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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Here on the Christmas, New Year's break for school kids, let's talk about dealing with Omicron when school is back in session. My next guest, Christina Veiga from the education news website, Chalkbeat New York, reports that one school in the Bronx had almost 20% of employees either sick with COVID or showing symptoms and trying to get tested as of last Monday before school closed for break. Another staggering statistic, more than 20% of the students at that school were absent last week.

Now in New York City, the response team tasked with handling COVID testing and contact tracing in schools is called the Situation Room. With the rise in COVID cases, that interagency response team appears to be overwhelmed and communication between the Situation Room and individual schools has sometimes been lagging. The result says, Christina Veiga in her reporting, is that some schools are having to make their own calculations with imperfect information and take matters into their own hands as best they can.

Let's discuss the situation in the Situation Room, no Wolf Blitzer jokes please, just the state of all things COVID in schools with a few days to figure out next steps and including the announcement that Mayor de Blasio and Mayor Adams just made together which we'll go over as well with Christina Veiga, Chalkbeat New York Education reporter. Hi, Christina. Welcome back to WNYC.

Christina Veiga: Hi, Brian, thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're going to open up the phones from the start here, because obviously, we know public school teachers and staff are off today so you'll get first dibs on the phone lines. How are you coping with so many positive cases? What's the buzz among your colleagues about how COVID decisions are made? This is for any school, public or private in New York City or anywhere else, if you work there, you can call in. Is anyone listening with insight into what goes on in the New York City Education Department Situation Room? Help us report this story. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Christina, were you watching the incoming mayor and the outgoing mayor do their joint announcement a few minutes ago? Do you have those details?

Christina Veiga: Yes, we have some news that is really going to change how the Situation Room works going forward. It was clear in the last week that the current state of business was not working for many schools as we saw the rate of positivity really increase across New York City and including among children, unlike in previous waves. The city announced today that the current mayor, the mayor-elect, and also the governor appeared together to really emphasize that they want to keep schools open and the way that they're going to try to do that is by expanding in-school testing and also changing dramatically the quarantine rules.

Currently, New York City schools had been testing 10% of unvaccinated kids weekly in schools. They're going to ramp that up, they say they're going to double it and that they're going to include both vaccinated and unvaccinated kids. I'm going to be listening out for details about whether staff are going to be included in in-school testing. There's been struggles for staff to get access to testing but the biggest change probably is coming to quarantine rules.

Previously, the city Situation Room, which was made up of public health officials and Education Department officials and interagency group working together to respond to positive cases in schools and they would help principals decide who needs to quarantine and who doesn't. Now the city is going to be, it sounds like relying on rapid tests that are given at home to implement a policy test-to-stay which has been tried in places like the UK and in parts of LA and Illinois I believe as well has tried this. Basically, if you're exposed to COVID in your classroom, instead of having to go home and wait for 10 days to see if you get sick, the city will be requiring children to test twice within seven days of their exposure. If both of those tests are negative and as long as you continue to not have any symptoms, you can stay in school. That's the news.

Brian Lehrer: Who do you expect to be happy with this or unhappy with this?

Christina Veiga: COVID policy in schools has been one of the most contentious issues that elected officials have had to deal with. Parents who struggle with child care and to respond to repeated disruptions when positive cases come up in their children's classrooms, I'm sure this will be welcome news for them. A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with families who have been reported to the city's Child Welfare Agency, ACS because they're keeping their kids home because they are so worried about COVID still and their children possibly getting sick that now they're entangled in child welfare cases, which can have really dramatic consequences for families.

There's not a whole lot of in the middle when it comes to COVID policy in schools. The city's health officials say that out of only one in 120 close contacts, when it comes to school cases, only one in 120 close contacts come down with COVID, so 98% of the close contacts will not get sick. They say that that is proof that something like the test-to-stay policy is safe. The CDC also endorsed the test-to-stay policy about two weeks ago. There are big questions though about the availability of rapid and at-home tests to be able to pull this off.

There are a million children about in New York City schools. The state says that two million tests are on their way to New York City schools and should be here by Friday. That should be enough to get us started for a while but given the rapid increases, I think that's something else to keep an eye on is having the resources to be able to pull this off. It's clear that the city had to do something because you can assure people that schools are safe all you want, but parents seem to have been, just like schools last week, taking matters into their own hands and keeping children home. We saw really deep declines in attendance in some schools particularly. It seems like this is part of an attempt on the part of elected officials to convince parents that schools are safe and that they're responding to the current surge that we're seeing.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and it's interesting that really the three officials appeared together, Mayor de Blasio and Mayor Adams, and Governor Hochul. They all made this announcement together. I guess maybe the top line headline here is just to say that school will return fully in-person on January 3rd despite Omicron really running wild throughout our communities. There was some doubt about that, right?

