Demand the city provide a safe and healthy return to school!
Sept. 8, 2021
Schools reopen next Monday, Sept. 13, only five days away. Meanwhile, over the weekend I had an oped in Gotham Gazette pointing out the many serious weaknesses in NYC’s school reopening plan. Please check it out. Here it is in Spanish.
Please also read this terrific oped in today’s NY Daily News from NYC principal Gabriel Feldberg about the need for more Covid testing in schools.
On Saturday, I interviewed City Council Chair of the Health Committee Mark Levine on WBAI-FM and the Talk out of School podcast about his concerns with the Department of Education’s health and safety protocols. Among other issues, he said there should be an independent evaluation of the Intellipure air purifiers that DOE purchased for $43 million which has received scathing reviews from independent experts.
NYC is in a high transmission zone, yet DOE intends to test only one tenth of unvaccinated students once every two weeks. As I pointed out in my oped, the refusal of DOE and the Mayor to carry out sufficient Covid testing is particularly inexplicable, given the fact that FEMA promised to pay for the full costs of school Covid testing, and the NYC Department of Health already has at least $251 million in federal funds that can be used for this purpose.
At the same time, the DOE just released $350 million in federal funds that schools can spend on almost anything except for hiring full-time staff to lower class size. Instead, these funds are eligible to be spent on more standardized testing, software, PD, and/or many other less effective ways to improve learning. And they made this funding available just a few days before school starts, which makes it more likely to be wasted. Here’s the list of schools, with the amounts.
If you’re a school administrator or teacher, outraged about the lack of Covid testing, please sign this petition. If you’re a parent, sign this one, demanding a safe return to school.
thanks, Leonie
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