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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Deadline day is tomorrow, and boy do you know this if you're a parent of a New York City school child. Deadline day is tomorrow in New York City for parents of remote learners to decide whether they want to send their children back to school buildings for the rest of this school year, but the city has been slow to address one particular frustration of many parents. It's a rule that closes school buildings automatically after two unrelated Coronavirus cases in the building. There's breaking news on that in the last hour, and we have our education reporter Jessica Gould to start this conversation with the breaking news.

Then we'll open up the phones to parents who are making this last-day decision about whether to send your kid back if they've been going all remote. Hey, Jessica.

Jessica Gould: Hi.

Brian Lehrer: What's the breaking news?

Jessica Gould: The breaking news, the two-case rule, much-maligned and deeply controversial, is no more. It is now more of a four-case or more rule. While individual classrooms still have to quarantine for 10 days when there's a positive case, schools only close if there are four or more cases. Here's the part that's interesting and a little confusing, "If that can be traced to a school exposure." I'm waiting to get a little more information about exactly what that means but individual schools, not buildings, have to close and schools no longer have to shut down for suspected cases. My understanding is vaccinated teachers don't have to quarantine, but there is going to be increased testing when there is a positive case.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your phone calls for Jessica Gould if you're one of those parents. You know Jess, there are days when we're doing Ask The Mayor, which we'll do tomorrow, it's Friday. Listeners, if you want to ask Mayor de Blasio something, that'll happen tomorrow like it does on Fridays. There are days when we're doing Ask The Mayor where, if we wanted to, we could take half the calls on parents complaining about the two-case rule. That's how upsetting it's been and frustrating to parents who think it's unnecessary that if there are two cases unrelated in different wings of a school building, let's say, that the kids then have to revert to going all remote for a period of days.

Now the mayor has reversed it, and with those shades of grey that you were just describing. Listeners, on the two-case rule, if you want to ask our education reporter Jessica Gould a question, you can do that. 646-435-7280. We're also interested in any parents out there who may have been keeping your kids all remote. It's been your choice this school year, you have until tomorrow to decide whether to opt them in to go back in person, at least in the hybrid model that they're using, for the rest of this school year. If you're in that category, then let us know what your decision-making process has been and what decision you've come to since you have to decide by tomorrow or you can spend the next 23 hours agonizing. 646-435-7280.

We also welcome teachers to weigh in on this two-case rule. I know the union has a position about it. That's at odds to some degree with what some parent advocates want. Teachers if you're listening on your prep periods or whatever, 646-435-7280, or any related questions for our education reporter, Jessica Gould. Jess, what is the union position here?

Jessica Gould: The union did send out a press release. They are saying that they're in favor of this change, that it will prevent school buildings from closing down as frequently which they say is actually something that both parents and teachers have talked about as being deeply disruptive and problematic. They're in favor of the increased testing. They're in favor of keeping the classroom closures. The union has come under a lot of pressure and criticism for holding fast to this rule, as more and more scientists said it didn't make any sense. I think you see the results of that now.

Brian Lehrer: I think a lot of listeners probably don't realize the percentage of students who have been kept out in all remote. I think what we hear in the media so much is the clamor to reopen schools for in-person learning, but even with the choice that parents have had throughout this school year in New York City, three-quarters of them, meaning 700,000 kids are being kept home full time voluntarily by their parents, right?

Jessica Gould: Yes. Chalkbeat, the education news site, had a really great article earlier this week where they went out asking parents whether they would be willing to opt-in and what it would take. It was not a scientific study, but from what they got from parents in conversation, many really weren't comfortable sending kids back until the fall. I think that the mayor hopes that changing this rule, which has kept so many schools closed so often, even though they're nominally open, will help encourage people back. I think there's a question about whether closing schools consistently because of positive cases ramps up the fear, as well as the disruption. A lot of families really still aren't comfortable.

Brian Lehrer: Do you find that this runs along certain neighborhood lines, certain demographic lines, anything?

