Education
Eats
NYC teachers think
de Blasio must do more
than mandate vaccine
BY ALEJANDRA O'CONNELLDOMENECH
With less than seven weeks until
the start of the school year,
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced
Monday public school teachers will need to
be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo
weekly testing as the City grapples with
a new spike in COVID cases mostly caused
by the more contagious Delta variant.
Some teachers applauded the mayor’s
move to increase the vaccination rate
among the city’s public school workforce.
Teachers in New York state became eligible
to receive the vaccine in March, but so far
only 60% of all public school educators
have received at least one dose of the vaccine,
according to Mayor de Blasio.
“I’m happy that something like this has
fi nally come out, it’s taken a long time,”
Annie Tan, a fourth-grade special education
teacher in Brooklyn told amNewYork
Metro. “But I don’t know if it’s enough.”
Many teachers believe the mayor’s edict
still falls short of keeping school communities
safe and hope the de Blasio administration
will soon issue more guidance on
how educators are expected to implement
health and safety protocols within schools
this year.
Tan noted some teachers about breakthrough
infections, in which a person contracts
the COVID-19 virus despite being
vaccinated.
Tan, along with a few other teachers that
spoke to amNew York Metro, said their
fears over breakthrough cases worsened after
reading headlines about a recent spike in
PHOTO BY REUTERS
COVID cases in Provincetown, MA which
mostly occurred among vaccinated people.
A handful of teachers also told amNew
York Metro they are also worried about
accidentally infecting their unvaccinated
students given that the city’s younger students
are not eligible for the vaccine and
the vaccination rate among older students
is still low.
The Food and Drug Administration
has only approved Pfi zer-BioNTech’s COVID
19 vaccine for children 12 years and
older. And since the vaccine’s approval in
May, just over 226,000 children — or 44%
of vaccine-eligible kids in the city — have
gotten at least one shot of the vaccine.
The City has continued to randomly test
10% teachers and children participating
in de Blasio’s Summer Rising, a free summer
school program meant to help address
learning loss among public school students.
It is unclear though what percentage of students
and staff in school building the DOE
plans randomly testing and how frequently
the tests will be administered.
Over a year after the fi rst system-wide
public school shutdown, Mayor de Blasio
announced in May all public schools would
fully reopening for students on Sept.13
with no remote option. With it’s 1.1 million
students, the New York City public
school system will be the largest network
of schools to fully reopen this fall. But in
a system notorious for its overcrowded
classrooms, teachers worry they will not be
able to accommodate all of their students
while still abiding by social distancing rules
despite recent guideline changes from the
Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
HIGHER ED TODAY
����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
������������������������������������������������������
The COVID-19 pandemic took a great
toll on the New York City communities
that are home to many CUNY students,
many of whom faced the loss of employment
and other economic setbacks while
struggling to pay the rent and feed themselves
and their families. They persevered
and, through it all, did their best
to maintain their academic progress.
One measure of the economic strain
faced by our students can be seen in the
increasing amount of unpaid tuition
and fees, which nearly doubled at CUNY
during the 16 months since the pandemic’s
onset.
In response, CUNY joined Governor
Andrew M. Cuomo this week in announcing
a groundbreaking initiative
to eliminate up to $125 million in unpaid
institutional debt for at least 50,000
CUNY students who experienced pandemic
related economic loss.
The CUNY Comeback Program will
use federal Higher Education Emergency
Relief Funds to clear students’
outstanding tuition and fee balances.
It will provide needed relief to our students,
their families and their communities,
and its impacts will bolster New
York’s overall economic recovery. It will
enable our students and recent graduates
to push forward in pursuit of their
educational and career objectives, and
it is one of the country’s largest student
debt forgiveness programs of its kind.
The program will help students like
Ifeoma Okeke, the daughter of immigrants
and a political science major at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
who recently learned that she would be
unable to begin her senior year because
of an outstanding tuition balance to the
college of just over $2,000.
“We’re all struggling,” said Okeke,
21, whose two siblings also attend CUNY
colleges. Their dad died of prostate cancer
in 2015, and their mom is a nurse.
“I’m financially responsible for myself,”
she added, “so I didn’t have the money to
pay back the expenses.”
During the pandemic last year,
Okeke temporarily lost her job at a grocery
store and that’s when she fell behind.
The CUNY Comeback Program
will eliminate Okeke’s balance to the
University and allow her to continue her
education this fall, staying on track to
fulfill the hopes her parents had for her
to graduate. I’m proud that we can help
them realize their dream.
I view the CUNY Comeback Program
as more than just good policy; it also affirms
the recognition that challenges
still exist for many New Yorkers, and it
helps to fulfill the moral imperative that
is implicit in CUNY’s historic mandate
to provide access to a quality education
for all New Yorkers, regardless of background
or means.
Tens of thousands of students determined
to have hardship and recent
graduates who were enrolled at the
University from Spring 2020 through
Spring 2021 and accrued tuition and fee
balances during that time, will have
those unpaid debts to the University
wiped clean. In most cases, outstanding
student balances will be cleared without
an application process in early August,
allowing students to register for Fall
semester classes, obtain their official
transcripts and continue their educational
and career pursuits.
Thousands of other students who accrued
debt during the same period, but
were not eligible for financial aid, may
have their unpaid debt forgiven by applying
based on financial hardship.
And in order to assist students who
paid tuition and fee charges out of pocket
since the Spring 2020 semester and do
not owe any amount to CUNY for that
period, such students may receive a $200
enhanced emergency grant through the
American Rescue Plan Act, on top of any
other federal Student Emergency Grant
allocation that the student will be entitled
to in Fall 2021.
While the CUNY Comeback Program
is focused on unlocking the future
potential of our University, it’s also an
acknowledgement of the way in which
our community performed during the
pandemic. I remain inspired by the determination
and resilience of our students,
faculty and staff.
CUNY’s program isn’t a panacea for
all the stresses our students continue to
endure, but I’m confident it will provide
them with a needed measure of relief
and another reminder that CUNY will
always have their backs, even in the
toughest of times.
������������ ������ ������������ �������������������� ������ ��������
���������������������� ������ �������� ���������� ���������������������� ������
�������� ���������� ���������������� �������� ���������������� ������������
������������������������������������������������������������������������������
��������������
Schneps Media July 29, 2021 9