Education, Lead Stories

Cuomo gives schools green light to reopen

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]olstered by a continuously low transmission rate of COVID-19 across New York state, students statewide will be allowed to return to the classroom this fall.

After huddling with members of the state Department of Health, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, announced on Aug. 7 that every region in the state had met the necessary threshold. Each of the state’s 10 regions currently sit well below the 5% infection rate set on July 13 by Cuomo in order for schools to reopen.

As of Monday, Aug. 18, the statewide infection rate was 0.7%.

Schools across the state will be able to reopen this September after Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the authorization at a press briefing on Aug. 7, 2020.

“They are all authorized to open,” he said. “New York State is in the best possible situation right now. So, if anybody can open schools, we can open schools.”

But how to proceed will now largely rest with each school district, which will have to decide whether to conduct in-person learning or some type of hybrid model that incorporates remote learning. Reopening plans will be assisted by state Department of Health guidelines.

Prior to the governor’s decision, school districts had been circulating surveys to gauge parents’ level of comfort with sending their kids back into the classroom.

“I have been deluged with calls from parents and teachers,” Cuomo said. “There is a significant level of anxiety and concern, and I’ve said a number of times these school districts have to be talking to the parents and talking to the teachers.”

District plans were required to be submitted to the Department of Health for review by July 31. However, as of Aug. 14, 107 of the 749 school districts in the state had yet to submit plans for in-person learning, while another 50 districts had submitted either incomplete or deficient plans. “There are 107 school districts that have not submitted their plan—for those 107 school districts, how they didn’t submit a plan is beyond me,” he said.

So Cuomo set a new Aug. 21 deadline for delinquent districts to kick in plans; any district that doesn’t submit a planwould not be allowed to open this year. As of Aug. 18, the Bedford, Poughkeepsie and Cortland school districts were the only in Westchester County that hadn’t submitted plans.

The Health Department has the authority to reject any plan if it is not responsible from a health standpoint, according to the governor.

Cuomo also required districts to host three public meetings by Aug. 21 with parents as well as one meeting with teachers to go through their individualized reopening plan and try to assuage any concerns. Remote learning plans must be posted online as well as districts’ plans for testing students and teachers, and protocol for contact tracing in the event that someone comes down with the coronavirus.

“The people that are going to make the decision are not a bunch of bureaucrats, it is going to be the parents and the teachers,” he said. “If parents don’t send their kids back to school you don’t have school. If the teachers don’t come back you don’t have a school.”

The Chappaqua school district plans to start the school year off implementing a hybrid model. In the district’s K-8 schools, students will return to the classroom in a staggered 3-day week where students will be broken up into cohorts. After the first week, remote learning will be added to the mix before the district will decide whether the schools can fully reopen on Sept. 14.

A Chappaqua resident who has two young children is a proponent of sending his kids back into the classroom. Wishing to remain anonymous, he believes the idea of virtual learning is somewhat useless, particularly with younger kids. “We can’t avoid actual school until a vaccine is widely distributed,” he said. “So, open the schools before further damage to society is done.”

In Yonkers, the largest school district in Westchester will start the year off by utilizing remote learning until at least Oct. 8. Teachers will report to school and conduct remote learning from their classrooms. One of the possible factors in starting off remotely was more than 3,000 families had already opted out of sending their children back into the classroom due to fears over COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Individual school districts were tasked with creating reopening plans that incorporate in-person instruction, remote learning or a hybrid model implementing some combination of both.

And the New Rochelle school district will run entirely virtual for the month of September as well. The district will then make a decision going forward after monitoring the situation, according to Schools Supt. Dr. Laura Feijoo.

Julio Veras, a math teacher in the Yonkers district, says he’s willing to return to the classroom with his students, but he’s not 100% comfortable.

Veras has already battled COVID-19, contracting it from his girlfriend, who teaches at the same school, back in late March as the pandemic began to rapidly spread throughout New York state. She first began exhibiting symptoms on the last day of school in March before Cuomo closed all schools. “Somebody tested positive before we actually closed, we all had contact with that person,” he said. “So we’re going back to the same environment. We are a little scared.”

If a school opens for in-class instruction and there is an outbreak of COVID-19, Cuomo assured that the state would shut the school down. “If something happens and there’s a spread then the state will step in,” he said.

To help districts prepare for returning students, Westchester County has released four webinars. The webinars, developed in conjunction with school superintendents across the county, include information on COVID-19 reporting and tracing; facilities; kitchens and cafeterias and the use of Personal Protective Equipment, PPE.

New York has also been monitoring states in the South and Midwest where schools have already reopened to varied results. There have been photos that have gone viral of students packed into hallways, many without masks. Some public schools and universities have quickly scrapped classroom instruction for remote learning after infections spread within the first week of reopening and students and teachers were placed into quarantine.

And tensions have risen between teachers unions and administrators over reopening protocols. In New York City, the public teachers union is threatening to strike over concerns with the city’s reopening guidelines.

“I think it’s a big experiment, they don’t know what’s going to happen,” Veras said. “We’re doing the best we can… the fact is that I miss my students, my colleagues and I miss teaching. I haven’t been in the classroom in six months.”

 

CONTACT: chris@hometwn.com