Editorial
No guarantees without testing
We don’t blame any parent,
teacher or principal who feels
the creeping doubt about the
scheduled start of the school year in September
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the United Federation of Teachers
threatening to have the city’s teachers walk
off the job if they don’t feel the city’s schools
are safe enough — namely because there
isn’t a testing mandate in the city’s reopening
plan — Mayor Bill de Blasio announced
on Monday the latest tactic to reassure them
and anxious parents: outdoor classes.
Other outdoor activities permitted in
New York City during reopening have proceeded
without spiking the COVID-19 infection
rate. Giving children more time out
in the open air certainly lowers the chances
of catching the virus within a closed environment
such as a school building.
But de Blasio’s plan for open classes
comes with serious fl aws.
Each principal, not the Department of
Education, will be entrusted to seek out
and apply for the use of open spaces such as
schoolyards, open streets and nearby parks.
Not every school community has that kind
of space available; the city says it will assist
those principals who have diffi culty fi nding
such open areas for classrooms.
Also, the city isn’t completely footing
the bill for all tents and outdoor teaching
supplies; that task has oddly been left to
individual parent-teacher associations. Of
course, some school communities have
more resources than others, so the city’s
asking the more affl uent PTAs to share the
wealth — which, in this case, is hardly a
solution at all to the glaring inequity.
Considering parents already pay plenty
of taxes toward their children’s education
— and considering the fi nancial hardship
so many New York parents are going
through these days — it’s wholly unfair
and insulting that the city would not want
to pick up the tab for outdoor classes.
And outdoor classes are not seen as a further
solution toward keeping children safe,
at least in the eyes of the UFT. The union’s
president, Michael Mulgrew, pointed to
the real concern in a terse statement: “The
mayor’s reopening plan continues to fall short,
particularly in terms of necessary testing.”
Until the city mandates COVID-19 testing
for all children and teachers before the
fi rst day of classes, every other safeguard
means very little.
For all the emphasis placed on COVID
19 testing, it’s incredible that the city
chose to overlook it in its reopening plan.
Op-ed
NYC must not forget educational
needs of homeless children
BY KIM SWEET AND
ÁINE DUGGAN
When Alexa’s family moved into
a homeless shelter, her school
became a safe haven—the one
place where everything was stable and she
could escape the claustrophobic environment
of the shelter, a former hotel. That
disappeared when schools closed in March
due to COVID-19.
For weeks, she could not participate in
remote learning because the shelter lacked
internet access. When the Department of
Education fi nally gave her an iPad with free
data, she struggled to fi nd a quiet spot to
study, while the poor cellular reception in the
shelter made it diffi cult to watch video lessons.
There are many more Alexas in New
York City, and as the next school year approaches,
we worry they are being set up
to fail.
Despite the best efforts of educators,
the transition to remote instruction proved
disastrous for many of the 100,000 City
students who are living in shelter or temporarily
staying with friends or relatives
because they lost their housing. Even before
the pandemic, fewer than a third of the
City’s students who were without a home
were reading profi ciently, and only 61%
graduated high school in four years, 18 percentage
points lower than the graduation
rate for their permanently housed peers.
As a new school year approaches, the
City must develop a coordinated, interagency
plan to support the one in ten
students who are without permanent
housing—a population that will likely
grow even larger unless government leaders
step up to provide rental assistance for
the more than one million city renters who
have fallen into arrears this year.
The City must recognize that learning
from home is inherently far more diffi cult
when you don’t have a permanent home.
Families experiencing homelessness may
have multiple children of varying ages,
grade levels, and learning needs confi ned to
a single small room, making it challenging
to concentrate on schoolwork.
The pandemic has also highlighted
the inequity resulting from the City’s
longstanding failure to provide adequate
WiFi in shelters for families. This reality
has long deprived children of educational
resources accessible to other children,
simply because they are experiencing
homelessness. And, while the Department
of Education is providing iPads that serve
as mobile hotspots, some students have had
trouble using them due to poor service.
Moreover, the City does not allow children
under 18 years old to be in shelters
without a parent, so even high school
students will need a place to go on the days
PHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
they are scheduled for remote learning while
their parents work or attend appointments.
Yet many shelters do not have the space or
staffi ng to provide shelter-based childcare.
Under the current “blended learning” plan,
students whose parents want them to return
to in-person schooling would be physically in
the classroom for only one to three days per
week, while learning remotely on other days.
This plan fails to recognize that online schooling
is much more workable for some students
than for others. Treating everyone the same
will all but guarantee that some children
have far greater access to an education than
others, further magnifying existing inequities.
The City should give students experiencing
homelessness, along with other high-need
populations, the option to attend school in
person on a full-time basis this fall.
The upcoming academic year begins
amid uncertainty about the State’s eviction
moratorium and federal eviction
prevention support. As even more families
experience homelessness, the City must
ensure that the educational needs of these
students are not forgotten.
Kim Sweet is the Executive Director of
Advocates for Children. Áine Duggan is the
President and CEO of The Partnership for
the Homeless.
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