34 THE QUEENS COURIER • KIDS & EDUCATION • AUGUST 27, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
34 k TiHdE QsU E&EN Se CdOUuRIcERa • tAUiGoUnST 27, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
File photo
Carranza warns 9,000 ed. jobs lost if state slashes aid
BY ALEJANDRA
O’CONNELL-DOMENECH
editorialh@qns.com
@qns
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza
warned that 9,000 Department of
Education jobs will be lost if the state
decides to permanently hold 20 percent
of aid to New York City. Th e measure
would also force all public schools to only
conduct online classes.
Governor Andrew Cuomo cited a
growing defi cit due to the COVID-19
pandemic’s shuttering of businesses in
March and the absence of a federal bailout
for the withholding of local aid. Th e
state is holding onto as much as it can
as it waits for Washington to step in and
help.
But if those federal funds never come,
it’s “game over,” according to Carranza
who told teachers, parents and administrators
that without state aid the department
won’t be able to man school buildings.
“If there is a 20 percent cut, let me
just tell you right now, we are going 100
percent remote. We can not open our
schools,” Carranza told parents, teachers
and administrators during the hourslong
Panel for Educational Policy meeting
on Wednesday night.
Carranza admitted that delaying the
start of in-person classes for at least two
weeks in order to “socialize with teachers”
and make sure that everything was
in place in schools was “good practice”
but then explained that the city could face
penalties from Albany for violating the
state’s 180-day instruction requirement.
Blended learning and thousands of
New Yorkers’ jobs could be saved if the
state would approve Mayor de Blasio’s
repeated requests to increase the city’s
borrowing capacity, Carranza said, a
privilege the was given aft er the 9/11 terrorist
attacks.
De Blasio fi rst pitched upping the city’s
borrowing power weeks before fi scal
year 2021 budget negotiations when his
administration calculated that the city
dug itself into a $9 billion hole. In June,
the mayor asked to borrow $5 billion
from the state to ease the defi cit.
But a bevy of state lawmakers, along
with the governor, have expressed worries
that the move would condemn the
city to a fate of economic despair similar
to the fi nancial crisis of the 1970s.
Over 130 people spoke during the
Zoom meeting, with the vast majority
asking for a delay to in-person classes
until details on the city’s reopening plan
can be clarifi ed at the school level. Many
speakers expressed concerns over the status
of school ventilation systems, personal
protective equipment shipments, the
absence of more public data on COVID-
19 related deaths among DOE employees
and a general distrust in the DOE
and its data.
During the nearly 10-hour-long Zoom
meeting, Carranza relayed contradictory
numbers in regard to school reopening
claiming that 85 percent of families
opted for blended learning despite just
last week reporting that 74 percent of
families signed up to send children back
to school buildings.
Many said that the reopening eff ort is
too underfunded, too rushed to be safe
and too many parents, teachers, staff -
ers and students lacked confi dence in the
department to safely rollout reopening
aft er witnessing numerous mistakes from
the agency when schools closed in the
spring. Some mentioned a lack of faith in
the ability of the city’s test and trace corp.
Traditionally, the city’s health department
tracks and traces infectious diseases
but de Blasio shift ed the responsibility
to the city’s public hospital system during
the peak of the pandemic.
Students were given the fi rst opportunity
to speak during the meeting an appropriate
choice given that some said they
felt they were being left out of the city’s
school reopening conversation.
“Right now as a student I feel like a
prop to reopen the economy,” said a
Stuyvesant student named Merrill. “I’m
a dollar sign, I’m not a human being and
my value is being reduced to the essential
work that my parents do … but the truth
of the matter is you can’t have an opinion
on this if you are not speaking to those
being directly impacted groups and those
are the students and the teachers.”
Early in the meeting, Carranza touted
the good intentions of the city and the
DOE when it devised its current reopening
plan and assured listeners that the city
was aiming for a 24-turnaround time for
COVID-19 test results. Th e Chancellor
said that it working with the department
of health to implement rolling tests
for teachers and reiterated the mayor’s
pledge to place a nurse into every school
building.
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and Mayor Bill de Blasio
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