Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Governor Andrew Cuomo is now officially allowing schools in New York state to offer in-person classes. This applies statewide, and it also makes New York City school system the largest in the country planning a hybrid model of remote and classroom instruction. America's other biggest cities are starting the school year all remote.

In the next couple of weeks, the governor expects school districts to hold town hall meetings to gauge community concerns and clearly layout plans. At least one of these meetings in each community is supposed to be for teachers specifically. Here's what Cuomo had to say in a conference call with journalists about that on Friday.

Cuomo: Teachers have to feel safe. They can't teach if they don't feel safe. You're not going to order a teacher into the classroom and say, 'Do your job even though you don't want to be here, and you feel like your health may be threatened." They're not going to be able to teach in that environment. That's not the relationship we have without teachers. The teachers have to agree to go back. I am telling you there is going to need to be significant discussion because teachers are raising many issues.

Brian: Doesn't sound like the governor wants school districts to require teachers to go back into the classrooms. I know a potential teacher shortage is one issue that's coming up. That is not a shortage of teachers willing to teach remotely, but a shortage of teachers willing to teach in person relative to the number of families who will choose in-person learning.

As the city's blended learning plans move forward, there are questions for individual parents as well, but also larger questions of racial and other equity that get formed by a lot of individual decisions being made in an unequal world. By many measures, New York City school system is the most segregated in the country when it comes to black students in particular.

With that as a starting point, how do pandemic era family decisions affect the bigger picture? We will ask about that as well as your individual decisions with three guests now, WNYC education reporter Jessica Gould, who's been coming on with us weekly this summer to anticipate September. Also, for today, Mark Winston Griffith, executive director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, and host of the podcast School Colors, which explores education inequities in central Brooklyn.

Plus Dr. Uché Blackstock, emergency medicine physician, founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equities, and a Yahoo News medical contributor. She has a Twitter thread about her decision to send her kids back in person that has generated a lot of response. Welcome back all of you to the show this morning. Good morning.

Dr. Uché Blackstock: Hi.

Jessica Gould: Good morning.

Mark Winston Griffith: Good morning, Brian.

Brian: Listeners, this is for you too. What do you think if you're in New York state about governor Cuomo's decision to allow schools to reopen in September? Parents, Friday was supposed to be the deadline for public school families to inform the school system remote or hybrid. What did you choose? Do you feel that you are making your decision only for your child, or do you also take bigger structural questions and equities and other things into account in your personal decisions?

(646) 435-7280. Today is going to be for parents primarily. Tomorrow we're going to do one for teachers primarily. For parents today, with Friday is the deadline. What did you choose and what did you really take into account? (646) 435-7286, (646) 435-7280. Jessica, what's the latest on what parents are selecting and the governor's announcement?

Jessica: Very good question, because there's a very latest news, which is the mayor and the school's chancellor are holding a press conference right now, talking about how many families have opted to go for the hybrid in-person several days a week, learning model with remote on the other days, and how many teachers are planning to be in person.

I can give you the latest numbers on that. For the amount of families who are planning to send kids in-person when they can, the number is 700,000. I believe it's 74% of families said that they'll be going in-person. That means 26% are planning to be remote. I believe that's around 400,000 families who have opted to be fully remote.

Of course, families can decide to go remote at any time for any reason. This is the starting point that schools have and principals have to begin planning their schedules. Then the other piece of information that the mayor just announced is that 85% of teachers are planning to do the blended learning model, which means that they're planning to be, my understanding is, in their classrooms.

Which is more than I would have thought potentially because of all of the pushback we've been hearing. I'm also hearing from so many people teachers that the reason that they do what they do is because they love the interactions with students. Maybe that's playing a role as well.

Brian: Sure. If those numbers reflect reality, that's really, really interesting. Just being announced this morning, out of roughly 1.1 million New York City public school students, about 700, 000 are going to start with a hybrid model. As you say, they have the opportunity to opt-out later if it doesn't feel safe for any reason. Of course, they would not have as much opportunity to opt-in.

That could lead a lot of parents to make the decision that gives them more flexibility, which is to start the school year with the in-person hybrid model. That teachers' number is very surprising considering what the rhetoric is that we've been hearing from the teachers union and the concerns about a lack of teachers in the classroom to meet with students.

If 85% of the teachers are really willing to go back in-person, that's really newsworthy this morning. Now, Dr. Uché Blackstock, you shared your thoughts on school reopening online, including your personal decision. Drumroll, please. What's your position? How have people responded to it on Twitter? You got yourself into a big mess.

