Problems with NYC's school reopening plan - what can they be thinking?

Schools reopen next Monday, Sept. 13, only five days away.  Meanwhile, I have an oped in Gotham Gazette about the many problems with NYC’s school reopening plan.  Please check it out. Here it is in Spanish. 

Please also read this terrific oped in the NY Daily News from NYC principal Gabriel Feldberg about the need for more Covid testing in schools. He writes:

Children aged 5 to 12 have the highest COVID rates in New York City. Since the start of July, this age group has grown 10 times more likely to test positive. Now, across the city, the average positivity rate for children under 18 is roughly 5%. Do this math.

Five percent is one kid in 20. Public schools routinely have more than 20 students in a class. So how many classes will have a COVID case on the first day of school? Then, even with masks, ventilation, and other safety measures, how many cases will that give us by the second week? We won’t find out, because the New York City Department of Education plans to cut 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.  You can listen to it above.  

Among other points, 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.

Since then, I noted that Governor Hochul and NY State Health Dept put out an order last week, which appears to require all schools to offer weekly testing to every unvaccinated student.

Yet DOE intends to testing only one tenth of unvaccinated students once every two weeks, despite the fact that NYC is in a “high transmission” zone.

Yesterday, the Daily News reporter tweeted that NYC claimed it had permission from the state to ignore this directive. 

Later that day:

None of this makes sense.  Why would New York state immediately backtrack on their own directive, which clearly said that schools were required to offer testing to all unvaccinated students weekly?

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.  In addition, as the Regulatory Impact Statement put out by New York State explains, 

The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has received an award for [Covid testing] of approximately 251 million dollars.  These amounts are believed to be sufficient to offset any costs associated with any school-related testing such that the fiscal impact on Local Health Departments and schools is minimized.  Costs for testing can also be offset by testing that is offered under Operation  Expanded Testing which is free testing in K-12 schools and other congregate settings which is funded by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Defense (DoD). 

So DOE has at least $251 million and perhaps unlimited federal funds to do weekly testing, but is choosing to actually cut BACK on testing this year, despite Delta and despite the lack of social distancing in schools. 

At the same time, they just released $350 million in federal funds to schools that can be used for almost anything except for hiring full-time staff to lower class size. Instead, these funds can be spent on more standardized testing, software, PD, and most any other far less effective way to improve learning. And they made this funding available just a few days before school starts, which ensures that most of it will 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.

Yesterday's hearings and our critique of DOE's reopening plan: too little Covid testing; too much standardized testing

Update:  Here is the just-posted transcript of the hearings.

 Joint hearings of the City Council Education and Health Committees were held yesterday on DOE's school reopening plan. The assorted officials who testified, including Chancellor Meisha Porter and Dr. Dave Chokshi, NYC Health Department Commissioner, did not appear to reassure many of the Council Members that their plan was well-thought out or strong enough to ensure student safety.

What was also depressing is that the public testimony was dominated by anti-vaxxer teachers, who also called out and disrupted the hearings several times.  News reports about the proceedings are here  and here

Above is the video of Michael Horwitz, providing abbreviated remarks on behalf of Class Size Matters.  The video of the entire session is here.   

Here and embedded below is our full testimony with our detailed critique of DOE's school reopening plan. 

Questionable DOE contracts to be voted on Oct. 21 by the PEP, concerns about DOE lack of compliance with student privacy law & ongoing issues about PEP process & lack of training

 I sent this memo to the members of the Panel for Educational Policy last week; questions about their busing contracts, DOE's lack of compliance with the state student privacy law by failing to post their district data privacy policy and contracts with vendors that have access to personal student data, and problems related to PEP governance.   

Update on busing: After this memo was written, it was also revealed that the DOE is planning purchasing Reliant bus company, for an unknown amount, acquiring one thousand buses and thousands of new employees, with ongoing considerable costs to the DOE budget. As I said to the NY Post, this move raises all sorts of questions, including how can the city afford this in the face of huge budget shortfalls? And why are they adding more city employees while threatening to lay off thousands of others? 

Update on the Covid testing contracts:  As of Friday 10/16/20, DOE has now posted the three vendor Parent Bill of Rights agreements here,  after we and others urged them to do so.  We still have concerns about the provisions regarding deletion of the personal student data portions in their Parent Bill of Rights, which do not clearly state when the data is to be deleted and thus do not appear to comply with the state student privacy law Education Law 2D, or regs, which fully came into force January 2020.  There still are no contracts or PBOR posted on the DOE website for the 75+ ed tech companies that DOE has acquired and encouraged teachers to use, many of which also have access to personal student data.

The meeting of the PEP contract is Monday Oct. 19 at 11 AM today; you can see livestream here.  Meeting of the PEP is Wed. Oct 21 at 6 PM; more info including agenda here.  The agenda has a link to the proposed contracts.  You can listen or sign up to speak starting at 5:30 PM here.