Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll wrap up our week of call-ins for teachers as a new school year dawns on surviving the culture wars. This time are the COVID culture wars now over in your school or school district, and what were they like for you at their peak? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Everybody who is holding on to continue the conversation about horse-drawn carriages, that one's now over.

Thanks for freeing up your line for the teachers who are going to get the stage next, 212-433-WNYC. Now in New York and most of New Jersey, the mask mandate for students and teachers has been lifted with a few exceptions. The New York school system, as of the last report I saw will still require students to wear masks in schools full-time.

They may rescind that rule by the time school starts, but they haven't done so yet, as far as I could see. New York governor Kathy Hochul this week announced more flexibility for schools for this fall for students and teachers who are exposed to COVID. We can get into some of that. The question is, are the COVID culture wars now over in your school or school district, and what were they like for you at their peak? Teachers or anyone else in schools, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Do you think the COVID wars are over now in your school or your school district? That's the main question on the table. Governor Hochul said the days of sending an entire classroom home because one child is symptomatic or over. If a student or teacher is exposed or has a close contact who's exposed, but they don't have symptoms, they no longer have to go home, they will stay in school.

There will be a mask requirement for a few days. The governor said, "After someone has a known exposure, but they can stay in school as long as they test negative and don't feel sick." Does this end the COVID culture war in New York State? Listeners, 212-433-WNYC. If you're a teacher or a principal or otherwise work in a school, is this now something for the trash heap of history, the COVID culture wars in your school? 212-433-WNYC.

In New Jersey, Governor Murphy has now lifted the vaccine or test rule for teachers that had been in effect. Unvaccinated teachers had been required to show weekly negative COVID tests if they were not vaccinated against the virus. That's now gone. I will say though that both governors are reserving the right to enact rules again, if there's a new surge of the virus in the fall or the winter, depending on what that's like.

Teachers, principals, anyone who works in the school systems in our area or the COVID culture war is now over in your school district, and debrief with maybe just a line or so. What were they like for you at their peak? 212-433-WNYC. How much [unintelligible 00:03:16] yourself want aggressive masking and testing and vaccination rules, or how much [unintelligible 00:03:23] yourself feel oppressed by them, or think the masks were doing more harm than good for your students?

Certainly, teachers' unions were on the front lines of wanting schools closed at the beginning for the safety of the teachers wanting safety requirements once schools reopened. Where were you on this? 212-433-WNYC. What kinds of pressure, teachers, did you get from parents or politicians, or activists when the rules were in effect? How much did the parents in your students’ lives disagree with each other on what was right and you had to mediate or navigate those tensions? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Are the COVID culture wars now over in your school or school district?

What were they like for you at their peak? 212-433-WNYC. It helps to say these things out loud I think because I think many teachers felt isolated in having to deal with these situations as the height of COVID was such an isolating time for everybody in so many ways. I think teachers in this respect and some of these respects for you. Tell everybody, do you think the COVID culture wars are now over in your school or school district? What should history remember about what they were like for you at their peak? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We'll take your calls, teachers, right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Okay, we have 10 minutes for this because we went long on the horse carriages with all those principals in the story who called in. Now we'll wrap up our week of call-ins for teachers as this new school year dawns on the question, "Are the COVID culture wars now over in your school or school district?" Deon in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Deon, thank you so much for calling in.

Deon: Hey, how's it going, Brian? It's good to be on here.

Brian Lehrer: Good to have you. Are the culture wars over and did you experience a peak of COVID culture wars in your school?

Deon: I'm teaching at a high school in Brooklyn. I would personally say at my school, the culture war's done, but I do know that it's still playing out across all the schools. I don't know. During my peak I'm on the younger side of teaching, I'm sub-30. I definitely understood the risk of COVID. At a certain point when the wave was low, I wasn't really as stressed out about it as some of the older teachers were.

I definitely experienced the-- it was so mind-numbing having to ask high school students every single day to put their math back on because they knew what was going on. To do that along with keeping the kids in the school and all the other stresses of a teacher, I'm very happy that I don't have to worry about masking.

Brian Lehrer: Deon, thank you very much. Tamara in Monroe, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tamara.

Tamara: Hi, Brian. How you doing?

Brian Lehrer: Doing all right. I see your daughter works in a school and you have some unfortunate news.

Tamara: Yes. She found out this morning she has COVID. The kids have been back in the charter school in Camden at the high school for a week. Two teachers have it. My daughter's in operations. She has it. She said it's inevitable that the kids are going to come back and get COVID. This is the first time for her. She's going to get some medication today and hopefully, she'll be fine.

Brian Lehrer: What's the rule in her district about how long she has to stay out or if she would have to mask going back for a period of time or not?

