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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and New York City public school parents, you only have till the end of this week to move your child from remote to hybrid, in-person learning. They say that's going to be the last chance for this whole school year. How should you make up your mind if you're still making up your mind? We are here to help. Only one in four New York City students of the over one million total, returned to their classrooms this year. Parents just have until the 15th to opt into hybrid learning. As I said, it'll most likely be your only chance to do so before the whole end of the school year, even though Mayor de Blasio said on the show the other week that, well, if conditions change, maybe they'll open it up again sometime in early 2021, but there's no guarantee whatsoever. Let's talk about it with Jessica Gould, WNYC education reporter. Hey, Jess.

Jessica Gould: Hey, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we'll open up the phones right away. For parents, have you made the choice to opt-in to hybrid learning from the beginning of the school year? If you did, from the beginning of the school year, would you recommend it for other parents grappling with the decision right now? 646-435-7280. For parents who are still deciding six days away from the deadline, how are you weighing the options? What are your pros and cons? You can give us a call at 646-435-7280. We are here to help. 646-435-7280. Remind us, Jess, of who has until when to do exactly what.

Jessica Gould: [laughs] Public school parents have until November 15th to go onto the DOE website and sign up for in-person learning. What they're saying, and this is the big change is that this is the only period to do this, unless as you said before, something else changes. Right now this is the only period to do it, that we still have the situation where you can opt to go remote any time. That's been true all along. That continues to be the case, but this is your chance to say, I want to be going in one, two, three days a week, however much your school offers. That may change according to how many people sign up. This is the opt-in period, through November 15th. You can do that on the DOE website.

Brian Lehrer: I guess the question for many parents will really come down to, is hybrid learning working? What are you hearing from students and parents? I'm sure it's not a simple question to answer yes or no.

Jessica Gould: Overall, I'm hearing from most parents and students that they love their in-person days. They're so happy to be in school. Teachers too. Teachers want to teach. They want to teach in school. This is what they signed up to do. I'm hearing that it's pretty joyful to be in school. I was talking to a senior on the phone last night and she was saying, "I love being in school."

The complexity is that for some students in the hybrid program, on the days that they're not in school, they don't have live classes. Some do live teaching on Zoom or online, but many don't because of the staffing shortage that you and I have been talking about for months now. Their out of school days are not as good as their in school days and in some cases not as good as their peers who have all remote because they're guaranteed more synchronous live teaching online.

Brian Lehrer: I guess parents have been looking for thousands of years, for ways to get kids to be happy to go to school. They found one.

Jessica Gould: Right. I keep saying that there's no more Ferris Bueller's Day Off. This is like a generation of kids who all they want to do is go to school.

Brian Lehrer: About the teachers and the live streaming of lessons that you were just referring to. I mean, the teachers union has discouraged the live streaming of lessons, which some parents feel is complicating matters. What's the issue there?

Jessica Gould: Well, first of all, it is happening in some schools. I've seen it with my own eyes. I think that the teacher's union, what they've told me is that it's not an ideal way to teach. I think that it's stressful for teachers from those who I've seen doing it, having to both work with the students in front of them and with the students online. I've also seen Wi-Fi issues. A lot of schools just aren't equipped to have that level of bandwidth. It comes in and out. The students get kicked off or videos freeze.

It's an imperfect form of learning but some schools are doing it and muddling through and others just can't, or won't. There's a whole range of how teaching is happening. I've been in schools where kids are in school and their teacher is remote. I've been in schools where it's live-streamed. Then I've been in schools where the teacher is just teaching the kids in front of them and then checks in with kids who are at home later in the day.

Brian Lehrer: Carrie in Manhattan you're on WNYC. Hi, Carrie.

Carrie: Hi. How are you? Thank you, Brian. I have two elementary school students in public school and we elected blended learning. It has been a bright spot in the last six months of coronavirus, the school seemed very organized. I think it's unfair for the DOE to change from three opt-ins to one. If they're going to do that, I cannot see why they're doing it in November rather than January.