Dr. Uché: I really did. I really did, Brian. Thank you for having me. I have two children in New York City public schools. I've been practicing seeing patients during the pandemic, so I've seen the worst of it. Still seeing patients and I've been thinking obviously about this decision very carefully with my husband, who is still undecided, I will say.

What I will say is that, I looked at the positivity rate in the city has just gone down significantly. Right now, I think the last number we had was below 1%. There were small cohorts. The kids would be in school two days a week. My children are elementary school age. They wear their masks all the time. I felt comfortable.

I still feel comfortable enrolling them this September. It was hybrid learning. I put that on my Twitter feed. I have to say that I was shocked by some of the assumptions and the responses that people were saying that I was an anti-educator, anti-teacher because I wasn't considering them. Obviously, I'm of the mindset that no teacher should be forced to go back to school if they are uncomfortable.

That's a non-issue. I was surprised at almost the vitriol that were in some of the comments. It just made me realize how really nuanced the conversation about school reopening has to be and how it relies on a lot of different factors including where you are in the country right now.

I think New York City is in a singular position right now compared to other major cities. Yes, that was my experience. I still stick by my decision to send my children to school with hybrid learning. It sounds like 74% of other families are on board with me as well and more teachers.

Brian: It's a lot different practicing medicine than being a tweet star, right?

Dr. Uché: Yes [laughs].

Brian: Your original tweet was, "The other physician parent and I are two of the only families, in my child’s class, considering sending our kids to school using the hybrid model. All of the other families are opting for remote only. Do the other parents know something we don’t? Seriously." You gave them a little tweak there.

Dr. Uché: I was serious because I was wondering what their concerns with these other parents' concerns were that I was not thinking about because I'm coming from the perspective of being, not just a parent, but also a physician.

Brian: Does your knowledge as a physician inform anything even larger in this respect about carefully reopening things in New York considering our low positivity rate?

Dr. Uché: Yes, it does. What I have to say is that I know that there will never be a no-risk situation, but I do in my daily practice with patients. I measure risks and benefits all the time with every patient I see. That's something that I'm used to doing and so because there will never be a zero-risk situation.

I looked at this and I also not just thought about my own children, but all of the other children mostly black and brown children, like mine, who benefit from going to school, and weighing those risks and benefits. I will say that this is obviously a very nuanced personal decision that each and every family has to make. I hope that I wasn't sounding judgmental of those other families.

It was really that I was trying to figure out if there's something that I'm missing, since then a few other families have decided to do hybrid learning in my son's class. I also didn't notice that some of the parents that were keeping their kids home during remote learning were more of the white parents in my children's class. That's just his class. I'm not sure how representative that is of the entire city.

Brian: What does that mean, if that is a pattern?

Dr. Uché: I do think that there's a certain luxury of being able to keep your children home. That means that you're probably working from home. That means that you're probably not an essential worker. That means that probably you have the resources to hire a tutor for them or some other help for them. I think that it will be interesting to look at these numbers of the families who decided to do remote learning and look at the racial breakdowns. Probably I think that we probably will see some racial differences.

Brian: That brings us to you, Mark Winston Griffith from the Brooklyn Movement Center. Your podcast from last year, which you were on the show to talk about at the time, School Colors reported on segregation, gentrification, and the history of District 16 in Brooklyn. What are you hearing from parents about the fall in the context of viewing the school system through that lens? I believe you have two teenagers of your own, don't you?

Mark: That's right. For me, it's sort of like the tale of two school systems because I have one in a public school and one in a private school. I think that you have to look at this against the wider backdrop of the pandemic in general. That is we're five months into this. Although in New York City, there's a greater sense that we are somewhat in more control of this than other jurisdictions.

What's been pervasive throughout the last five months is just has been unpredictability and folks talking about the signs, but not really knowing the signs. I think that that confusion and that general sense of risk and vulnerability is what parents are facing as they face the school year this year.

I think that there's a sense that the doctor was saying before that folks who are opting out probably have a certain luxury. I imagine that's what many people are feeling here. That is, on some level, there's almost like a proverbial gun up to our heads to say that we've got to go into the schools and no one is forcing us. We also know that there are risks in so many different ways.

That is whether our children have emotional needs, whether they have language needs, whether they have resource needs. Many of us don't feel like we have the choice to just opt-out. Seeing my 13 year old really struggle over the last few months. He's an extremely social being.

He loves the engagement. Although he doesn't always like go to school, he loves being there and engaging with people. Him not being able to do that with the remaining of the spring semester, and even over the summer, he's done some online learning, it's just been really difficult for him.

