Schools have reopened, as overcrowded as ever, with insufficient Covid screening

UPDATE:  On Monday, Sept. 20, the DOE announced their plans would shift again.  Now 10% of unvaccinated students whose parents give consent would be tested weekly, instead once every week.  

But to minimize quarantining, NO students in the same classes as positive cases would  quarantine, as long as they were masked and maintained three feet of social distancing -- which we know does not exist in many if not most schools.  It's like the Emperor's New Clothes.  Who will call out the Mayor and the Dept. of Health on this new fantasy?

Instead, if the Mayor and the Chancellor want to minimize disruptive quarantines, they should be administering rapid Covid tests to students in the same classes as those found to be infected, as they are doing elsewhere in the country, including Maryland, Massachusetts, Quebec and elsewhere. They should also be administering weekly testing to ALL students and staff, and mandate vaccination for all students over 12, as LA schools have done.

---

The school year has begun and predictably there are reports of lots of Covid cases, and many  overcrowded schools and classrooms. 

Already, one D75 school in East Harlem has closed because of suspected in-school Covid spread, and as many as 663 classrooms partly or totally closed. 

Here are photos of two other schools: the first, to the left, shows classroom overcrowding in an unidentified Brooklyn high school, the other below, a hallway at Midwood HS in Brooklyn.

Below this post is a video taken in the hallway at Fort Hamilton HS, also in Brooklyn.  Today's NY Post has photos of similar levels overcrowding at Forest Hills High School in Queens.   According to Adam Bergstein, the UFT chapter chairman and an English teacher at Forest Hills HS:

“People are wearing masks, otherwise it’s like nothing has changed from February of 2020 until today,” Bergstein said.

Fort Hamilton HS had 4,657 students, as of the latest DOE data, and was at 193% capacity.  Forest Hills HS with 3,705 students was at 184% capacity. and Midwood with 4054 students was at 165%.  

All three were all on the list of the 73 "Tier one" schools  that DOE had originally admitted to principals would be impossible to provide any kind of social distancing without provided with extra space, (though they refused to reporters to confirm the veracity of the list after I posted it.).  Yet fully 727 NYC schools are more than 100% overcapacity, according to the DOE's won data.

Back in June, when principals asked DOE  what could be done in so many schools where students pack "the hallways like sardines",  officials claimed they would provide solutions, including finding more space for the most overcrowded schools:

DOE spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon said Wednesday that “there will be enough space to safely accommodate all of our school communities in the fall.” “We have three months until the start of next school year – part of our work to get ready is actively supporting a small number of schools that may face spacing challenges so that we can accommodate all students,” O’Hanlon said.

Clearly, that didn't happen. This level of overcrowding is inhumane - even in "normal" times. During a pandemic, it is simply unacceptable -- especially given the lax Covid testing regime of only one-tenth of unvaccinated students every two weeks. 

In the NY Post article, one Forest Hills parent suggested that the "school should offer a remote learning option to free up space, stagger classes or perhaps reduce the course load for juniors and seniors so they take only classes necessary for graduation."   

One epidemiologist warned against letting students eat in crowded cafeterias, where they have to be unmasked; another strongly urged the city to stagger classes and test for Covid more frequently.

Today, the UFT called for more testing : "Weekly testing of students under age 12, along with those in District 75, must be reinstated if we are to meet that goal."  Presumably this means the same 20% random weekly sample as last year, and only for children under 12 and D75 students.

But as Dr. Kitaw Demissie, the dean of SUNY Downstate’s School of Public Health told the NY Post, "Every student, every week needs to be tested,” Demissie said. “Ten percent is very small.”

 

Original list of "Tier one" schools which DOE said couldn't provide social distancing next year, with UPDATED info from DOE

UPDATE 8/6/21: After I posted the below on Wed. August 4, on Thursday Jessica Gould of Gothamist wrote about the confusion of several principals as to what DOE actually expected them to do in terms of social distancing.

Jessica also sent them DOE the list of Tier one schools which I had received from a confidential source, listing 73 schools which the Department had originally admitted had no space for social distancing.   Yet "the education department would not confirm or deny the veracity of the list." 

Then last night, shortly after the article came out,  CSA sent around a message to principals saying that DOE only expects those schools with the space for social distancing to do so.  The message also said the following: "If additional staff is needed to maximize distancing, please make the budget request to your BCO in writing and copy your superintendent."

All parents and teachers should ask their principals if they have a plan for social distancing next year, and if so, what it is.  If they say they lack staff but not space for this, please quote from the above and ask them to request more money from DOE to add teachers to do so.  And let me know know what you hear, please,  by emailing info@classsizematters.org Thanks!

___

August 4, 2021

 Last night at the UFT delegate assembly, Michael Mulgrew said now, the DOE claims that they "have figured out 3 feet of social distancing for all schools except for 50.  We have a hard time believing that."

See this sound file of his remarks at about 40 minute.  At about 1:08 in, he said that the DOE told him that every class in every school will have to adhere to the three feet rule,  except for those 50 schools.

This is literally incredible.  The DOE originally said they had a list of 76 "Tier one" schools which were too overcrowded to socially distance, and so they would find auxiliary space for these schools, though they refused to provide the list of these schools publicly.  

They also said there were more than 100 "Tier two" schools that would have to re-purpose gyms, auditoriums, and even storage closets as classrooms.  

Yet many principals and even Mark Cannizzaro, the head of the CSA, publicly said that the number of the schools that would not be able to provide socially distancing was really longer. Our estimate suggested that fewer than half of all students could fit in a standard sized classroom, given current class sizes.  According to the latest Blue Book from 2019-2020, 488,708 students were in schools that were at 100% or more -- about half of all students:

We finally did get the list of 73 "Tier one" schools from a reliable source this week, and created our own spreadsheet with their total enrollment and those of their co-located schools; see below.  

Please be aware, however, that even if your child's school is not on this list, the actual list of schools too crowded to provide any distancing is likely much longer. Parents ggshould be asking their principals what the plan is to provide three feet of social distancing next year.  A reliable source told me this week that he believed that the DOE had given up trying to find auxiliary space for even for "Tier one" schools, as they originally said they would. 

Another disturbing factoid from Mulgrew's presentation, at about 38 minutes in:  All students will be tested three times a year not just to discern their academic levels, but also for their social-emotional state, whose findings will go into a database.  What assessments will be used for this purpose and what  privacy protections will be used to protect this highly sensitive data in unknown. More on this soon. 

The list of 73 Tier one schools along with their enrollment of 54, 558 students, along with about 10,000 students in their co-located schools, some of which are even more ovecrowded than the others, is here and below.