Christina Veiga: Well, I think the current mayor, Mayor Bill de Blasio has never wavered in his conviction that schools need to remain open and the Governor as well. I'm going to be keeping an ear out for what the incoming mayor and chancellor say. The new Chancellor, David Banks, suggested to my colleague, Alex Zimmerman in an interview not long after he was named the next chancellor, that he called it critically important to recognize that some parents are still fearful legitimately about the pandemic and our ability to keep their kids safe. In saying that he said that he suggested he might be more open to the possibility of a remote option.

Now, it's not clear at all that that would happen this school year but he definitely opened the door more than any other of our public officials so far. As of January 1st when the new administration comes in, that's something to keep an eye on.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. In fact, let me play a clip of the incoming Chancellor David Banks on this show the other day saying something similar to that. Here he is.

Chancellor David Banks: My gut tells me that while most kids should be back in school, there's a small percentage of kids who the remote learning work for them. Why not create that as an option? Why does it have to be one size that fits all for everybody? I fundamentally don't believe that, I believe in choice. I believe in us being nimble and flexible, and to the degree that we can create a system that can in fact meet the needs of all the kids, that's what I want to do.

Brian Lehrer: Incoming Schools Chancellor David Banks here the other day. My guest is Christina Veiga from Chalkbeat New York, the education news website. Christina, that clip even implied to me that the schools will be fully open come January 3rd, he might like to offer a remote option for individual families, which the de Blasio administration has not been offering. Was there any indication today from Mayor Adams that that would be the case?

Christina Veiga: No, I didn't hear anything like that from Mayor Adams. The thing to note about remote options that have been offered in other school districts, the demand has been not quite as high as the previous school year. The reasons for that can be varied. Yes, a lot of people want their children back in school, and also school districts offered a really limited remote option where there wasn't a whole lot of live instruction, for example, but I think the point is offering something for those folks who still remain so worried about the virus that they're willing to keep their kids home, so I think that will definitely be something to watch for.

The other thing that I think will be important to watch for is whether the incoming mayor decides to move even further with required vaccinations for school-aged kids. Obviously, the city is requiring even the youngest kids to be vaccinated to do pretty much anything indoors. When it comes to schools, participating in a lot of the extracurricular activities requires vaccination but not just to go to school itself, the city has not decided to move forward with that. I think part of their reasoning is probably the fact that there is no remote option and so there is no alternative for parents who might not want to get their kids vaccinated.

If we see an administration that is more open to remote learning and also has indicated that they're more open to the possibility of moving farther with vaccinations, I think those two things together could add up to some real changes to the school year.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take some phone calls from some teachers. Kat in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kat.

Kat: Hi, I'm actually off the road, so if I lose you, sorry. I'll try to be quick. I teach in Brooklyn, I've called before. I teach at a small school. There were 14 confirmed positive cases the day before the break but I can tell you there were many more that were unconfirmed because the Situation Room did not call the principal back. I was tested the Tuesday before the break in school. I still, if you can believe it, have not gotten my results back. I waited in line at a City place to get tested. There was a teacher in front of me in school trying to get tested, they turned her away. Two people were positive in her class.

I think the biggest problem is the mayor, outgoing and incoming don't know what's happening on the ground. The problem, that's great, send a test kit but some parents don't even know how to use it, some parents won't use it. Remember the consented 10% getting tested in school, there are literally like nine kids getting tested. Great, they're increasing it, but the facts just don't add up. They don't know what's happening. That's fine, keep schools open but to do it safely, there has to be a different system. They haven't even talked about increasing the staffing in the Situation Room. It's the whole system is broken but they're saying it's safe because they're not testing and they don't know the cases, the teachers know the cases. It's a game, an unsafe game.

Brian Lehrer: Were you able to hear, Kat, what the announcement of the new policy was this morning when we were describing it earlier?

Kat: I absolutely was.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that's an improvement?

Kat: Now they're going back to the 20% of consented students. Remember last year when it was 20%, and then remember at the beginning of the year, they went down to 10% consented every other week. Remember Mulgrew fought it and then got 10% weekly of consented.

Brian Lehrer: By consented, you mean parents who agreed to let their children be tested at all, right?

Kat: That's exactly correct. The forms are not even in different languages. The forms, the teachers are trying to get the parents to do it but they also were doing-- Now, this you'll have to fact check, but I think it was 10% consented of unvaccinated because remember, I work in an elementary school.

Christina Veiga: Correct.

Kat: What I'm saying is that the numbers aren't-- It's just ineffective. They're actually, the word liar is a big word, but they're not telling the truth of what's happening.