Jessica Gould: Yes, that's changed a little bit over the course of the year. We know that the Asian community and Black families have been more likely to keep their kids home, whereas white families and Hispanic families have been more likely to send their kids, so that's something that we've seen. At least at the beginning, the hardest-hit neighborhoods were less likely to send their kids to school. I saw that in person, very few kids in schools in parts of the Bronx. I'm curious what it will take to make people feel more comfortable, whether it's having kids be fully vaccinated, or whether it's having the adults vaccinated, which should be increasingly the case. I will see.

Brian Lehrer: We will see. Before we go to some phone calls, in our last segment we were talking about so-called vaccine passports or negative COVID test requirements to get into entertainment venues, and also now into Rutgers at the university level for this coming fall. They say vaccines will be required for all students. I imagine there will be some exceptions for certain health concerns. I don't know if there'll be exceptions for religious concerns, but they're trying to get to universal vaccination requirement or close to it for Rutgers this fall. Where does this come in in the New York City public schools debate, if at all?

Jessica Gould: We've asked city officials about this, whether there will be a vaccine requirement for kids. They said it's too soon to say because the research isn't there yet on safety and getting kids vaccinated. We've also asked this about teachers, and so far there has not been a statement that teachers have to be vaccinated. We were talking to the science team in the newsroom and it's not unusual, it's actually part of policy for certain vaccinations to be required to go to school. We don't know if a COVID vaccine will be a requirement, but it certainly wouldn't be unprecedented.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a public school parent, Lisa in Forest Hills. Lisa, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Lisa: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I really love your show.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Lisa: I'm the mother of a 10th grader who's been all remote since last year. I have no interest in sending her back in person at all with those variants running around right now that's easier to catch and is affecting more young people than the original version. Until she is able to be completely vaccinated, I'm very hesitant.

Jessica Gould: That's interesting. What would it take for your child to be vaccinated herself, for you to feel comfortable sending her back?

Lisa: Yes, and at the moment, she can't be vaccinated until she's 16, which happens in December. I'm in the process of being vaccinated and because she can't get vaccinated yet, I don't plan on doing anything differently at all. I don't want to put her at risk.

Brian Lehrer: Is it putting her at risk more, Lisa, or is it putting yourself as the parent who would be more vulnerable presumably to more serious illness potentially? Which is, I think, the case with some of the families. They want to protect the parents themselves, or if there are grandparents living in the household, things like that.

Lisa: No, honestly, it's her. I feel like every day I'm seeing something that says this new variant affects more young people. When you have a 15-year-old kid in New York City, it just feels scary to put her in the public before she's at all protected with the exception of just wearing a mask which, to be honest, I don't trust that kids are as diligent about doing that as adults are.

Brian Lehrer: Lisa, thank you so much. We appreciate your call. Fannie in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi Fannie.

Fannie: Hi, Brian. How are you? Nice to speak from you again and hi, Jessica. I appreciate your recording. I'm calling because you actually read my tweet a couple of months ago to the mayor when he first said he was going to review the two-case rule. It's taken him long enough not to do that, and now he's done it. My kid's school in Brooklyn is closed today for the two-case rule. I wanted Jessica to cover a little bit how this lack of, and we got the notification last night at 8:30 PM, of course, as usual. Unfortunately the DOE and the mayor have not been communicating very well with the principals and they've made this hybrid model pretty impossible for the schools themselves because of the lack of transparency and these last-minute rule making.

What I wanted to touch upon with Jessica is that perhaps this part of how school openings have been happening is a large reason why many people didn't opt in. There's a lot of talk about why people didn't feel safe. I think for a while, that was a very legitimate concern for a lot of people. As time passed, it was obvious that the hybrid model was extremely unreliable and for some of us who are more privileged, can work from home, we made it work as we could. I think there's never an acknowledgement that I think for a lot of people it was impossible to choose the hybrid because it's been so unreliable and because of the DOE has been communicating in such an untransparent and unreliable way to the principals, to the parents, to the schools.

If you could touch upon that a little bit, because the equity issues and the geographic issues and the racial divide and all of that is talked about a lot. I think it matters, but I think just practically speaking, what was on offer was not something that was really acceptable to many people. Again, it could affect working people who have to show up every day who need reliable schedule.

