ready, where is the calendar? We are afraid they are playing games and we are going to lose days from our holidays.

M- The Mayor is not understanding, that he made a mistake by not engaging early. The DOE says they don't want to put it out because they are afraid they will have to change the dates. They are nuts, they are being paranoid.  What we had to do give up in the spring was horrible. The governor's thing was that he didn't want the kids outside. Imagine if we opened up when the number back then was 20%?  We are going in and checking everything. We are not waiting on them. Our staff goes to the schools and file reports. We don't trust the DOE either.

Q- I live with another teacher. I got medical accommodation and they didn't. What can we do? Should they take a leave?

M- Don't take a leave yet. The children who opted online, those numbers will only grow.  Crazy stories are all over the place. The thing is, we thought more would apply for medical accommodations. They are going to need more teachers to do more remote work. We want to give priority to those with someone at home. This is humanity. We need to be careful. Let's see what we can do. No promises, but we working on it.

Q- Federal compliance with IEP, ICT and ratio?

M- DeVos doesn't care if children have IEP's. We will try to adhere to these compliances at all times. We told the DOE that in an ICT setting, the child needs both teachers. We don't have enough special education teachers. We need to be able to get access to both. Don't let principals say we are splitting these classes and teachers. No. They need both. Both teachers have to be working together.

Q- Paraprofessional; how will our jobs be affected? Contractually followed?

M- We are trying to figure out these issues. Our paras, what they did, they picked up so much, all sorts of different things in helping the kids and teachers. Our paras really put up a big light out there, that we will help you. Thank you all so much! The DOE had no clue what was going on. That's what we do, we take care of each other. Big shout out to paras.

Q- What if you are exposed to someone through your spouse?

M- If the quarantine is due to COVID, the CAR days are not affected.

I was on a conference call with teachers from Georgia.  They said days are taken from their bank and if they run out of days, then there's no pay. It's disgusting. They need to sue.

Q- D75; I have students with sensory issues, it may be impossible to get masks on. With PPE, has there been special consideration for us?

M- No discussions with the DOE for D75. We have had many conversations with medical professionals about these students. We will get to this with the DOE. D75 parents said kids aren't doing well, and we need to help them.
 
I started in D75. I understand the settings. One of our doctors has child who is a teacher and he understands the settings and the major PPE issues.

We have a package on the table to help with these discussions.

Q- Teacher evals?

M- Don't know. Can't do a MOSL.

Q- Hearing we are still going to have them.

M- We've been working on opening. We cannot do evaluations if there is no agreement, but we clearly need to get this done. Safety and livelihood first and then we can move on to things like evals.

Q- Many people are concerned with all the schedule changes. Things are always changing.

M- There has been no guidance to principals. Yet at the same time they were told to pick a program. You can't just do that. Everyone is under a lot of pressure. Don't get crazy. Chill out. We'll go to the superintendent if we have to. Kids can't opt in till Thanksgiving if remote was chose. Cant flip. Can't maintain safety this way. It is still not safe. I'm honest and say so on TV. Gets worse day by day without clarity. Today was a productive day with CSA and the DOE. We got nurses but still so many unanswered questions. It will get uglier before it gets better.

Q- I have a family member who is hesitant to apply for an accommodation. She is afraid it will affect her tenure.

M- There's no way we will solve all problems.  We will make sure there's no harm to a teacher for medical accommodations. I will get a lawyer and sue the hell out of the DOE.

Q- If we went all remote will there be training? If remote in building, how will that look? Retro pay?

M- We will have to have extensive training. Every teacher, remote or in-person, must use the coordination time in the A.M. Curriculum will have to be coordinated, standardized. If the majority of school will be remote, there may be multiple teachers working with that child. Schools need to choose a platform with a Scope and Sequence in the subject areas. We've been working on this since May and the DOE doesn't get it.

Retro & raise. The city is going to come to me about the layoffs. We have a plan you will hear soon to solve this. Why would we give in? We are in the middle of a pandemic and I don't want to give them a dime. We will continue to go above and beyond. This is our school system, not the Mayor's. I love my child's teacher is what I would hear. We understand the bond between the child and teachers. We aren't going to be schmucks. You will stand up and say, I kept our school system going and safe. We will make it happen.

Thank you all. There will be more challenges. We will get thru this. We will take care of each other. We are the guardians of the NYC public school system. Goodnight.

5:17

DOE Death Panels

 

I'm getting a lot of email about reasonable accommodations this week. The DOE is finally responding to requests they got a month ago, and what people are really surprised about is that they're getting answers out before school starts.

There's so little reason in the world to begin with. Just for starters, I see young women everywhere wearing thinks that say PINK in big letters. Almost none of them are pink. I'm befuddled, of course. And it's not only young women. My principal, for example, is not a young woman at all, and he's always wearing a hat that says BROWN on it. The hat is black, though. 

With that sort of thing going on in the world, it's hard to expect the DOE to be reasonable. It's not, after all, what they're known for. How many times have you gone to Court St. only to find your transcripts are on the fourth floor, not the sixth, and you therefore have to resubmit them?