Brian Lehrer: Kat, what, in your opinion, would be a better system considering the complexity of the situation?

Kat: Yes, exactly. I think there should be mandatory testing. Think about private universities, of course, they have the money but they're testing vaccinated staff and students in colleges weekly. How is the city going to fund mandatory testing weekly for all students and staff, vaccinated and unvaccinated? That really is what needs to happen but is that ever going to happen? No. COVID will spread, it's spreading.

Yes, mandatory testing, the Situation Room has to be staffed, well-staffed. There has to be a return-to-test program that's effective, but think about it, who's going to teach the remote kids and if the teachers are out with COVID? Yes, there's a lot of great suggestions but what's the easiest solution? Let everybody be sick and just keep going business as usual because that's what they're doing.

Brian Lehrer: Kat, thank you so much for your call. Christina Veiga, education reporter for the education news website Chalkbeat, New York. Do you think there are a lot of people out there in the education system who feel like Kat does?

Christina Veiga: I've heard from a lot of people who feel that the current testing system was totally inadequate. I think that's why the city is announcing today these changes. Now they will be testing unvaccinated and vaccinated students, whereas before it was only the unvaccinated. Again, I think a big question to look out for is whether staff will have access to in-school testing. Last week, I spoke to a teacher who tried to get tested at his school while they were conducting the weekly testing but he couldn't because the city requires teachers to submit a consent form and there's only a certain number of teachers who can get tested at any given time on site.

Also, the testing companies, basically, if they don't have time, if they have to move on to their next school, they don't have to stay to test teachers who want to be tested. I spoke to this teacher on Tuesday who tried to get tested, he got turned away. He waited for an hour and a half after school at a City testing site and tested positive. The staff question I think is a really big issue, especially since we were seeing with Omicron more breakthrough cases. Even though staff are required to be vaccinated in New York City schools, there's also some real questions about whether the city has followed up to make sure that teachers have gotten their second doses.

The caller also mentioned the staffing in the Situation Room. The Situation Room's role is going to be very different now that the city is changing its quarantine rules to the test and stay policy, but the city has said that they're ramping up staffing there from about just under 300 to over 500. That was before they changed the quarantine rules, so I will be following up to see whether they're still planning on ramping up the staffing to that level.

Brian Lehrer: Is there concern and did the two mayors and Governor Hochul address it in the announcement this morning about staffing shortages that might require closing schools or enlarging classes, consolidating under one teacher where there would normally be two or something like that? We're seeing all these staff shortages emerge now in the subway system, on airlines, just because so many of the staff have COVID. Is that going to happen? Is there an indication and did they address the scenario of that for January 3rd with de Blasio and Adams and Hochul this morning?

Christina Veiga: I did not hear them address staffing, the concern about potential staffing issues in schools. Whenever I've asked the Education Department about this, they've insisted that they've got enough staff, enough substitutes. I think part of what's going on here is that schools are really taking matters into their own hands because things are so backed up and changing so quickly that maybe the city isn't totally aware of schools that are having staffing issues.

For example, in the last week before schools closed for break, I heard about schools who were essentially deciding on their own to go hybrid and telling parents, look, if you really have to send your kids in, we'll be open and there'll be someone here to watch them, but we're going to be offering essentially remote learning, what had been come to be known as Zoom in a room last year, and we really encourage you to keep your kids home. We will give them an excused absence and allow them to access remote work.

The city is insistent that there are no staffing issues. I think for some schools, it's a different reality and staffing has been an issue in schools, not only in New York City but across the whole country. We've seen it with busing, some states this year called in the National Guard just to help get bus school buses running. It's hard to believe that New York City would be immune from these staffing issues that other places are seeing as well.

Brian Lehrer: Well, we heard from an elementary school teacher, let's take a call from a high school teacher. Eli in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello, Eli.

Eli: Hi, Brian. My name is Eli. I'm a high school teacher in a public school in Manhattan. I want to share, I really feel relieved to learn that we are going back in person on Monday. I feel like my students before we left were asking me very anxiously, are we coming back? What's going to happen? I didn't really have an answer for them, and it's very frustrating because going remote would really re-traumatize many of our students.

However, I really feel that we were recklessly endangered with the policy that was in school in this past week. I and many of my colleagues had a lot of trouble accessing testing and it was frustrating to see many of my friends who work corporate jobs have testing through their employer or have the ability since they work from home to wait hours for a test or have 3, 4, 5 COVID tests. When many of my teacher colleagues and I had to make the decision between calling out of work and contributing to those staffing shortages or going into work and risking exposing ourselves and our colleagues.

Brian Lehrer: What would you have them do? Oh, go ahead.