For my partner and I she's a school teacher herself. We know we have an option. We know technically we have a choice, but it doesn't feel like much of a choice for us. We feel like if he has any chance of not only just getting a good education, but he's going into the eighth grade.

What does that mean for high school? What does it mean in terms of standardized exams? What does this mean for his future? We feel like we're going to take the risk knowing that there are all attending health risks that come with it.

Brian: For you as both the parent and a big picture guy who works on social justice, how do you experience and how would you like other people to be experiencing, if that's a fair question, the tension between what's best for your own kids and what's best for the society of families and children as a whole?

Mark: If a school system or any public institution is doing the right thing, then people don't have to usually make those choices in the sense that I think that if everyone knew that they had access to the same resources, if everyone knew that there was equity baked into the system.

If everyone knew that no matter what their child did during this semester, they would have just as a good chance of getting into the school of their choice and would still get a quality education. If all of that were the case, then I think that there would be a certain level of comfort that people could feel. We know that the system has inequities baked in.

We know that folks are talking about creating pods. We know that folks have resources that can compensate for whatever they're not able to get inside the classroom, not only in terms of education, but in terms of childcare as far as enrichment and being able to support them as they're taking tests and standardized exams, those kind of things.

It just puts more pressure on us to really come to terms with how our school system it's not equitable. It does not treat everyone fairly. We don't have access to the same opportunities. It really put pressure on us to get our stuff together, so to speak, during the course of not only this pandemic, but when we somehow can return back to normal. We can never lose sight of those equity issues.

Brian: We have a lot of parents calling in. Let's see what some folks have to say with Mark Winston Griffith, executive of the Brooklyn Movement Center, Dr. Uché Blackstock, emergency medicine physician, founder, and CEO of the group Advancing Health Equities, and a Yahoo News medical contributor, and Jessica Gould, WNYC and Gothamist education reporter. Sharon in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi Sharon, thanks so much for calling in.

Sharon: Hi. I'm opting to keep my granddaughter. I'm a grandmother. The last three months I had to step in because my daughter and my son-in-law had to work. I'm appealing to the seniors to step into this whole scenario on making decision on sending these children and sacrificing their health. Plus, I look at the schools buildings. New York has done a poor job of funding school building.

They haven't built middle schools. Most of the schools are shit by a combination of Tata schools, middle schools, and the HVAC systems in them are just like the malls. They wouldn't open the malls, but they're going to open the school. The staff, cleaning staff, they don't have enough. The school safety staff, they don't have enough.

We're kidding ourselves into thinking, "Okay, we can send the kids back in. It'll be safe." Then all of a sudden, you got to close it. That's going to be another interruption. Me as a grandmother, I have two girlfriends that are grandmothers and which [unintelligible 00:19:28] I told my brother I'll be there for her. Harper is not going back in that school. Forget it.

Brian: Sharon, thank you very much. Jessica Gould, from WNYC and Gothamist, Sharon mentioned something there that relates to your latest story, which is about ventilation in schools. You want to talk about that and why it's an ongoing question?

Jessica: Sure. Yes. I found myself learning more about HVAC systems than I ever thought I would last week.

Brian: Some people become education reporters just so they don't have to learn about eight-track system. Anyway, go ahead.

Jessica: As the science points us more and more towards concerns about transmission in the air instead of surfaces, there's been talk about how all the protocols around disinfecting surfaces may not be the right focus. The better focus is how we ventilate our school buildings, many of which are very old with very old HVAC systems, if they have them at all.

The concern is that in many schools, the ventilation systems have been broken for years. The Daily News actually looked at this from a numbers perspective over the weekend and found that 650 of 1,500 buildings surveyed in 2019 had some deficiency in their exhaust fans, which I think it pulls the air out. It's an in and out thing. That's as far as my knowledge of it goes.

In addition to that, there are a lot of windows in schools that don't open, some for safety reasons, some because they have air conditioners installed in them. What I heard from an expert in ventilation that I talked to last week is that what you want is you want as much fresh air coming in. The school system says keeping windows open can actually be the best way of ventilating schools.

The concern is that in buildings that don't have windows that open or don't have ventilation systems that work properly, the stale air is going to add to the transmission. The school system promises that they're going to be able to fix all these ventilation systems and get the windows up to code. Although I heard that 50% of windows working is the standard that they're going for, at least in one of the buildings that I was looking at.

The concern that I heard from teachers and parents is the science is still evolving. There isn't a clear sense of how much air is properly circulating in school buildings or how much you need and they don't feel informed about that. All they know is that they have these HVAC systems that have been broken for years and that's a concern.