Reasonable at the DOE? Mayor de Blasio is jumping up and down, after having wasted April through July, and saying he's got a whole month to figure out how to open the schools safely. I'd argue, especially lately. that the DOE is known for precisely the opposite of being reasonable. I mean, who thinks it's a good idea for students to eat lunch together in a classroom during a pandemic when even talking is restricted? Not me. Not you. But DOE thinks it's the bestest thing ever. 

Then we come to the concept of reasonable accommodations. This is the notion that, if you have certain conditions, you may not wish to get sick and die from COVID. Over 65? Don't get it. Type 2 diabetes? Smoking? High blood pressure? Don't get COVID. Asthma? Also a bad idea, but I hear it depends upon how bad your asthma really is. The genius doctors at DOE, or whoever they have deciding these things, will say, oh, your asthma only comes up to HERE, but her asthma goes up to THERE. YOU smoke one pack a day, but this one smokes FIVE.

So it's okay for YOU to go in there and risk your life and those of your loved ones, but it's NOT okay for him to do it. I've been working for DOE around 36 years now, and it's very hard for me to understand exactly how they make decisions like these with such precision. And we know there's tangible risk, otherwise why would the city be offering all-remote instruction to anyone who asks for it? 

If I were rejected for reasonable accommodation by NYC, and I contracted COVID, I would go out and find a lawyer and sue the city from here to eternity. I've never sued anyone before. I had a few doctors who gave me very bad advice and I didn't sue them. But I would not hesitate to sue the city on this. In fact, I'm shocked that they muster the audacity to determine who is and is not worthy of accommodations, particularly when they're supported by medical statements. Are DOE doctors better than your doctor? If that's the case, my friend, it's time to find a new doctor. 

I'm further shocked by stories I hear about doctors giving people a hard time about writing statements. You'd hope that your doctor would place a very high priority on preserving your life and health. If that's not the case, you sorely need a new doctor. I've told several people that. My doctor, when I asked for a note, said absolutely, no problem. That's just one reason I'll continue to see her and rely on her.  

I know a lot of us are finally being notified about the accommodations we requested. If you are rejected by the DOE death panel, what you need to do is get your doctor to correct whatever language they deem lacking and resubmit. 

 Honestly, I don't know how these people sleep at night.

Class with Instructional Lunch

 

The chancellor had a flash of inspiration one day, and decided that he needed to maximize learning in schools. Now I'm just a lowly teacher, so I have no idea exactly what inspiration looks like on that lofty plain, that hallowed ground of the old Tweed building, named for the crookedest politician of all time (pre-Trump, of course).

That's why it's hard for me to fathom exactly what the thinking was behind this particular revelation. Consider the following--NY State opening guidelines state the following on page 29. You can check. 

 Turn desks (including teachers) to face in the same direction rather than facing each other to reduce transmission caused by virus-containing droplets (e.g., from talking, coughing, sneezing); 

Given that we can't even face one another because it's too risky, given that talking is listed as something we ought not to be doing while facing one another, how on earth is it okay for us to be sitting in the same classroom and eating?

I can't speak for all my colleagues, but if I were in a class with instructional lunch, I'd be wearing an N95 mask, a facial shield, a hairnet, and an entire body covering. That's what my doctor wore when she examined me a few weeks back. I would not consider eating, not for a moment. 

I'd advise students not to eat either. Perhaps this is conceived for younger students rather than high school students, but it would make no difference to me. 97,000 children just tested positive for Coronavirus, and this idea is a rebellion against common sense. 

As if that's not enough, who on earth wants to brush up on calculus while eating lunch? Back before the apocolypse, I used to eat lunch with a group of teachers. We had a table. There were generally two science teachers, a Spanish teacher, and a music teacher. The most we ever worked during lunch was never. We'd commiserate, tell stories, discuss the events of the day, tell jokes, and take a break from our busy days. 

There's a lot of talk about how kids need to go back to meet their social and emotional needs. I've written quite a bit about how the bizarre settings under which we'd be holding classes would make that difficult, if not impossible. Somehow, though, things weren't bad enough for the chancellor. 

We're already in a situation where social contact is severely restricted. To have a bunch of kids sitting in a room with an assignment on the board, eating while doing some sort of whatever, sounds pretty depressing to me. It would be a painful reminder of just what they were missing. As if that weren't enough, kids are often as aware as we are of what's going on. Imagine a young child sitting there worrying about getting infected, or infecting older relatives afterward?

I guess I could write the assignment on the board and then go sit in the back with my hazmat suit. That's not teaching, though. Absolutely anyone could write an assignment on the board and then go sit in a chair somewhere. Perhaps this is where Mayor de Blasio's grand experiment of letting Tweed flunkies go teach will truly shine. While I would not trust any of them to teach my kids on a bet, I'd be happy to see them write some busy work on the board while a small group of miserable children try to eat lunch and do busy work.

I'd feel terrible for the kids though. Tweedies who make 200K for going to gala luncheons may merit this sort of treatment, but 1.1 million kids deserve better. This is one of the worst ideas I've even heard, and whoever dreamed it up was certainly not a working classroom teacher.