Eli: My question is really like, is there any plan right now to expand testing to teachers? I heard about Kathy Hochul saying that they're sharing rapid tests with the schools, which was heartening to me because I really had trouble accessing those last week, but I haven't really heard if those are going to be accessible by teachers or just by students, which I'm glad they're expanding the testing system for students. I would really like to see them expand the testing, accessibility of testing for teachers as they are doing in media, in corporate jobs.

I feel like we have funding to test people. The funding is not there and it's confusing to me because I wrote to the mayor on Friday. They're willing to fund so many different things and they're saying that they're valuing schools and valuing teachers, however, I don't see funding testing accessible to teachers when we have money to do so, so it's confusing to me.

Brian Lehrer: Christina, do you know the answer to her question?

Christina Veiga: Yes. I haven't heard anything about increasing testing for school staff but I have heard from plenty of folks just like the caller who feel like more needs to be done, especially if there is going to be such an emphasis on keeping schools open and if schools are going to be having trouble potentially getting staff tested after so many possible exposures as cases just explode across the whole city. If you're waiting in line for hours for a test, it cuts into your ability to go back to work safely, knowing that you're not positive. I think it would just help relieve a lot of anxiety that we're hearing from folks who are working inside of schools and would go a long way to just rebuilding a lot of trust that I think has been broken after the past week.

The caller alluded to this but it was a rough week last week for a lot of New York City schools. A lot of principals just felt like they were left on their own to respond to these really sharp increasing cases. Yes, their staff had trouble getting tested and so I will be keeping an ear out for what the incoming mayor has to say about that. Also, the Teachers Union, the president, Michael Mulgrew, has been hinting very strongly that they also don't think that the current testing strategies are enough, so we'll see-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Eli, thank you for your call, and good luck next week. Let's take one more who has a story of how things were at her school last week. We keep talking about- people keep bringing up how things descended last week, going into the break. Molly in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Molly.

Molly: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. Yes, I actually teach in North Brooklyn and it was complete chaos. We had 16 confirmed cases in the school. We had many more unconfirmed because the Situation Room is only taking PCR test results. We had to collapse our classrooms, merge our classrooms because we had so many teachers who were out sick. It was just very, very frustrating to hear the mayor say that schools were safe and that the numbers supported this because the data that we have is faulty. It's not useful data because only a very, very small percent of parents have consented to testing. We're testing, like the earlier caller said, the same 10 kids over and over again.

Brian Lehrer: Molly, thank you very much. We're almost out of time. I want to ask two questions. One is about the Situation Room itself that everybody keeps talking about and being so frustrated with. What is the Situation Room? Is it a physical place?

Christina Veiga: It's a center that brings together folks from Public Health and I believe the Education Department, who are supposed to respond when positive cases are reported within school communities. Like the caller said, there was a real backlog last week in trying to do that. The issue with the PCR test versus at-home tests was real last week as well as people weren't able to get access to testing lab tests. The city was handing out at-home tests but there were delays in getting those confirmed with the Situation Room.

Essentially what would happen is when a principal finds out about a positive case, they're supposed to contact the Situation Room and the Situation Room then essentially conducts a test tracing investigation to determine who might have been exposed, who has to quarantine and whether there's transmission happening within the school. This year, the city will only close schools if they determine that there is widespread transmission actually happening within the school, so the school is the source of the spread of COVID.

I think it's important to note that we don't really know, obviously, there was a huge increase in cases recently in New York City, we don't know how much or whether schools were contributing to that although certain people who work in schools certainly feel that way. Yes, the Situation Room is staffed with test and trace employees who are supposed to help principals determine who needs to stay home, whether classrooms stay open, whether schools stay open, but principals reported sending email after email and not getting any response, they reported long wait times to get through, or just not being able to get through at all on the phone.

I spoke with a teacher for about half an hour as she was on hold with the Situation Room waiting to report positive cases. I think there are real questions about the numbers that the city reports on its public dashboard for how many cases there were in the last week before schools because, I mean, just principal after principal reached out to me to tell me, "Look, I've had more cases every single day and I'm still waiting for them to confirm cases that I reported last week. In the meantime, yes, some principals just acted and closed entire classrooms and sent people home to quarantine. In other cases, they didn't feel empowered to do that and were really worried that they were potentially exposing more people in school as they remained open in the Situation Room just was nowhere to be found or heard from.

Brian Lehrer: With that, we're out of time and there's the breaking news this morning about the new test-to-stay policy in the New York City Public schools announced in a joint announcement with the incoming mayor, the outgoing mayor, and Governor Hochul. We leave it there with Christina Viega, Chalkbeat, New York reporter. Chalkbeat New York is the really excellent education news website, in case you don't know it. Christina, thank you so much.

Christina Veiga: Thank you.

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