Brian: Dr. Blackstock, for you as a physician, how concerned are you about that? I realized as an emergency medicine physician, you probably were also not studying HVAC systems in med school, but what do you think? Have you focused on this?

Dr. Uché: No. I will say absolutely that's a concern. Ventilation is definitely a concern. I know that the city is going through the buildings, trying to see what's working, what's not working. I also feel like that is one factor out of several factors. When we weigh the risks and benefits, it can't come up to just ventilation alone.

I know that for some people, that may not make sense, but for me as someone who often weighs multiple factors in making decisions about people in their lives, I want to do the same in this situation as well for my own children and other children as well.

Brian: If the windows in a classroom don't open, how much of a concern is that for you?

Dr. Uché: Definitely a concern. I am willing to see, especially the cohort sizes are going to be much smaller. Let's see what happens. It's not like we're going back full force. It's a measured approach. Obviously, if the first week we're seeing things that we don't like, we can pull our kids out.

Brian: James in East Williston, you're on WNYC. Hi, James. Thanks for calling in.

James: Hi, Brian. Long time listener to your show. Love your show. My school district has announced a plan that first sent around a survey saying that we'd go to after careful consideration, our high school did not have an adequate spacing or number of people to allow full day everyday school.

They were going to come back with three days of out of class, full virtual one day in school so they'd stagger the people. Then one day out of the school where you could have catch up on your assignments or meet with your teachers virtually. After they sent around this survey, they didn't sent around.

They got about half the responses back. They sent around another response, giving us three different plans, one for a hybrid plan, one for the original plan, and then one for full day, everyday learning. They give us 18 hours, less than 18 hours to respond to that.

They announced a plan the next day that over half the people responded to the survey, and a plurality chose full-day every day. Now, they've announced a plan where they have not told us the contingencies if we're upset with this plan. Full-day, everyday school, everyone coming back at the same time, no spacing, none of the safety protocols that they put in for the public school or the middle school, which the elementary school-- [crosstalk].

Brian: You mean elementary or middle. Go ahead.

James: They turn even turned the cafeteria into a classroom. They're even going to let the seniors go out to lunch because it's a time-honored tradition. I think this is so misguided. I think that the superintendent and the school board are just totally are-- It's a dereliction of duty. We're hoping that the governor would mix this plan.

The governor's position apparently is that as long as the school district submitted a plan and it's under 5%, they'll prove it. In my neighborhood, my neighbor on the next block over last Friday held the sweet 16 for a daughter with over 100 people in it and the DJ is announcing COVID is over. What is going to happen when this comes through? What is it setting up for these children?

Brian: This is East Williston. I know that area.

James: East Williston School District.

Brian: Williston Park near Mineola around there.

James: No, no. Brian, it's East Williston Old Westbury Roslyn heights in Alberta and little bit of Mineola.

Brian: Right. What's the high school?

James: Wheatley High School. The Wheatley School.

Brian: James, thank you very-- Go ahead. Finish that thought, James. It's okay.

James: Eight graders, by the way, go to the high school. We don't have an adequate plan at all. We have nothing.

Brian: James, thank you very much. Now, Jessica Gould, WNYC education reporter, I know you mostly focus on New York City. I don't know if you've got anything to add here as a matter of reporting. Certainly, the governor was not just talking about New York City public schools when he made his announcement on Friday that school districts needed to submit plans.

There are school districts all over Long Island like the one that James is in and others. There are school districts all over Westchester and Rockland, and further upstate, obviously. If James is describing the situation accurately, that's quite a conundrum for people there.

It almost sounds medically again, if he's describing and accurately, the opposite of what we're hearing from the science, because it's the younger kids there who would be more spaced, the way he describes it, and it's the older kids, the high school students who are going to go back full capacity, nevermind they can go out to lunch.

Jessica: Right. I don't know that particular school districts plan myself. I do know that the governor, while he said that the infection rate, the positive test rate is under 5%, it's been around 1% here, makes it okay for schools to open. The state is still evaluating schools' specific plans, the Department of Health for the state, and the Department of Education.

If there are concerns about that school, one would hope that that would make it up to the State Department of Health and Education before those plans are officially accepted. That's true in New York City where I've been focusing too that while the table is set for schools to open from an infection rate perspective, the governor said there's still evaluations to be done and stamps of approval to yet be levied on individual district plans.

Brian: This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT FM 80.1 Trenton, WMJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcom, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are in New York and New Jersey Public Radio, where we have a few more minutes to talk to parents on what you're choosing in terms of hybrid in school or fully in school in the case of some districts, as I guess we just heard from our last caller, or complete remote learning.

