Education activists around the country explain what their districts have done during Covid pandemic

On the latest Talk out of School podcast, after some local education news,  I spoke to three education activists: Damaris Allen, Hillsborough County parent and President of the Florida Collaboration Project; Glenn Sacks, a LA teacher and chapter leader, and Cassie Creswell, Chicago parent and Exec. Director of Illinois Families for Public Schools , about what their schools have been doing during the Covid pandemic to keep students safe and healthy, and what sort of education is being provided to make up for the disruptions in their schooling.  You can check out previous podcast episodes here.

Episode Notes

Chalkbeat, NYC officials keep a lid on data from tests to address ‘learning gaps’

Gothamist, Some NYC Teachers Worry "Learning Loss" Tests Will Exacerbate the Problem

Class Size Matters and Education Law Center, State budget hearings testimony on the DOE’s failure to use state funds appropriately and with required public input

NY Daily News, NYC Education Dept. shortens quarantine for students who test positive for COVID-19 from 10 to 5 days

American Medical Association press release, AMA: CDC quarantine and isolation guidance is confusing, counterproductive

El Diario, Preocupación y confusión entre padres por nuevos cambios en reglas de cuarentena de niños en escuelas de NYC

JD Supra, Mask Mandate; Nassau County Court Decision; Where Are We?

Brooklyn Eagle, Brooklyn Judge Reinstates NY Mask Mandate

Chicago Sun-Times, CPS says change in COVID case reporting wasn’t intended to mislead public

Chicago Sun-Times, Fight over COVID testing of students — and whether CPS disregarded governor’s offer of help — at heart of dispute with union

 

Deceptive messaging and multiple gaps in the level of protection from Covid that the DOE is providing students -- but why?

Update 1/7/2022:  Jill Jorgensen did an excellent story last night on NY1 explaining this bizarre formula the DOE is using to determine ho many students to test at each school- the first reporter to do so, to my knowledge. She found that of at 60 of randomly selected 250 schools, fewer than 5% of all students were tested. Check it out.  In the segment, DOE falsely claims that "Our surveillance testing program is the largest in the nation." Of course, NYC is the largest district in the nation.  But they are clearly not testing the most students in any case.  Los Angeles schools tests every student and every teacher each week --over 660,000 kids & over 26,000 teachers. See also this letter to the Mayor, from State Legislators and Council Members, asking for a two week remote option, to allow for improved safety protocols to slow the spread of Covid.

I try to study the health and safety protocols being used in schools, and yet only last night did I realize that the much vaunted doubling of in-school random PCR Covid testing that DOE claimed would start after the holiday break does not really meant what it seems. 

Despite the fact that the NY Times reported that the DOE "plans to ramp up testing from 10 percent of consenting students in each school each week to 20 percent", actually that 20 percent rule only applies to the number of unvaccinated students in each school.  

For example, if a school has 300 students, and 250 are vaccinated, the DOE will only test 10 students  (20% of 50) per week of the total pool of vaccinated and unvaccinated kids who have consented .  This was confirmed by a tweet from Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat.

Yet I cannot find this reported nowhere in the media or on the DOE's website. If you can find this explained anywhere, please leave the link in the comment box below. [No longer true; see update above.]

Even some pretty well-informed parents were not aware of this either, like Debra Wexler, who used to work at DOE as a press officer and now works at the Carnegie Foundation; see her tweet below.

Turns out they’re testing only x students= 20% of y, with y = to unvaxed kids. Ridiculous and deceptive. When they claimed to be testing 20% of all vaxed and unvaxed kids.

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) January 6, 2022

Yeah - I saw a reporter tweeting out this explanation after I replied. Absolutely not how I understood the change as a parent. And absolutely inadequate.

— Debra Wexler (@DebraWexler_) January 6, 2022

This also means that as more students are vaccinated, there is less and less testing each week - which seems counterproductive.

This, along with the low percentage of students who have consented in some schools, means very limited numbers of kids are being  tested each week; in some schools, only a handful. See this from teacher Sara Allen :

The last week of school before break, 24. 26 kids today.

“Doubling.”

This is a school of 1300 kids. That’s 2% of total students.

This is happening all over the city.