Tamara: Good question. She's at a charter school. They indicated that maybe she could come back on Tuesday. The rule is probably five days after a positive test but because they're shorthanded, they might just have her come back if she tests negative and just wear a mask for the next week.

Brian Lehrer: Tamara, thank you very much. Deborah in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Deborah.

Deborah: Hi, hi, good morning. I'm glad it's over, but like your previous call has said a lot of the teacher's time is taken up policing masking. It is inevitable that we are going to get it. I got it in June. A lot of my colleagues got it in June. It takes a lot of time out of teaching. The absenteeism is rising again, probably. I'm a little bit worried about going back and having that same issue.

Brian Lehrer: That same pattern. What about a culture war aspect? Did you experience it in your school with a lot of tension between different sides who wanted different responses?

Deborah: Yes. Not just from the teachers, but also the students, but some students, parents were very worried and kept them home, which of course affects the classroom culture. Some parents sent their kids to school but didn't allow them to take the mask off and the kids couldn't eat in the cafeteria. Then we had teachers very worried. An older teacher got COVID twice in our school who has many health issues. Yes, the whole spectrum was in our school.

Brian Lehrer: Deborah, thank you for chiming in. I hope it goes better than your fearing. Morgan in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC, third-grade teacher, right, Morgan?

Morgan: Yes, that's right.

Brian Lehrer: Are the culture wars over? Go ahead, start wherever you want. Go ahead.

Morgan: No, definitely not. Just something that I was thinking about in the last year around kids and getting vaccinated is teachers can sometimes find themselves in a pretty awkward position when they hear kids talking about vaccines and getting vaccinated because even in New York, there's a really wide range obviously. There are kids who aren't vaccinated and whose families are against getting vaccinated and you putting that position where you feel the need to correct and give accurate information about vaccines and how much they protect you. It also means that you're openly going against what children are hearing from their families.

Brian Lehrer: The fact that the vaccines have been shown not to mitigate against transmission as much as we hoped, it does mitigate against transmission some and they certainly mitigate against serious disease. Does that make you care less about any kind of vaccine mandate now that it's coming off?

Morgan: I think for me as a teacher, it's just more important that kids are getting accurate information about the safety of vaccines. I certainly would appreciate as a teacher to have much clearer mandates, either at individual schools or more broadly. In terms of life in the classroom, it's just navigating, that can be tricky.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. If you're a third-grade teacher, what do you think the effect on your students of masking was in the last two years?

Morgan: The kids adapted fine to the masks. They were just as annoyed obviously as grown-ups are. Of course, they need reminders, some of them need reminders every few minutes. I really don't see any negative academic or social-emotional impacts from masking. Especially when we go outside for recess, they can take their masks off, they get to take their masks off to eat lunch and eat snack. I really don't see any negative impacts for them in terms of masks.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Morgan, thank you for calling. We're taking calls from teachers on the question are the COVID culture wars now over in your school or school district and what were they like for you at their peak? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Alley in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alley.

Alley: Hi, how you doing?

Brian Lehrer: Doing good.

Alley: Thanks for having me on. I guess I just wanted to share some of my experience I taught at the [unintelligible 00:12:18] high school in the Bronx. We were the first school to have a publicly reported COVID case back in March 2020. Actually, it was that time where de Blasio was hesitating to close the schools within our movement for reconcile educators with social justice caucus within the union, we had to push our own union to threaten the sick out in order for de Blasio to close the schools. I remember we had 1000 school staff on that call that Sunday night before the schools were closed.

I told the story of what had happened at my school which was that we were having a outbreak among our staff, among our families, and we literally had to go to school Friday to turn kids down and be like, "Look, the building is not safe."

Brian Lehrer: It's a piece of it that people forget that at first there was so much pressure on Mayor de Blasio to close the schools before he was ready to close the schools. Then, of course, Alley, it started to go in every direction. People wanting the schools closed longer, people wanting the schools reopen. We just have 30 seconds left in the segment. Did your school become the focus of competition among parents who wanted different things?

Alley: Actually, no, I would say our families were very much aligned that they knew the school was not safe. They had a healthy amount of skepticism because the truth is, many public schools in the Bronx have never been healthy. I've had asbestos in my classes all my five years of teaching. We haven't had a nurse every single day in the school. There's a healthy amount of skepticism rightfully so.

Brian Lehrer: Right from the start. That's going to be the last word in this segment. Teachers, good luck in the new school year on all these cultural war aspects we've been talking about all week, and in every other way, good luck as the new school year dawns. One last thought for today, we say goodbye today to our terrific summer intern, Amanda Rosane, who's been with us four days a week the last few months and now returns for her final semester with the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Amanda has contributed lots of great writing and research and ideas to the show.

We know she'll do great as she finishes up school and heads toward making her mark in journalism. Amanda Rosane, thanks for everything, and good luck. Have a great weekend everyone. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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