12 SEPTEMBER 23, 2021 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Reading the classroom
Though New York City is in far better
shape than its peers in Texas,
Florida and Mississippi in terms of
the spread of COVID-19 these days, there
remain plenty of reminders that the
health crisis remains far from over here.
The latest reminder came on Sept. 18,
when the city’s Department of Education
announced the fi rst school closure,
a special needs school in East Harlem,
related to COVID-19 in the new school
year, which only began on Sept. 13.
The closure should come as a surprise
to no one.
Even with vaccines getting into
arms as young as 12 years of age, and
rigid health and safety protocols in place,
there is no guarantee that infections will
be completely avoided.
It makes the city’s omission of a remote
learning option for public school
students and parents, even for just the
fi rst half of the new school year, all the
more glaring.
There can be no substitute for inperson
instruction. We know from
experience that children have missed
the interaction with their teachers and
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Even with vaccines getting into arms as young as 12 years of age, and rigid health and safety protocols in
place, there is no guarantee that infections will be completely avoided. Photo via Getty Images
peers that only a classroom can provide,
not the isolation of a computer screen.
They’re more focused and higher
achieving inside a classroom than outside
of it.
Yet nothing was done to accommodate
the students who may have been hesitant
to return, or to assuage the anxiety
of parents who feel uncomfortable about
sending their youths back to school.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn
recognized that in continuing its St.
Thomas the Apostle Remote Learning
Academy for a second year. About 150
students are part of the program, and
the diocese says parents who have
enrolled their students in the remote
academy have expressed continued
concerns over COVID-19 and the Delta
variant.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools
Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter would’ve
been wise to follow the diocese’s reasoning
and created a remote option for its
students. Their laser focus on reopening
the classrooms completely ignored the
angst of a small, yet sizable number of
parents and children who just aren’t
ready to take that next step.
In short, they failed to read the
classroom.
Disruptions like the one in East Harlem
will be repeated oft en this school
year. They will continue as long as
COVID exists on a pandemic scale.
What would the harm have been
off ering parents and children remote
learning as an option from the start?
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