(Be sure to check & track your school’s results here:) https://t.co/pV7Jsjp2yW

3/

— Sarah Allen (@Mssarahmssarah) January 6, 2022

 And yet even with the low rate of testing, Covid is so rampant that many schools are  reporting that they are running out of the test kits that kids who are exposed are supposed to receive, and have had to cut back:

Yep. We didn't give the kids the two they were supposed to because we were rationing them. Even with rationing, we ran out of tests on Day 3 of this "Test to stay" business.

— Terra Vetter (@dissidentedu) January 6, 2022

According to the DOE "plan", if students are exposed in school, each one is supposed to receive two rapid antigen tests, and then take one test on the first day and the other on the fifth day, to see if they are infected. 

Yet as this Stat article explains, even if someone tests negative on, they may be actually positive and able to transmit the infection to others . If exposed and possibly infected students are getting only one test now because of shortages, what does that mean? 

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, all students had to test negative before starting school after the holiday break, and as before, all students and staff will continue to be tested weekly, with no opt in or opt out allowed.  In New Orleans, all students must be vaccinated by February 1. Why NYC is unable to provide the same level of protection to its students is beyond me. 

And students unlike teachers are not being provided with high quality masks. See how important high quality masks are (from the Wall Street Journal):

This in the wealthiest city in the world, where the Covid positivity rate as of yesterday was 34.8% . The state as a whole now has the highest rate in the country; and if it were a nation, it would have the second highest rate in the world.

I keep looking at New York State as the indicator for what's to come in the US. For new cases/capita, it's leading the US. If it were a country, it would now be the 2nd highest in the world after Ireland. In contrast to the CDC, the state has a lot of solid new data to review /1 https://t.co/gqyNo6A59P pic.twitter.com/byud6eRaXP

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) January 6, 2022

Update on Omicron and what's happening in schools in NYC and elsewhere to limit transmission

Correction:  Just informed that on Dec. 29, CDC updated its guidance & now calls for 10 days quarantine for any Covid positive school staff or students. So the DOE directive that staff should return after 5 days as long as their symptoms are minor is NOT aligned with the CDC. 

Omicron is spreading like wildfire, and in response several urban and suburban districts are keeping their schools closed or going remote next week, either for the full week or part of it, including Seattle, Detroit, Atlanta and Newark.  In NY state, among the districts that are going remote are Yonkers, New Rochelle,  Mount Vernon, and according to reliable sources, Ossining, Westbury and Freeport.

In NYC, the citywide seven-day positivity rate is an incredible 32%.  [update 1/3/22: now 33.5%.] In some neighborhoods, the rate is as high as 40%. Yet instead of  going remote, the DOE has made an agreement with the UFT they will increase the weekly random Covid screening to 20% of all students and staff who have consented, and will be providing teachers with testing kits and K95 masks each week.  

Students will only get testing kits if they're exposed, and no masks -- very unfortunate especially given that they are less likely to be fully vaccinated and thus presumably more vulnerable if they do get infected. 

In addition, DOE has updated their screening process.  Here is the new form students, staff and visitors have to fill out daily, which is confusing.  

First of all, it suggests that if you were exposed to a Covid case out of school and not fully vaccinated, you need to quarantine for at least seven days, but if exposed in school, not to quarantine at all unless you test positive, despite the fact that it is impossible for most people to distinguish the source of their infection and unclear why it should make a difference.  

Secondly, the new screening requires infected teachers to return to school after five days even if they are still symptomatic as long as their  symptoms are not serious and they wear a K95 mask.  This is aligned with the new CDC guidance, but still seems excessively risky. awho log in wwho ti klienho wwho havwhowho://twitter.com/jasonwhwhoiiimartinez81/status/1477417610920693762?s=20

Also, a message widely tweeted by teachers today appears to say that the DOE Situation Room is no longer even going to attempt to track transmission within schools, but is leaving this critical task up to overburdened school administrators and teachers.  

If this message was distributed to your school and/or I've misinterpreted it, please let me know by leaving a comment or emailing me at info@classsizematters.org.  Thanks! 

See also the chart with reasonable precautions and protocols that Jay Brown, a member of CEC District 21, put together and that Nina Kulkarni, a teacher and parent,14776 alonlkarni_ninastatus//94823670980610?s=20 has recommended on twitter.

