Photo by Allan Foster.
The city has given parents until this Friday to make a very difficult decision: will you send your child back to school this fall for a hybrid in-person and remote education, or opt for completely remote learning?
New York City is in a better position to reopen schools than most of the rest of the country right now, because the rate of new Covid-19 infections is relatively low, and only about 1% of people getting tested every day are testing positive.
Still, that doesn’t make this decision easy, given that new studies are showing that children can pass the virus on to each other and to adults.
Parents are anxiously discussing this question, and we’d like to gather a large number of responses so we can understand your thought processes.
We’re interested in responses from public and private school parents, and we’ll plan to share this with readers once we have a lot of responses in the next couple of days. We won’t be sharing anyone’s name, just your responses from the Google Form below. If you’d like to speak with a reporter to possibly be quoted, email westsiderag at gmail.
The more responses we get the more useful this will be!
Sending children back to school in person will be an UTTER DISASTER!! It is not a sustainable model (in any form). If the schools open, they will soon have to be shut down again. Opening will cost many lives in multiple generations. And it will destroy the progress NYC has made in controlling the virus.
Totally agree. The planning and most importantly, practice drills that would reveal the pitfalls and offer some possibility of success have not been done, or if they have, are not easily accessible to the public. The mayor and school board had months and months to prepare and as far as I can tell from the one person talking about it publicly (Randi Weingarten) there is still no firm plan available for review.
ITA. My family is in California and they picked up their supplies from school last week and will start online school this week. I hope NYC schools will be just as prepared. I can’t even imagine dealing with the logistics in NYC, especially if there’s more than one child.
How old are your kids, Toni?
Children need to go back to school, at least part time. It is dangerous for children to not have non-familial adults regularly observing them in person. By September it will have been almost 6 months since children were in school. I get a bad chill down my spine just thinking about it. Young Lives will be damaged and lost.
May I ask, dangerous in what way?
It’s been well covered that agencies are very concerned about children who have fallen off the radar since March. Schools are typically the primary reporters of child abuse cases. Think of all the spouses and children who were locked down with an abusive family member for so many months.
If the there are home situations that are dangerous for children, and the agencies are aware, then why have the children been left there in the first place? At the very least could these agencies do weekly home checks?
If schools can even be open for a few weeks it would be a huge benefit to education, especially for younger kids. That way teachers can build relationships with their students, establish norms for behavior and work product, have some understanding of each child’s learning style, etc. Remote learning was only slightly successful in the spring because these relationships had already been established.
This of course assumes that it is done in as intelligent, cautious a way as possible. The principal of our school is clearly making this a priority in attempting to offer in-person learning, and I would hope that others are doing the same thing, assuming the DOE and the union enable them to do so.
With the virus rate low – kids should go to school. I hope it will happen, but I think it might not because teachers do not feel secure, and it is likely that schools will simply not have enough teachers for in-person learning.
I am not a parent, so not sure if my opinion counts much here but…
I think it’s insanity to open the schools.
I am a grandparent and from a family of educators. Safety and Security are first principles for our children.
well, would you agree that schools that should not open fully should at least give the parents the money they would have spent on pupils for parents to use to hire their own tutors or buy teaching resources or other gear to teach their own children or to pod up with neighbors little red school style? If you don’t want the schools to open, and you refuse to give parents the tools to deal with it, then you’re just not thinking it through. If the schools shouldn’t open by your thinking, why do they get to keep the $ for education that is not being carried out?
Unsafe to all … a disaster!
I think it’s important to open schools and be vigilant about reporting cases in the classes so that the parents can isolate their children if they choose to.
Open the school, FULL TIME!
If you are at risk, or you have family members who are at risk, stay home.
The well being of kids is just as important as the well being of the elderlies.
They need schools to socialize and learn. Some kids need it for food and a safe place. Parents need it so they can work and pay taxes that fund all of our social infrastructure.
Will it be 100% safe? No. Neither is driving to work, taking the subway or anything else in life.
Excellent Points Sayed, couldn’t agree with you more. Open the schools !
lol hell no
Remote learning over long period takes a high toll both on the kids’ education and on the family environment, both of which can have serious consequences. Balancing these risks and the (also serious) coronavirus one, we have a clear preference for at least a dose of in-person schooling, provided that schools can organize to provide a decent level of risk mitigation and that the epidemic situation is closely monitored.