I love being a working classroom teacher. Stepping into a miserable dystopian parody of what we really do in order to make the mayor look less incompetent hardly seems worth it. And if they mayor gave this any thought whatsoever, he'd likely realize that the responsible thing to do would be to go all remote until it were safe for us to really do what we do.

I don't know about you, but the Tweedies look less competent to me with each and every passing day.

Yet Another Chancellor's Email

 

Dear Colleagues,
 
There are many things that keep me up at night, including constant messages I receive from families who simply want the best for their children. Lots of them seem not to want to get sick and die from COVID, and that’s why we gave them a choice of not going in. After all, why simply say the entire community ought not to risk sickness and death when we can give you a choice? You can always count on us!

Our schools play such an important role in the wellbeing of our children—especially now, when they have been through so much. For us, health and safety lead the way, always. Unless, of course, you're a staff member without a medical condition, or you choose to opt for our hybrid program. In fact, if you failed to fill out our survey, you’re there by default. School will be in session 5 days per week—no matter where our students are.  We can't wait to cancel days off again!
 
We know a lot more now about how that is going to work with respect to mathematically impossible in-person learning, as well as remote learning. Right now we are planning for nearly three-quarters of our students—over 700,000—to begin the school year in a blended learning mode. This means we’ll have a few days or weeks before people start getting sick and we have to close the schools again. Of course it will be your fault for opting in, a win-win for us!

As of now, 26 percent of families plan to begin the year in fully remote learning. This is how we choose to interpret surveys, because who is gonna say otherwise? (The papers? Fahgedaboutit.) Those who make no choice automatically agree with us. Beats the hell out of, you know, elections, and we don't have to do actual rigging. Additionally, we know that as of now we can expect about 85 percent of the teaching workforce to be teaching in person in a blended model as well. Unless more of them apply not to. Fortunately, lots of teachers are afraid to apply, thinking there’ll be retribution, another win for us, as we don't give a flying hoot how anyone feels once we manage to drag them in by hook or by crook.
 
About 15 percent of teachers have requested a reasonable accommodation to work from home. Alas, we were unable to offer them our first choice of unreasonable accommodation. (Those damn lawyers ruin everything,) But you have grit, and that must be a good thing because people are always telling me full of grit. If it were up to me you’d all be paid in pure grit but it’s unlikely I’ll still have this gig by the time contract time comes around. 

So: with all this information at hand, each school continues to develop plans to reopen, and that is largely thanks to our absolute determination to take no responsibility whatsoever for these uniformly impractical and unworkable programs. Each school is blazing an entirely new path for their schools, and I’m certainly glad my children will not be part of the miserable dystopian science fiction that will be occurring in city classrooms come September, or October, or whenever we get around to releasing a calendar. 

We just can't say enough about all the school-based staff working who will be coming in to reinforce the hopeless exercise in futility we will engage in before we inevitably go all remote. Our Central and Borough and Citywide Office employees are critical to reopening too, of course, and will do all in their power to make you pay as little attention as possible to this convoluted and incomprehensible process, just as long as it does not interfere with their crucial function of scheduling our gala luncheons (be they virtual or in person). 

Speaking of Central employees, there is some important news I am so excited to share with you. As of Monday, Donald Conyers has been named First Deputy Chancellor for the DOE. I know that at a time like this, with hopelessly terrified teachers, students, and staff you just can't wait to hear all about who I pick to help me do whatever it is that I do. I can only imagine how much you care about this as you wonder whether you, your students, or your loved ones will contract or spread the virus via public transportation, classroom interaction, touching surfaces that haven’t been cleaned for a century, or breathing the air that we simply cannot recirculate. So please, stop worrying about life and death and start focusing on some guy you've never heard of who you have no idea what he does. Yeah, that's the ticket.
 
Each of you continues to act as though we have enough teachers to double up and teach remotely while you are teaching in person, and we sincerely hope you go in each and every day to teach live, then go home and repeat this remotely.—setting an example for the young people who, not long from now, will be asked to work impossible hours for no compensation, risking their lives for a program that's certain to fail miserably, just as we’re asking you to do now. 

Thank you so much again for your dedication during this extraordinary time.
 
In unity,
Richard

UFT Executive Board August 10, 2020--What the Hell Is Going On Here?

Roll call--5:50

UFT Secretary LeRoy Barr--welcomes us 6:01 PM. 

Minutes--approved via email

UFT  President Michael Mulgrew--6:04--We need to look at numbers within last two weeks. Appears that there's no neighborhood at 3% or over at this moment. We will continue to check. 

We are considering legal actions, and we need to say there's a clear and present danger to prevail. Anything we went to court over would simply give city a month to fix it at this point. 

We must prepare for either opening or remote. We have to do all we can to keep everyone safe, hold city's feet to the fire. They have a plan, but not many details. We know what we need, but it isn't there yet. We will train 100 people as COVID task force. We've already started visiting schools. Largest problem is ventilation. 

We need eyes on PPE, eyes on processes at school level. Thanks 100 people for taking on this process. 