The city's claim of low in-school transmission is unreliable at best

Yesterday the Mayor and the NYC Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi held a press conference to announce revised safety protocols for NYC schools, with weakened quarantining requirements.  Instead, kids ill be sent home with testing kits if they were in close contact with a Covid positive classmate or teacher, and unless they test positive on day 1 and/or on day 5, they can continue to attend school.  

They also said that they will double the amount of random Covid testing in the schools (ostensibly 10% of students weekly at each school, to be increased to 20%; though the actual number of students is  often far less given that families have to opt into rather than opt out of testing).  

For more on the new protocols, see the DOE letter to parents here, and articles in Gothamist and Chalkbeat.

During the presser  and afterwards on twitter, Dr. Chokshi repeated the claim that more rigorous measures were not necessary, including testing students more frequently or before the resumption of school next week, as some experts have advised, since they had found in-school transmission to be extremely low: "Even if the rates were to become somewhat higher due to Omicron becoming dominant, we estimate that, in schools, about 98% of close contacts do not end up developing COVID-19."

I received the document below that City Hall is using to back up this 98% figure, prepared by Dr. Jay Varma, the Mayor's Senior Advisor for Public Health.

Some quick observations:

1. I don’t see the figure 98% cited anywhere.
   
2. The time period covered, October – December 2021, is mostly pre-Omicron and thus of doubtful relevance to current conditions in which this far more infectious variant prevails.  In fact, the document is entitled, "Interim Report on COVID-19 Transmission due to Delta Variant in New York City Public Schools."
3. Since the DOE Situation Room has been dysfunctional, especially in recent weeks, overwhelmed by the sharp rise in Covid cases in schools according to many accounts, it is unclear how much tracking and tracing the city has managed to do that could accurately estimate how much in-school transmission has actually occurred.  
   

If you have additional thoughts, please leave your comments/observations below the document.  Thanks!

Risk of Covid worse in crowded lunchrooms; and in many overcrowded schools lunch already starts at 9:30 AM

One of the most concerning risks of Covid transmission will take place in the cafeteria or other eating spaces, because students have to take their masks off to eat, often in very overcrowded conditions.  That's why NYC is now requiring proof of vaccination for anyone eating at a restaurant indoors.  Sadly, no vaccination is required for any student, even those 12 and up who are eligible.

In a Chalkbeat article on this issue earlier this month, the DOE advised the following:

In New York City, officials with the education department recommend that schools use outdoor spaces or other large areas for meal times, and to start lunch earlier or later so fewer students are in the cafeteria at once.

Yet the proposal to start lunch earlier ignores how many overcrowded schools already start lunch very early. In Feb. 2019 an article in City Limits pointed out in some schools, students were forced to eat lunch as early as 9 AM. 

Despite DOE promises to improve the situation after the Daily News and WNYC had posted data listing 75 overcrowded schools where lunch was served before 10 a.m. five years before, these early lunch periods still occurred at 41 of the 75 schools. Three schools had closed and 21 others served lunch between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m.

This was followed up by another expose in March 2019 in the Daily News, revealing that students at more than half of all NYC public schools were forced to eat lunch before 11 AM.  In response, the DOE spokesperson said,  “Students shouldn’t eat lunch before 11 a.m., and we’ll work with each school serving lunch before 11 a.m. to make adjustments if possible for the 2019-20 school year." 

A few months after the Daily News article appeared, Mayor de Blasio promised to take action: "That has to change. It's unacceptable. I'm a parent and I can say parents don't want to see that for their kids,"

It's impossible to check to see if the situation has improved, as the data on lunch times is no longer on the webpage where it once existed. Peter Fois of the DOE Office of Food and Nutrition Services emailed me that updated info may be posted in mid- to late-October.  

Yet you can take a look at a list provided by City Limits of the schools that had exceptionally early lunch times in 2014 and still did in 2019 here.  I doubt it's changed much since then.  There is also a list by school of how many lunch periods they schedule per day, as required by Local Law 60-2011, but there's no data posted since 2018-2019.  City Council sent me a copy of the report for the 2019-2020 school, and I sorted the tab entitled "meal periods" by the number of  lunch periods for each school per day.  Though it's hard to interpret the time that lunch is served from the data, one can assume that the more periods a day, the earlier lunch starts and the later it ends. John Adams HS in Queens was the worst, with eight periods of lunch a day.