With our three guests, Mark Winston Griffith, executive director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, and host of the podcast School Colors which explores education inequities in central Brooklyn, Dr. Uche Blackstock, emergency medicine physician and founder and CEO of the group Advancing Health Equities, and WNYC and Gothamist education reporter, Jessica Gould. Let's see. We've done Queens, we've done East Boston. How about Eddie in Coney Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Eddie, thanks for calling in.

Eddie: Thank you, Brian. I just wanted to tell you why we chose to send our boy back to school. Of course, like everybody else, we had to really think about it and figure out which risks are worth taking. The past few months have been very, very difficult. Not every kid is geared to learning at home. Not every parent is geared to being a teacher.

There's been some loss of learning I would say we're making up in the summer a bit. It's too difficult to allow an eight-year-old to continue to be his own teacher in a sense. In our case, there's also a little bit of ADD involved, so physical exercise is extremely important. He happened to have gotten into a school called Ballet Tech.

Ballet Tech is a school that teaches ballet but it's an actual New York City public school. This is from I think by the American Ballet Theater. For a kid to learn ballet on Zoom, I don't think that's a viable option. I don't think anybody's ever learned ballet remotely. We decided to send him back. Of course, it's a difficult decision considering we're in Coney Island quite far away from Union Square area where the school is.

His mother actually decided to go ahead and rent a second apartment, not too far away from the school within a 20 or so, 25-minute walk. We're going to be spending another three something thousand dollars a month just to avoid being on a train for an hour and a half each way every day or three days a week, two days a week. We fought the decision, but we feel like this is the only one that makes sense for us either with the virus out there.

Brian: Yes, difficult decisions. Eddie, thank you very much. As we start to run out of time, let me get a quick last thought from each of you. Eddie's story raises a host of issues. One of them is for children with special needs or looking at very particularized education programs. I know there are public-private partnerships, Mark, like the ballet school between, arts institutions and the New York City public school.

That's such a particular one but it's got that. If they're dedicated to that form of education, maybe their child is seriously on track to look to be a professional ballet dancer, and that's something that they're interested in. That's a particular kind of special need. By the same token, he talked about the thousands of dollars that they have means as a family to spend to make their own unique hybrid model possible, and that brings us back to the inequities issues.

I wonder, as a last question to you, since your podcast was about school segregation to a large degree, if you're worried that there's going to be a new kind of segregation from this, at least for this year, which is it's not just segregation by neighborhood, by housing, it's also going to be segregation by whether you have the privilege to stay home?

Mark: Yes. I appreciate the question but I do feel as though you're calling it a new segregation. I just think it's a doubling down of segregation and inequities that have long existed and people have already been suffering from. I think it's going to be manifest in a different way.

Brian: Dr. Blackstock, a final thought as we end this segment. Again, there's so many things that you can comment on. I'm still thinking about the caller from East Willesden for you as a doctor. Where, again, if he's describing it accurately, they're going to be going to great pains to separate the little kids, six feet or whatever but not so much the high school kids. Does that sound backwards to you?

Dr. Uché: Yes. I will say that obviously, this is a false choice that parents have to make. As your other guests mentioned and you mentioned, students go to school because of many different reasons other than just education: for socio-emotional stability, for health care, for special education services. It's unfortunate that because of ineffective leadership and a persistence of structural inequities that parents have to make this deeply difficult decision.

I will say that I just hope the conversation continues to be a nuanced one and that it doesn't have to be as polarized as it has been, or at least on Twitter. These are really ongoing discussions and the situation is dynamic. Who knows in a few weeks where we'll be? I wish all the parents the best in making this very difficult decision.

Brian: Jessica, what's your next story?

Jessica: Good question. I want to do a story about remote learning and the issue of equity with remote learning, because everybody will be doing some of that. I also just wanted to say one correction. Earlier I said that 700,000 students have opted for hybrid learning and that's true.

The number who opted for remote, it's 264,000. Just to be clear, you really only could at this point opt for remote. The 700,000 number is a default. Does that make sense? I just wanted to make everybody was on the same page with that.

Brian: I hear you and we leave it there. With Jessica Gould, WNYC and Gothamist education reporter, Mark Winston Griffith, from the Brooklyn Movement Center, and Dr. Uché Blackstock. Thank you all so much for joining us. Nuanced conversation, I hope as you say, Dr. Blackstock. We will talk about this more on tomorrow show from the teachers' perspective. Today it was more from the parents' perspective.

 

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