The timeline for students to return to the classroom is November 30th, the weekend after Thanksgiving, when people will be gathering. We're not going to, but people will be doing that and it will continue right on through December. It just seems totally incompatible with public health objectives, given the trajectory of the virus. Then on the point about live streaming, it's critical. If you are in remote, if the option is that it's asynchronous learning, you do a half an hour Zoom call and then your elementary schoolers are supposed to do self-directed work for two hours. That just doesn't work.

The models that work are the blended learning and the live streaming and the more students you have opt-in chaotically to the system at a point in time when the virus is surging. It just seems like you're increasing the likelihood that you're going to have a virus-related shutdown, you're going to have more chaos and inconsistency in the delivery of hybrid versus remote learning. It doesn't seem necessary at this point in time. My point has always been if the DOE is going to change course and do a single opt-in, it should be January. It makes no sense. I heard the mayor the last two times on the mayor give his reasons and he didn't answer it adequately. I don't see why they're doing it now.

Brian Lehrer: Carrie, thank you so much. Jessica, to her point I feel like if people went to a Thanksgiving gathering, they need to stay home for two weeks or five days plus a test or something like that. What's the policy going to be?

Jessica Gould: I completely agree with the concern here. I was just listening to the mayor's press conference and the city test positivity rate is above 2% today. The threshold for shutting down the whole school system is 3%. Our unofficial number cruncher-in-chief, Jake Dobkin, says that we're going to be hitting that in about 10 days, the 3% threshold. Then add in the holidays plus there are families who's said that they wanted to see their families and then come later. This is making them choose between their families and the holidays or school.

I think that the rationale that the city is giving is that there's enough evidence that there isn't a meaningful spread in schools at this point, the number of positive cases within schools has been low. It's 0.15, is the current positivity rate from the random sampling in schools and that the combination of the precautions that are being taken will keep kids safe and it's time to decide.

I think that this is my speculation, but I think the mayor wants to push people who have been on the fence to get off the fence and come to in-person learning and creating this opt-in period as only one and now is a way to do it, but I think there are a lot of very legitimate concerns to be raised about the timing.

Brian Lehrer: I personally can't believe that they wouldn't want to offer another option for even as late as May 1st or something like that. For families that want to wait out the winter with a surge that we seem to be in early stages of maybe it'll start to-- We don't know what's going to happen, but one scenario is maybe it'll start to recede in the spring. Kids will have had enough over the winter and a lot will want it, opt-in maybe around May 1st, and do the last two months in-person, and for them not to offer that option. Frankly, I just don't get it. I would think they would be able to arrange the staffing by then around something like that. Lewis in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Louis?

Lewis: Hey, Brian, thanks for taking my call. I have two kids in the public system. One transitioned from middle school into high school, and another one is in her junior year in high school. Regardless of the question of remote or in-school learning, the quality of the teaching has just been insanely low. I have noticed both of my kids taking classes. My daughter went to-- she started doing 50-50 school. She went a couple of days to school and a couple of days at home, and she would just tell me about how the kids that were with her in school are just standing up, nobody's really monitoring them. She wasn't really getting the education that she expected. We decided to switch her to at-home remote learning.

There is no right choice here. You either send them to school hoping that they get a better education, or you keep them at home where you see that the education is still not up to par. I don't know what to do [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Between those very imperfect options, I hear you, about things that were wrong in both scenarios, are you happier overall so far with remote only?

Lewis: No, I'm not really happy. I'm just really scared for this generation to be frowned upon later on when they get to college, the COVID generation. Thanks for that.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Louis, I appreciate. Are there a lot of statistically speaking, Jess, parents like Lewis who started their kids hybrid, but then pulled them out along the way? Because what people may not realize unless they're involved in this, is for all we're talking about this being the only re-entry period to go in-person again, you can pull your kids out and take them only remoted anytime.

Jessica Gould: Frankly, that's the key here to what the mayor has been saying, which is that people are enrolled for in-person, and they're not coming in. He wants those slots to go to kids who are really going to come in, which is a little bit different from what you're saying about pulling people out. I think there's an element of both going on. I've also heard of kids who are, "It's raining outside," and they don't want to come in that day and so they do remote that day or whatever other factor is keeping them, maybe they have overslept their alarm.

What I'm hearing from administrators is that it's more of that, that people are signed up but not coming in. The senior I was talking to on the phone last night, she said, sometimes they're six or seven kids in her class, in her cohort, which is what the classroom can allow with social distancing, but there have been days where she's the only one there with her teacher.