As far as strike or job action, we are prepared to do whatever we need to do if we don't feel things are safe. Everyone has to understand, if we go to court and fail to get an injunction, members need to understand what striking means. We will talk about them. We're not near that yet, but we need to give people good information on which to base decisions.

We will be in every school building in NYC before they open up.

Around rest of country, we see school after school closed right after they open. These states are on fire with COVID. We aren't near that, but we shouldn't open unless we are safe. City Hall has completely lost our trust. We will continue to do our work and prepare. I'm prepared to face whatever penalties if necessary.

15% of teacher have medical accommodations. 20% or more of students have opted out. Parents can opt out at any time. These numbers will continue to grow. 

21 districts opened today with high COVID levels, and are closing quickly. How can we insure we won't go through the same thing? Should we test everyone who enters a school building? Probably. We have no agreement with city yet. 

Doctors say we need random intermittent testing to quickly shut down program. We have no agreement with city on testing or tracing, no evidence they can actually trace. Didn't work upstate and school was quaratined two weeks.

Instructional--No program yet. Goal is, if we open, we want students in, to do their learning and get home as quicky as possible. We want the same for our members. We still have to work out special ed. services and IEP. We have to focus on remote. Numbers will get higher. Over 70% of instruction will be done remotely, and there's a large possibility we will switch to all remote, if we don't start there.

Right now everyone gets out 30 minutes early. This will minimize time in building. We want you to spend the least amount of time in building. We want to coordinate as teams. City wants teachers to work full day and then do remote later. That won't happen. City will be short on teachers, and we don't have federal package to help. 

Instructional lunch--we can't move children in and out. All children facing forward, students would work and eat, and teacher sits in back of room.

Mayor says everyone will be in pod, but that's almost impossible in middle and high schools. We are emphasizing PPE and cleaners. City has enough ionizers, 1400 now and 2000 on order. 

Town Hall this week. Press will spin it all sorts of ways. We are planning for every contingency. We need to insure schools will be safe. We have evidence city didn't follow rules in March. We need to know about testing and tracing, so far unsatisfactory. We are working on educational platforms and pacing. We need curriculum in everyone's platform, but we don't think city is up to it. 

If school doesn't have curriculum off which everyone works, schools can't coordinate. We need to be on same page, but plan is lacking right now. We may start meeting weekly now. Things will get very tight.

We will stand by demands for safety and papers can say what they like. We have access to doctors who work with us and give us great advice. 

Questions--

Does new schedule supercede SBOs in multisession schools? 

Debbie Poulos--There will be some SBOs we cannot implement, but we hope they will begin in Fall, but others can be implemented. 155 minutes not implemented, for example. 

RSPs taking students out for therapy--Still working on that. PPE will need to be particular to those people. Working on caseloads whether remote or in person. Special ed. issues are very difficult. Principals are inventing policies that won't last. Late planning made this worse.

No survey of people who contracted. Info is protected. We are demanding school nurses for every school.

Medical accommodation approvals have begun going out.

We will get you protection needed, and we will get lawyers to back you up if schools don't comply.

We will hopefully begin testing at beginning to school, but we need to test everyone because some people are not symptomatic.

Michael Sill--There will be two forty minute meetings first and third Monday, as in multi session. No parent engagement, or OPW.

Staffing shortage will be next crisis you will hear about in media. Any issue with programs will be operational.

We will not have people in classroom with 12 kids and livestreaming to others. Broadband won't support it.

Teachers up for tenure next year--We don't want to harm anyone and people are still receiving it.

High schools will try to do grab and goes. Teachers will not eat with students. Teachers will have to social distance. 

Nobody is teaching six periods. If you are in those blocks you don't have to be there the whole time. 

We don't believe city has buses. Contracts are settled very late. Buses are controlled by DOE and they don't want to talk about them.

Mike Schirtzer--Ventilation--If systems work as designed would that mean theat of covid gone?

A--Can reduce but not eliminate. Custodians know there's a way to deal in newer buildings, pushing up airflow. Best thing still open window. 

 Arthur Goldstein-- I have a friend who's a middle school CL. He's very concerned about the six period day set out by DOE. He says they would teach six one day and four the next, rather than six every day, and the DOE program shows six periods a day, in violation of contract.

A--There are six periods available for school to use in blocks. No one is teaching six periods every day. CSA is just as frustrated as we are with bad information from DOE. 

Michael Freedman--Does Cuomo want to see every schools plan and have five meetings in large districts?

A--He said NYC has to have five public meetings, one specifically for teachers. We need to be present for all. 

Mindy Rosier--We need social distance, but none go far enough to protect D75 with spitters and biters. We will need to assist students. We can be super spreaders going to different classes.

A--We've been talking ICT over two months. There's no way they will be safe at this moment. Upstate was a special ed. building, and many more had to be quarantined because no one was able to handle a pod. We haven't touched D75 because we can't even get past ICT. You need gowns, face masks and everything. 

?--Many nurses have questions. In March, nurses weren't included in remote program. Where will we be in September? And where is calendar?