Of course, the problem is generally made worse by the number of co-located schools in the same building, which not only increases overcrowding overall but makes scheduling lunch far more challenging, since each school wants its own dedicated time in the cafeteria.  I wrote about how the DOE has continued to co-locate schools throughout the pandemic in our  testimony to the Council on Sept.1.

Why Biden should focus on vaccinating all school staff ASAP instead of making students take pointless stressful tests

On Monday, Ian Rosenblum, appointed as Deputy Asst. Sec. of the US Dept. of Education announce
d that states would NOT be given a waiver from administering standardized exams this year – though ten states had already requested them, including New York. 

His letter is here; articles in Chalkbeat  and in Diane Ravitch’s blog here.  Rosenblum’s letter does say that the tests could be shortened, given over the summer (!) or even next fall. 

It is somewhat surprising and quite depressing that a relatively junior staffer would make this announcement before Biden’s choice for Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has even taken office – and in the midst of a pandemic no less.  Check out the video here where Biden promised at an AFT forum last year that he would eliminate all federally-mandated standardized testing.   Makes you wonder who is really running the show! at the Dept of Education.

Or perhaps not.  Ian Rosenblum, who signed the official letter, came to the US Department of Education from running the NY branch of the pro-testing outfit Education Trust, now headed by our former and highly controversial pro-testing NY State Education Commissioner John B. King.   

Before that, Rosenblum was the top education advisor to the formerly pro-testing Gov. Cuomo, until Cuomo decided that this was not a popular political stance i, given vocal parent protests against the lengthy and highly flawed Common Core-aligned exams, leading to a 20% opt out rate. 

Interestingly, Ed Trust spearheaded a letter just a few weeks ago, urging the US Dept of Education to reject state requests for waivers.  The letter was signed onto by many inside-the-Beltway groups that have received a minimum of $200M in Gates funding over the last ten years or so:

National Urban League [$18M since 2011]
National Action Network [not listed]
UnidosUS [$11.5M since 2011]
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) [not listed on Gates Foundation site but cited on LULAC site as “partner” and cited here and here]
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) [$3.9M since 2011]
National Center for Learning Disabilities [$5M since 2014]
Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA) [not listed]
National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools [$1.9M since 2019]
The Education Trust [$49.1M since 2012]
Education Reform Now [$1M since 2016]
Alliance for Excellent Education [$22.8M since 2010]
Data Quality Campaign [$26 M since 2009]
Teach Plus [$23M since 2012]
Educators for Excellence [$12.4M since 2011]
Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents (ALAS) [not listed]
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools [$21.5M since 2009]
National PTA [$5M since 2009]
KIPP [$18.4M since 2019]
Collaborative for Student Success [not listed but funded by Gates according to its website]

The push back from teachers and parents to the waiver rejection letter has been immediate and intense, saying how unfair it is to make students take these tests at this time.  Said one New Jersey teacher & mom: "Parents don't want this. Educators don't want this & scientifically impossible that these tests will yield reliable, valid, usable data. Who is being served by this?" 

If states have to give these exams remotely, watch out for the unreliable and highly biased surveillance spyware schools will ask to install on your children’s devices.  Best advice is to refuse and opt out of these exams altogether.

Even our DOE Chancellor this morning said the following:

Carranza this morning, when asked what sort of state tests would be feasible at this point in NYC: "As an educator I would say to parents, there is an opt out. And if there is ever a time to consider whether that opt out makes sense for you, this is the time."

— Reema Amin (@reemadamin) February 25, 2021

https://twitter.com/reemadamin/status/1364977654097657861?s=20

Instead of mandating standardized testing, the Biden administration should focus on getting all teachers vaccinated as soon as possible, as this oped convincingly argues.  Biden has said that teachers should be prioritized for the vaccine, but he has left this up to states to decide on how this would be achieved and over what time frame. This is a mistake.

The evidence over whether it is safe for all teachers and students to attend schools in person at this time is contradictory and confusing, and different people have understandably different estimations of the benefits and risks involved.  

But two polls have come out in the past week, one from Morning Consult and the other from Pew, showing that the majority of voters believe that teachers should be vaccinated before schools are re-opened in full.  Morning Consult found that 55% of voters held this view:

Pew’s results were even more resounding, showing that 59% of voters say that reopening schools should wait until all teachers who want the vaccine have received it:

Here in NYC, though teachers are on the huge priority list to be vaccinated,  thousands of teachers and other school staff are still on waiting lists, according to a statement put out yesterday by the UFT :

“The UFT represents more than 120,000 teachers, guidance counselors, paraprofessionals and other school-based members. Even putting the most positive spin on the city's numbers, there are tens of thousands of staff who have not yet had access to the vaccine," said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers.