Brian Lehrer: Absolutely. You raised so many good points, let's just aggregate a few of them, Jess. You can start any way you want and I think I'll have a follow-up question or two.

Jessica Gould: Sure. I absolutely agree that this has been wrenching for families. They get text messages or emails late at night saying that school is out for tomorrow and they have to reshuffle somehow and find care for their kids. The mayor himself said that the reason that he wanted to extend the opt-in in window from, I think it was Wednesday till tomorrow, only a couple of days, was to allow for more clarity around this rule. I'm not sure how much the rule itself is keeping people from opting in, but I definitely think that it's keeping people from being happy with the hybrid experience.

As New York City gets lauded nationally for having its schools open, so many parents are contacting me all the time saying that their kids have only been in school a couple days since January because of the closures.

Brian Lehrer: To that point, when Fannie raises the privilege of being able to work from home as some people can, and many people can't, and be flexible as the schools open and close here and there when cases pop up or with a hybrid model in general, where it's some days in the school building, some days at home. A lot of working people who don't have that kind of flexibility, how much does your reporting indicate that that's been a primary reason that parents have kept kids all remote? That might be a little counter-intuitive because parents have to go off to work and are choosing to keep their kids out of school for that reason but maybe it's just the consistency of being able to predict what and arrange for childcare of some kind. I don't know, you tell me.

Jessica Gould: My reporting personally has borne out more that it's the safety concern that the first caller mentioned, that people who want in-person learning have tried. One thing that has kept a lot of families out of it is that there wasn't another opt-in window until now. People who began to feel more comfortable as the research showed that the school safety precautions were largely working to keep transmission and cases in schools extremely low, they wanted to start opting back in the winter, but there wasn't an opportunity to do so. I think that the consistency issue is a huge issue.

It's a huge issue for the families who have been experiencing it and some teachers have told me that they think their remote kids are having a better experience because of the consistency, even with the challenges that we've heard about and talked about with remote learning.

Brian Lehrer: I know that there are some students who feel frustrated when they're in school and their teacher is teaching them in-person at the same time as trying to communicate with the kids who are at home learning on a screen and hearing the teacher, seeing the teacher that way. The kids in the classroom sometimes don't feel like the teacher is really with them because they're relating to the screen so much. It's complicated. The other thing that I want to follow up on Fannie's call, and Fannie thank you for raising all those issues, is the last-minute communication which has come over and over again, either from the De Blasio administration centrally or because of the two-case role in the ways they pop up from an individual school.

How many parents have been looking nervously in the middle of the night at their email if they happen to wake up, to see if my kid's school is now going to be closed in the morning because a couple of kids popped up with cases, this has happened. Also, even this announcement today, as an example of changing and last minute communications, the mayor extended the opt back in period for the rest of the school year through tomorrow, it was supposed to be last week, so that he could try to clear the two-case rule. Now they finally changed it to some degree in the announcement this morning, but parents only have one day to digest this and make their choice.

Jessica Gould: Right. I think that the last-minute information has been a huge problem, and contradictory information, since the beginning of this crisis when the mayor and the governor in competing ways closed the school system after being called upon to do so for many days, many weeks. Then did it at the last minute, and then there was confusion between the city and the state over closing geographic zones, the red zone, orange zone. It was impossible to understand exactly where your school fit in. Then most recently the mayor said on your show in the morning that when the CDC changed the rules for classrooms to have kids six-feet apart, could now be three-feet apart in the morning.

He said on your show it was too soon to say, then that afternoon he had a surprise press conference saying, "Yes, we're going to change it to three-feet according to the CDC." Then there was a question about whether the state needed to weigh in on that. I think principals have been in an extremely difficult position. In terms of the cases popping up, I'm not sure what else they could do because they get alerted by the test and trace score at the last minute. All they can do is follow the rules that are set forth for that.

Brian Lehrer: It's just been hard to make any plans. Here's Michelle calling from Morris County, even though the segment is primarily about opting back in or not in New York City public schools, Michelle has a story from her own experience that I think can inform anybody from anywhere Michelle hi, you're on WNYC.