A--They're afraid to put it out. If we're back in, then nurses will be in schools, and we need more nurses. If we are remote, there will be some kind of child care program. Tough on nurse chapter, but no one got sick, thankfully. Right now we'll continue talking with city and keep you informed.

We agree to weekly meetings going forward. 

Mulgrew--Dealing with city is quite frustrating. Not sure why mayor thinks number of opt-outs is good thing, and that number will continue to grow. Chances of opening still not so good. We are severely short staffed and have limited time. 

Thanks us and says goodnight. 6:55

Closing roll call.

Blogger's Day Off--But You Can Watch Me on Fox Five News

Not As I Do

It's remarkable to turn on the TV and see people broadcasting from their home computers. More remarkable still is when they speak from isolation demanding we open school buildings. Though it's too risky for them to get off their butts and go to a TV station, though it's too dangerous for the interviewers to be in the same room with these authorities on education, it's okay for over a million kids to visit NYC school buildings. 

 In fact, in New York City, indoor dining is considered too dangerous, so New Yorkers may only eat outside of restaurants. The city, in fact, started a program to enable and expand this. They don't seem to have bothered preparing this much for school next year. We've got an outlandish program that proposes two teachers for every class, one online and one in person. Guess what? The city doesn't have enough teachers to accomplish that. 

We get hopeful letters from the chancellor, saying they care about our health and that of the students. This notwithstanding, it's simply inevitable that there will be new cases of Covid. And while we may have contained it for a while by being extremely careful, this particular experiment will move us precisely in the opposite direction. Eleven Kansas educators just went to a Branson educational retreat, and six came back infected. I'm pretty sure hotels in Branson are cleaner than NYC schools. 

Elsewhere, there are other disturbing developments. While it's comforting to entertain nonsense about how young people are at such low risk, a 7-year-old boy in Georgia with no complicating health issues just died of the virus. Does Mayor de Blasio or Governor Cuomo think that New Yorkers are somehow tougher, and therefore immune? What are they going to say after the first New York kid dies? It's the price of doing business?

I'm bone weary of hearing people say it's all about the kids, while ignoring not only the kids who get sick and die, but more pointedly, their teachers. If you think over a million kids are going to universally observe social distancing, I have a bridge to sell you. And while you're out blathering about the lazy teachers who don't want to do anything, Melissa Martinez, a San Antonio kindergarten teacher, has just died of Covid. 

So go ahead, talking head. Sit in your living room, broadcast from your laptop, and tell me and hundreds of thousands of my UFT brothers and sisters why we have to go into filthy, decrepit, neglected buildings. Tell us why we should trust Mayor Bill de Blasio to monitor infected schools when he plainly failed to do so last March. Tell us why he'll close schools as per his promise when he simply placed them in a bureaucratic purgatory last year. 

Tell us, Governor Cuomo, from your socially distanced, sparsely attended press conference, why young children and teenagers will obediently observe the conditions just as the governor of New York does. Go ahead, Atlantic editor, and find health care workers to ridicule vilify us, and make believe that we'll have PPE just like they have in hospitals. Pretend that unions didn't have to go to ridiculous lengths to secure PPE for hospital staff. Pretend schools are cleaned as hospitals are. 

While politicians and TV talking heads do their work from the comfort and safety of highly controlled environments, let's play pretend and hope for the best regarding New York City's 1.1 million students and 80,000 teachers, not to mention administrators, office staff and custodians. After all, we all know, "Children First" really means all the adults can drop dead.

And when that begins to really happen, what are you going to say, Mayor de Blasio, Governor Cuomo, and Chancellor Carranza? It's unfortunate? We had no way of knowing? We'll do better next time? History suggests otherwise.

I know what I'll say. I'll say you've yet to clean the blood on your hands from March, and now there's more.

The Chancellor Sends Us Another Email

Dear Colleagues,

  

I hope you and yours are safe and healthy, and experiencing a bit of rest and relaxation this summer. You'd better get as much rest as you can now, because September's coming, and we have no idea what the hell is going to happen.

  

Last month, I wrote to you with information about our plan for blended learning in the fall. Today, I am writing to share details about some newly announced health and safety protocols, which we hope will work, but who knows? They didn't work anywhere else, but we think our way is the charm. Uncertainty is a constant during this pandemic, and our plans must be flexible enough to allow us to make excuses and weasel out of blame when they fail. But in all cases, your safety and the safety of our students and families would be the first priority—no matter what, if it weren't for my boss's reckless insistence on opening buildings.

  

We all experienced anxiety and alarm from the events of this pandemic starting back in March, as we failed to close public schools after having closed Broadway. Since then, we have been working diligently and in partnership with other city agencies to build on the lessons learned and prepare fully for a new school year. Last time we failed to follow our own rules and let Covid-infested buildings linger open for a long time. We are drawing on your feedback and on the best-available public health guidance to craft our plans for the fall. This is difficult, since we haven't asked what you want, but my magic 8-ball has gotten me this far.

  

Full details of the protocols are available on the DOE website. I also encourage you to read the plan we recently submitted to the State Department of Health, which Governor Cuomo says is an outline rather than a plan. Screw him. He doesn't pay my salary.