As of this week, the UFT vaccination program has matched 23,000 UFT members who want the vaccine with health care providers. Based on the number of doses the providers have had available, roughly 8,000 have already been vaccinated. We do not receive names, only total tallies, of those who received an appointment through the UFT program.

We have encouraged our members to also apply for vaccines through other city and state sources.  We have no way of knowing how many have been successful in getting vaccinated through these sources.

The Mayor claimed yesterday that about 30,000 of the DOE’s 120,000 total school staffers have now received the COVID-19 vaccine via the city program.  Even assuming this figure is accurate, it clearly isn’t enough.

The Trump administration sent separate shipments of vaccines to pharmacies that were supposed to be used  in an expedited fashion exclusively for nursing home residents, to ensure that they would be vaccinated as soon as possible; why couldn't President Biden do the same for schools?  

For the sake of our teachers, our students and schools, not to mention his own popularity, Biden should make this his mission, instead of requiring that students take stressful and pointless exams that will yield highly unreliable and inequitable results, especially during the current crisis.

Please urge your legislators now to support our schools so they can reopen safely next year!

Last week, Governor Cuomo, the State Department of Health, and the NY State Education Department all came out with detailed guidance on what measures schools should take to reopen in the fall to ensure health and safety as well as provide instructional and emotional support to their students. If the COVID positivity rates of all regions of the state remain under 5%, as they do currently, their schools  will be eligible to reopen if they adopt the recommended protocols.  

Yet little or nothing was said in these instructions about how schools can afford the expensive health and safety measures, as well as the extra staffing and space necessary to keep students engaged in learning while attending school in person in shifts to ensure social distancing.

As the National Academy of Sciences pointed out, “Many of the mitigation strategies currently under consideration (such as limiting classes to small cohorts of students or implementing physical distancing between students and staff) require substantial reconfiguring of space, purchase of additional equipment, adjustments to staffing patterns, and upgrades to school buildings. The financial costs of consistently implementing a number of potential mitigation strategies is considerable.”
 
Even to do an adequate job with full-time remote learning requires funding for additional devices, faster internet access, and more teachers and counselors, to provide more individualized and ongoing support and to keep group sizes small.

Our schools’ desperate need for more funding has been aggravated by the fact that Governor Cuomo hijacked the extra dollars that were funded by Congress in the CARES ACT to fill holes in state aid, instead of sending these dollars to schools to help them address the COVID crisis.

Now is the time for the Governor and our State Legislators to stand up for our schools and protect our children by providing them with the funds that are badly needed. They could do that easily by boosting taxes on the ultra-wealthy,  including the Ultra-millionaires Tax on residents who earn above $5 million annually (S.8164 / A.10364), or above $1 million annually (S.7378/A.10363); and the Pied-a-Terre tax (S.44 / AA.4550), a surcharge on non-primary residences worth over five million dollars.

There is no doubt that the ultra-wealthy can afford this. In NY State,  118 billionaires saw their wealth increase by $77.3 billion during first three months of the pandemic. Michael Bloomberg saw his net worth increase by $12 billion during this period alone.  All New Yorkers, including the ultra-wealthy, need to pitch in during this time of need, to ensure the health, safety and education of our kids. Below are links to your Legislators’ contact information and a script you can use. They will be back in session starting tomorrow. 

Directions: Call your Legislators in their district offices – unless their phones are busy and then please call their Albany offices.

You can find your Assemblymember’s  phone number here and your State Senator’s phone number here.

Script: Hi, my name is ________ and I am a constituent.
Our public schools desperately need more state aid to deal with the pandemic. I want to urge [Elected Name] to support the Fund Our Future package, including the Ultra-Millionaires Tax, the Billionaire Tax Shelter Tax and the Pied-a-terre Tax, so our kids can attend school safely next year. Can I count on [Elected Name] to sign onto these bills, and to ask the Legislative leaders to bring them to a vote? 

Afterwards, if you have time, please enter their responses into our Google form here. Thanks!