Michelle: Hi, thank you so much for taking my call. I'm calling from Morris County, our school district has been open the entire year. My kids are in kindergarten and fourth grade, so elementary grade level. Our school has not shut down once because of cases, our rule is it only shuts down if there are two cases in the school that are traced to being spread within the school. There's been times where there have been two separate cases at the school at the same time, but they got it from different places, and the school stayed open.

I recently sent my kids, and I kept them virtual the whole time because I was just a nervous wreck. The trauma from last year was just too real for me. I'm also from Asian descent, maybe that has something to do with it also, just seeing our community being hit harder, the South Asians. I kept my kids virtual up until March this year, and finally I sent them in. It was after I just realized that look, there have been cases, there haven't been any spreads, the masks are clearly working. They have like Plexiglas around all their decks. I sent my kids and they have their own hand sanitizer top sitting at their desk where I tell them to pump it and keep sanitizing their hands. I put a little sanitizer in their lunch bags, I send them in with a cloth mask, it has three layers, and then I stick a filter in there also.

My kindergartener, we had a full discussion with her, she completely understands the importance of wearing a mask and how if she can promise me that she's going to wear a mask properly, and she's going to take it seriously, then she gets to go to school.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you, this is the 2021 version of what's in your lunchbox.

Michelle: Final, also is asthmatic.

Brian Lehrer: Even being an asthmatic, you ultimately became comfortable with sending her in, seeing the lack of spread when there were individual cases, and with the safety precautions you could send her with. Very, very interesting to hear Michelle, thank you. I'm going to give you a little bit of short shrift because I want to give one more caller a chance, and then we're going to be out of time for the segment. Michelle, we really appreciate it. Call us again. Tish in Sunset Park, you're on WNYC. Hi Tish, we have about 30 seconds for you.

Tish: Hi. I have two high schoolers, and I've chosen only remote. They go to different high schools, one has 4,000 kids and one has about 600 kids, but the DOE has such a lack of creativity that they've offered no option for in-person teaching and learning. I would not send my kids into a building to sit at a computer all day long. They can't socialize. All of our children need to be able to do what school is really about beyond learning, which is having contact with other kids and their teachers. The DOE has handled this so badly, and the Mayor, if this isn't a reason to end Mayoral control, I don't know what is.

Brian Lehrer: I was talking to one high school teacher off the air yesterday who was talking about the backwards reality, Jess, you might be interested in this too, that she saw her high school students experiencing, which is that when they're in school, they don't have the social contact. Like Tish in Sunset Park here was talking about, they're wearing their masks, they're trying to be distanced from each other for safety so they're not clustering and hanging out like kids normally do. When they're home and remote and online, they can actually see each other more and feel more comfortable chatting and gossiping and doing whatever normal people do. What's socially isolating and what's not, at least in this one teacher's experience was getting flipped on its head.

Jessica Gould: The high schoolers doing remote learning in school, I would say is the second most tweeted at anything after the two-case rule. It's really frustrating. A lot of students have told me that they bailed on in-person because they didn't want to sit at computers, that it was the same thing, they might as well do it without a commute at home. We'll see if the change in the three-foot rule and the increase in vaccinations changes that as well. The opt-in period, you have to make a decision now if you're in middle school or high school if you want to opt-in, but how that will work exactly and when that will start, the mayor hasn't announced yet.

Brian Lehrer: Certainly, I've heard from multiple other high school teachers that those rules apply in class, but there is a lot of socialization among the high school students. As soon as they leave the building, they all take off their masks and they're all hanging out like it was 2019. I guess you can cut that one either way. All right, we will leave that there with our education reporter Jessica Gould. The mayor announcing this morning that in New York City, the two-case rule is now the four-case rule, but it's a little more complicated than that. Jess, you'll have a story up on the website soon?

Jessica Gould: Yes. Sophia Chang from Gothamist is working on it right now if it's not up already.

Brian Lehrer: Great. Thanks a lot.

Jessica Gould: Thank you.

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