The major components of our health and safety planning include the following: 

·         Building Safety Measures:   

o   At all times, students and staff must wear face coverings protecting their nose and mouth while on school property or on DOE-provided transportation, unless students cannot medically tolerate a face covering or wearing the face covering is developmentally inappropriate. If other students repeatedly refuse to do so, we will remove them, maybe. How many times do they have to refuse? Well, you're likely as not infected after the first, so what's the dif?

o   School leadership and facilities staff in every school are reviewing school space and making necessary repairs and adjustments to ensure safe conditions. Sure, you've never had them before, but we're gonna try extra hard this time. TRUST us.

o   Schools will be cleaned throughout the day and disinfected each night, with special attention to high-touch areas. Sure your custodial staff is inadequate, we haven't replaced retiring staff in ten years, and they can't handle what they already need to do, but if you close your eyes, count to ten, and clap your hands, you won't see how filthy the building is.

o   School buildings will display signage on face coverings, hand washing and physical distancing.  We're hoping to get corporate signage so as to compensate for all the money we're gonna lose when the feds don't come through. 

o   Schools will be allowed to modify or reconfigure spaces to ensure compliance with physical distancing rules.  By that we mean you may move desks.

o   As soon as we can think of other stuff, we'll let you know about that too. Or maybe not. Everyone loves a surprise!  

  

·         Test, Trace & Other Health Protocols:   

o   DOE recommends that all staff take a COVID-19 test in the days before the first day of school and monthly throughout the school year. But if you don't, what the hay?

o   If a student or teacher is feeling sick, they are required to stay home and, if their symptoms are consistent with COVID-19, are asked to get tested.   But if they don't, what the hay?

o   If a student begins experiencing symptoms in school, they will be isolated and monitored by a dedicated staff member until they are picked up by their parents or guardians.  Good luck finding volunteers for this gig. But if they don't, what the hay?

o   Staff members who become symptomatic at school are asked to notify administration and immediately leave the building.   But if they don't, what the hay?

o   In the event of a confirmed COVID-19 case in a school, NYC Test + Trace and NYC Health will investigate to determine close contacts within the school. We will then cover it up for weeks while we pretend to act on it, just like we did last year before you finally humiliated my boss sufficiently to close schools.   

o   If there's more than one case in a school, and it's not in the same classroom, we will devote double the time to pretending we're doing something about it, and we will really hope that it doesn't spread so much that we have to close. My boss really thinks if we can stretch this out his political career will recover. (Hey, what's the difference between Elvis and de Blasio? Elvis is alive.)

o   There will be a clear flow of information to facilitate fast action and prevent spread. A positive confirmed case will trigger an investigation by the NYC Test + Trace Corps and DOHMH to determine close contacts within the school. However, once we hear about it, we will have to check if very, very carefully, just like we did in March, and hopefully we can get through to June without actually doing anything about it.

·         Screening, Entry/Dismissal and Movement Protocols: To minimize the number of individuals who come in contact with each other, and to identify potentially sick students and staff to the greatest extent possible, schools will be required to dismiss students one at a time, beginning at nine AM. Every minute, another student will be dismissed, and schools will develop individual bell sounds for every student in the building. It is our firm hope that, with bells ringing every minute, no one will focus on COVID or the ridiculous nature of classes of ten all facing one direction unable to speak to one another.

   

As a reminder, full details of the protocols are available on the DOE website. I also encourage you to read the plan we recently submitted to the State Department of Health, because I know you have nothing better to do. Cuomo was right. The plans are so vague I don't understand them myself. Nonetheless, I'm certain I've made them sufficiently unappealing that none of you really want to take time out and read them.

Additionally, principals and educators can see newly-released detailed instructional guidance and sample school-day schedules on the InfoHub. We have a great program that's six classes a day five days a week in blatant violation of the UFT Contract. We're hoping no one notices, and then we'll double it, triple it, and quadruple it until you're all working around the clock and we finally have enough teachers for our impossible hybrid plan.

  

You have done an extraordinary job of rising to the challenge of this crisis, and our city owes you both a debt of gratitude and a rock-solid commitment to your health and safety as we move forward together. If it comes to layoffs, I will feel deeply down, depressed and doubtful. But hey, a chancellor's gotta do what a chancellor's gotta do. 

Over the coming weeks and months, we will continue to devote valuable lip service to your feedback. I mean, it's not like we took a survey or anything, so your feedback is whatever the hell we say it is. Though we have an entire legal department devoted to depriving you of your contractual rights, though we failed to keep you safe last year, though many of you have gotten sick and died due to our gross negligence, we pledge to keep listening whenever we can't find a better alternative, to keep improving since we can't possibly do any worse, and to value your health and safety, and the health and safety of our students, above all else, even though we clearly failed to do that last year.   

  

In unity, 

Richard

Be a Role Model. Risk Your Life and Those of Your Students to Set an Example

You may or may not have noticed that I don't write about nursing here. I once had a girlfriend who was a nurse, though. Sometimes she'd bring me a stack of magazines and books and have me write a term paper for her. I got As on my nursing papers.

