Carranza warns 9,000 education jobs
lost if state slashes 20 percent of aid
3
QUEENS WEEKLY, AUGUST 30, 2020
BY ALEJANDRA
O'CONNELL-DOMENECH
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.
The measure would also
force all public schools
to only conduct online
classes.
Governor Andrew
Cuomo cited a growing
deficit 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. The
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
hours-long Panel for Educational
Policy meeting
last week.
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
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and Mayor Bill de Blasio File photo
the city’s borrowing capacity,
Carranza said, a
privilege the was given
after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
De Blasio first pitched
upping the city’s borrowing
power weeks before
fiscal 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 deficit.
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 financial
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 clarified
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 effort is too
underfunded, too rushed
to be safe and too many
parents, teachers, staffers
and students lacked
confidence in the department
to safely rollout reopening
after 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
shifted the responsibility
to the city’s public
hospital system during
the peak of the pandemic.
Students were given
the first 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. The 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.