Brian Lehrer: Anna in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Anna.

Anna: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I think earlier a caller actually really touched on this already, but my main concern is just right on the brink of-- congregating for holidays and possibly traveling right at the brink of winter and [unintelligible 00:13:35] as we're seeing an uptick in numbers. I know you guys covered that piece already. I am a nurse practitioner in a school-based health center and my school is poorly attended like many schools are. So far, we haven't seen a lot of cases.

I really take issue with the mayor and the city pointing at what data they have already as adequate evidence that inviting people and even with this policy change, really pushing parents to rush back into schools to say that that's safe and we have enough evidence for that. I just don't think we have enough evidence yet.

Brian Lehrer: Anna, thank you very much. I'm going to go right on to Frances in Brooklyn. Frances, you're on WNYC. Hi?

Frances: Hi. I'm calling because my grandson was in a hybrid program, but he's too in-school days. They put the kids in groups in a cafeteria, they had to be online and there was a proctor, not a teacher. It didn't make any sense. He's full time at home in school because of that. My sister teaches in Virginia. She live-streams her class. She's got maybe five or six students in class, but the rest of her students, she has online. They can see her in the lesson and participate. They can interact with her and their classmates in terms of asking questions and making comments and things like that.

Brian Lehrer: Frances, thank you very much. I hear you, I'm going to sneak one more in here. John, in Brooklyn, a parent. You're on WNYC. Hi, John?

John: Hi, thank you for having me on the air. I would just like to say that my daughter goes to school in-person, the hybrid blended model. Our school doesn't have any issues. If it were up to me, I would send her to school five days a week. There's never going to be a perfect solution under the circumstances. People have to temper their expectations, but my daughter's specific school, I'm happy. Like I said, if it were up to me, I would send her every day.

Brian Lehrer: John, thank you so much. I guess we hear, Jessica, that life being full of human beings. [chuckles] With 1.2 million students in New York City and 1,000 different schools, those who are going in-person, they're going to have different experiences.

Jessica Gould: I definitely have heard of cases where-- and I've heard from students, I've seen students who are doing their work in school remotely. For some, that's just one class a day, but if that's every class, every day that they're in-person, that's definitely something I'd like to hear more about because that's a concern and not the way that I think the hybrid was supposed to be.

Brian Lehrer: How can parents assess their individual school to see the quality of hybrid learning there, rather than trying to take in this system-wide generalities?

Jessica Gould: I would say that the most important thing is to talk to the people who are in-person, who are going in-person at your school to hear about their experience, talk to the teachers. I can point you to the resources on the DOE's website that talks about the schools that have been closed and what the testing results are.

As a parent, and as a reporter, I would want to talk to the individuals in the PTAs to hear what's actually going on. I think there are a lot of resources in your individual school who can give you insight into how much is remote in school and how many days a week. That's going to change depending on how these numbers shake out when the opt-in period is over.

There may be schools where there are going to be more days a week for students because of consolidation of those who want to come and then there may be somewhere you have less days available. Trying to assess that as much as you can, is also another good tip.

Brian Lehrer: PTA is a great resource. In our last minute, you recently retweeted a teacher whose whole class was bundled in coats inside the classroom, because to make schools safer, teachers have to keep the rooms well ventilated, meaning the windows have to be open. You can see where that leads in the colder weather months. Is there a solution to that?

Jessica Gould: I asked the mayor about that at his press conference last weekend. He said there is a plan in place and my colleague, David, who's a Gothamist wrote about this over the weekend. They're going to be more air purifiers, air filters, distributed, and space heaters as needed.

The hope is that you can improve the ventilation enough in the classroom that you don't have to keep all the windows open. My concern is that we haven't had a very clear standard of what constitutes appropriate air circulation. Until we have that, I don't feel particularly comforted by the number of air purifiers and filters, but they are working on that. They are working to deliver those in the next month to schools. In the meantime, I've talked to teachers to go onto to IKEA and bought a bunch of fleece blankets.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, boy. WNYC's Jessica Gould, hear on the radio read her on Gothamist, our education reporter. Thank you so much.

Jessica Gould: Thank you.

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