Still, you wouldn't want me as a nurse. I don't know nursing. This notwithstanding, The Atlantic had no problem having a nurse write a column on what educators ought to be doing during a raging pandemic.

My issues with this article begin with the title:

I’m a Nurse in New York. Teachers Should Do Their Jobs, Just Like I Did.

As far as I know, teachers in New York worked straight through April, May and June. Not only that, but we worked an entire week we were supposed to be off. You'd think someone writing an article about us would know that. I suppose being a nurse was her first qualification, or it wouldn't be right there in the title. Let's look at her second:

....my husband, a public-school teacher in New York City...

I sat through a Presidential forum in Pittsburgh last year. Candidate after candidate was married to a public school teacher, had a mom who was a public school teacher, or knew a public school teacher. I'm sorry, but that does not make you an education expert. That's what you call an appeal to authority, and it's a logical fallacy. It's compounded by the fact that it's so indirect. Knowing someone, even intimately, does not suggest you are expert on their job.

I support teacher-led campaigns to make sure that safety measures are in place. And any city or state experiencing a spike in cases should keep schools shut, along with indoor businesses. What I don’t support is preemptively threatening “safety strikes,” as the American Federation of Teachers did in late July.

So there you have an  argument. The writer supports safety, and schools that don't provide it should be shut. However, you ought not to threaten to strike simply because schools appear unsafe. What ought you to do? Write a strongly worded letter? Hope for the best? In fact, there is no better reason to strike than for safety. There is nothing more fundamental or indispensable.

There then comes the tired "teachers are babysitters" argument:

What do teachers think will happen if working parents cannot send their children to school? Life as we know it simply will not go on.

This is problematic on multiple levels. While we certainly supervise children, that is not our primary function. It's our job to set examples and teach them. We don't set a particularly good example when we decline to stand up for safety. And perhaps the writer hasn't noticed, but pandemic life is not "life as we know it" by any standard.

More importantly, the writer fails to even consider the conditions under which students are returning to school. The fact is, in New York City, she won't even get the babysitting service she equates with "life as we know it." Students will be in buildings 20-50% of the time, and the rest of the time, I can only presume, will be life as we don't know it. Not only that, but the quality of education provided in person will be distinctly inferior to what we can provide with remote instruction.

The writer compares us to nurses and food service providers. She calls us essential workers. I guess this depends on what essential means. If it means people will die without our services, then we are not essential workers. If it means our services are very important, then we ought to provide them in the best way we can. At the moment, the very best was for us to provide services is remotely. The nurse hasn't considered that. She also does not appear to listen very well to her husband, whom she uses repeatedly to rationalize her position:

“I can’t think of one time that there was actually hand soap in the men’s bathroom,” my husband told me. That’ll have to change, hopefully for good. 

I don't know about the writer, but I learn from experience. With all due respect, I'd be an idiot to believe that NYC schools would suddenly be spotless, that custodians would finally have the resources of which they've been deprived for decades, or that Mayor de Blasio, who totally screwed up in March, will miraculously become competent in September.

In case those experiences aren't enough, school openings have proven disastrous thus far. Right off the top of my head come Israel, South Korea, Hong Kong, Beijing, and now Georgia. 

I love my doctor. She's smart and knowledgeable. I saw her a few weeks ago and she was dressed like a martian. She was wearing an N95 mask, a face shield, gloves, and an entire body covering. (No, teachers, you won't get that, nor will your students.) I asked her for an accommodation letter, and she said yes, certainly. She told me she wouldn't be coming in unless she absolutely had to. She said she was now teleconferencing, and if I didn't absolutely have to see her, I should avail myself of that service. I told her I would.

Of course you can't draw blood or do physical testing remotely. I'll tell you one thing, though--her office is spotlessly clean and so is her hospital. I wish her only the best.

Meanwhile, the chancellor of New York City schools has finally announced students without masks would be sent home from school. Of course, that won't happen until after they arrive unmasked, and potentially infect their teachers, classmates and families. Of course if younger children aren't "developmentally able," they get a pass, and maybe you get infected. And students won't get sent home until they "repeatedly" refuse. So how much infection, exactly, is it okay for students to spread? And why they hell shouldn't we not only threaten to strike, but also follow through, to protect our lives, our students' lives, and the lives of all our families?

Sorry, but "I'm a nurse and my husband is a teacher, so suck it up, risk your lives, those of your students, and those of all your families." is one of the very worst arguments I've ever heard.

Magical Co-Teachers

I finally understand the DOE plan to conduct remote learning. I'm hearing details, and now it makes total sense to me. There will be no more Miserable Mondays and Torture Tuesdays, so all schools will be six hours and fifty minutes.

This way, you'll be able to spend the first thirty minutes of each day meeting with your remote or in-person counterpart. You'll also get a thirty minute prep and the end of the day and you won't even need to be in the building for that.

There are other details I've heard, but I'm going to focus on just a few here. One, of course, is that if you happen to be in a building like mine, with multiple sessions, your day starts at 8 and ends at 2:50 already. I guess if you have a first period class, you spend the first thirty minutes of it coordinating with your co-teacher. Your students will just have to sit and wait, I guess.

