Nearly a million students are expected to return to New York City’s public school buildings on Monday in what officials are calling a “homecoming” after a year and a half of remote and hybrid learning.
The Department of Education has spent the summer preparing, but some parents worry these measures will not adequately protect their children from COVID-19 and say they do not feel safe sending their kids back. Come Monday, they may not.
“I just know there’s nothing I can do when they’re squeezed into a classroom or an auditorium where spread is going to happen,” said Brooklyn mom Naomi Alexis. “I know it’s going to happen … They are calculating the risk of some children getting sick.”
The city says it has implemented a broad spectrum of COVID precautions: reorganizing classrooms to increase social distancing, upgrading ventilation, rolling out new test and quarantine protocols, implementing a vaccine mandate for educators and campaigning to get teenagers inoculated.
Many schools said they can achieve three feet of social distance—measured nose-to-nose—between desks as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But some facilities are struggling to keep students spaced in classrooms, lunchrooms and other common areas. While most of the city’s nearly 59,000 classrooms are listed as having operational ventilation, WNYC/Gothamist found 4,000 rely solely on windows—which city officials say are adequate but independent engineers call unreliable. Some parents and educators have criticized the decision to scale back testing to once every two weeks, with no consequences for opting out.
Alexis said she already had qualms about her daughter’s school, where she is one of only a handful of Black students in her class. Alexis was disturbed by the way she saw some teachers speak to Black families during remote learning, and she is uncomfortable with the school security agents who patrol the halls. COVID-19 put her over the edge. Though she works, Alexis plans to homeschool her daughter.
City officials have been emphatic that schools are the safest places for students to be, because of the precautions in place and the mental and physical health benefits of formal education. The COVID-19 rates inside city schools last year were also very low, though the delta variant is more contagious and pediatric hospitalizations are on the rise.
The cafeteria at Murry Bergtraum High School has a larger version of the Intellipure air purifiers being placed in city classrooms.
Speaking to reporters this week, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he anticipates the overwhelming majority of students will return to classrooms on Monday, but he does expect some to sit it out for a few days. “I do think you’ll see a small number of parents take a wait and see approach, but the vast majority will show up on Day 1 and are ready,” he said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Paullette Healy plans to keep her two children home as well. She lost two family members to the pandemic this summer, and both involved breakthrough cases. She said her son attends a District 75 special education program where he would be learning in a windowless basement classroom alongside peers who struggle to keep masks on. Her other child goes to one of the city’s most crowded middle schools and has been especially anxious about infections following the deaths of relatives.
Healy, a member of Parents for Responsive Equitable Safe Schools (PRESS), said she knows of hundreds of families who have requested medical accommodations. Students are automatically eligible to learn from home if they deal with one of 20 medical issues on the education department’s exemption list. Kids with other conditions can also apply.
But Healy said very few have had their requests approved. Some have been rejected, while others are still waiting for a response from the city, just days before school is set to begin. According to the education department, students will receive materials from their school while their applications are pending approval.
Other parents who considered home instruction said an hour per day of academics is nowhere near sufficient. They are turning to charter and private schools instead.
Healy said she has not applied for home instruction or home school for her children. “I believe schools will shut down within the first week, so I don’t believe my kids will miss pertinent instruction,” she said.
Repercussions could arise for families who keep their kids home without official clearance. New York City students are required by law to be educated, and when absences pile up, schools that suspect “educational neglect” may contact the city’s Administration for Children Services (ACS) to intervene. Early in the pandemic, some families without devices or internet received calls and visits from child protective workers because their children were missing remote lessons.
“If in the beginning of the school year, a parent's not ready, we're going to keep talking to them.
City officials said the plan for this fall is not to punish parents, but to work through their fears and help them transition back. “If in the beginning of the school year, a parent's not ready, we're going to keep talking to them, we're going to keep trying to convince them,” de Blasio said.
“ACS is our partner, and ACS is very clear that their goal is the same as ours, and that is to help get our babies into school,” added Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter. “The only time the ACS will intervene is if there is a clear intent to keep a child from being educated, period, which is a very different thing to deprive a child of an education. But we want to work with our families because we recognize what families have been through.”
It is unclear just how many students won’t show up next week. Parents are desperate for childcare and eager to get their kids back into a more social and academic environments. Many students are thrilled to be heading back to school after the isolation and disruptions of the past 18 months.
Parents and students largely express a mix of anxiety, excitement and resignation. They are hoping for the best.
Latoya Reed, who lives in the Bronx, spent the summer agonizing over the decision. Two of her children have medical issues–one with asthma, another with sickle cell. Up until this week, she was certain she would not be sending them back. But she said outreach from her school convinced her to give it a try. On a tour this week, administrators showed her how they had added air purifiers and taken out bookshelves, so there could be more distance between desks in each classroom.
“My point of view has changed over the last few days because I was able to view the school, view the classrooms, and see that they are actively trying to make sure that there is space between each child, that there are cleaning protocols in place,” she said.
Ultimately, Reed said she knows her children need the socialization that school provides. But as soon as there is a positive case in one of her kids' classes, she plans to pull them out.