Who is your co-teacher? Well, if you are teaching remotely, your co-teacher is the person who teaches the other ten students in the building. And if you are in the building, your co-teacher is the person who teaches the ten students who aren't online that day. Let's examine this concept just a little bit.

First of all, the person in the classroom will have several disadvantages. One is the state regulation that says all desks must face in the same direction so as to preclude droplets being orbited in the direction of students or the teacher. I mean, it's good that the people in that room will have less chance of contracting and spreading a deadly disease, but nonetheless it's gonna be tough to communicate when everyone is social distanced, no one can approach anyone, no one can see the teacher's face, and the teacher can't come to any student to check work or answer questions that require knowledge of anything that is not apparent. Students won't be writing on boards, or even in a chat window.

So there's that. There's the fact that teachers have different voices and styles and may cover different material without actually planning to. There's the fact that students may like your style better than mine, end up hating me, and may stubbornly refuse to learn from me, demanding to be with you. Granted, that may be a stretch. There's a bigger problem, the one de Blasio and Carranza have failed to face ever since they made up this program.

The main problem is this--if I'm scheduled to teach five classes, and a hundred of my colleagues are scheduled to do the same, that means my building has five hundred classes. If we're elementary teachers, we have one hundred classes. Under this plan, our high school now has one thousand classes, and our elementary has two hundred.

Each school, though, still has only one hundred teachers. Where are the other one hundred coming from? Are they going to drag in people from Tweed? Are they going to hire tons of new subs, and assume the subs are capable of teaching whatever to whomever with no training whatsoever? Are they going to put every ATR to work? Because if they do, and if no problems whatsoever ensue, we still won't have nearly enough teachers to cover this plan.

Maybe we shouldn't have spent fifty years without lowering class sizes after all. Maybe then we'd have leeway to deal with this emergency. As things stand, though, teachers cannot handle extra students and provide anything like the services students need under any scenario, let alone this one. Given their utter lack of planning since April,  I'm not at all surprised the city now wishes to rely on magical teachers who don't exist.

This notwithstanding, with no qualifications whatsoever, I could do the chancellor's job better than Richard Carranza simply because I believe in verifiable reality.

Dr. Fauci’s Experiment

On the evening of July 28th, Dr. Anthony Fauci told the American Federation of Teachers the following:

“You’re going to be part of the experiment of the learning curve of what we need to know.”

I was a little surprised by that. First of all, I frequently see Dr. Fauci compared to President Trump, portrayed as the relative voice of reason. He seems to be truthful to a fault, and frequently speaks the bad news the White House would be happier to deny. I can only suppose that’s why he made this statement as well.

I’m not at all sure, though, that teachers, students, and our families ought to be participating in this experiment. The stakes here are literally life and death, and I’m neither inclined nor honored to be a canary in a coal mine. I’ve lost friends to this virus. I have young colleagues who’ve spent weeks in the hospital. Even more of my colleagues have lost parents and other family. In fact, we’ve learned a lot about COVID 19 in a relatively short period of time, and we’ve learned it the hard way.

Of course there is still a lot we don’t know about the virus. It’s shocking, however, that any medical doctor, let alone Dr. Fauci, would suggest that the way to learn about it is to send Americans into schools and find out exactly how many of them get sick and die. While it’s true that this information might prove of value, we’ve already got 150,000 dead and millions more sick.

I’m not a doctor, and I won’t pretend to know much about disease. I do know, though, that doctors take an oath to first, do no harm. I’m baffled as to how sending tens of millions of Americans to schools to find out just how the virus spreads entails doing no harm.

Furthermore, we have a pretty good idea of what school openings can be like. In Israel, we now know that opening the schools prematurely was a disaster that brought about a resurgence of the Corona virus. In South Korea, a country that had managed to contain the virus much better than we had, they had to close schools within days of opening, after the virus spiked once again.  Hong Kong opened schools, but is now fighting a third wave of the virus.

Given these real examples, among others, it’s even harder to determine why Dr. Fauci might think this experiment is well-advised. It’s even more of a mystery why he’d announce such a thing to the AFT and expect it to be well-received. Hopefully he'll make up his mind to oppose it, and sooner rather than later.

On its surface, this statement sounds more like something from an old black and white horror movie than the words of one of the country’s most-respected physicians. This kind of experiment is not all that disturbing when it’s performed on a stolen corpse in some cold, dark castle during a violent thunderstorm. When we’re talking about America’s teachers and children, it takes on a different connotation altogether.

AFT members signed up to support children, not to be crash test dummies. We certainly didn’t sign up to use our students as such. Furthermore, the plans under which we go back are so poorly-thought-out that it’s doubtful our students will benefit educationally, let alone socially or emotionally.

I’m glad Dr. Fauci speaks the truth, and I’m glad he isn’t intimidated into misleading us about this pandemic. This notwithstanding, it’s simply unconscionable to perform life and death experiments with America’s teachers and students. I sincerely hope Dr. Fauci does everything in his power to get American to reconsider this experiment and advocate for a better plan.