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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. New York, the largest school district in the country with 1.1 million students is the only major city nationwide planning to offer in-person classes during the pandemic when they are scheduled to reopen on September 21st for in-person learning. New York is also a city of immigrants. We'll spend some time now talking about the potential impact of in-person and remote learning specifically on various immigrant communities in the city, different communities are preparing differently and have different needs and challenges and priorities.

The only way to understand 1.1 million kids is not to look at them as a monolith. With us now, Garry Pierre-Pierre, journalist with the Haitian Times. Rong Xiaoqing, reporter with Sing Tao Daily and Debralee Santos, editor of The Manhattan Times and The Bronx Free Press. Welcome back all of you to the Brian Lehrer show and listeners, especially those of you in immigrant communities for this call-in, we want to hear from you.

Are you sending your kids back to school? Are you opting out? What are your concerns about this coming school year? Or maybe you have a specific question for any of our panelists? 646-435-7286, 646-435-7286. Debralee, let me start with you. We know students who are learning English and their parents who did not speak English fluently, really struggled during remote learning in the spring. I think that's been pretty well-documented. What's being done by the DOE to make it better for the fall, if anything?

Debralee: Good morning.

Brian: Good morning.

Debralee: The DOE has largely focused on assuring families that whatever is not in place now will be and there's a real sense of preparation to come. When pressed on the issue specifically on the devices that some families have yet to receive, the rapid response from both the chancellor and the mayor is that the families will receive, but they simply have to call-in and contact other schools and contact the DOE directly and they will receive them. That's resulted in various success levels.

I think Brian when I'd like to underscore too, is that when you look at the many, many factors that have compounded this crisis for immigrant families and really for all DOE families specifically in the communities that were so hard hit by a COVID, you're looking at not in abstraction by any stretch, you're looking at a reality that was spelled by death and grief and loss with these families.

When you look at the ramp-up to this preparation period that we've seen, this real sense of, "We can do it," what it seems to be missing by and large is a recognition that what is going to return to these sites are a group of children who were wounded and hurt and have suffered trauma and it's a real, real preoccupation for many of the families for whom this conversation essentially has been lacking.

Even when the mayor and the chancellor have gone on to visit the site and speak to principals and speak to the labor leaders about the process, what seems to be missing publicly anyway to my mind and to that of many others is any real engagement with students and the idea that they are the ones who have been so impacted by this and many of the sites that they're returning to represent trauma is of grave concern to the families, despite the fact that they desperately want their children to return to some semblance of normalcy.

Brian: Rong Xiaoqing, the data that I've seen suggests that a large majority of Asian-American students actually not a large majority, but more than in other communities, about 47% opted to go fully remote this school year when the DOE sent out that survey with those options, that's a lot more apparently than in other communities, almost half the families choosing to go remote, why do you think that is and what does it mean about the state of learning in different communities? I realize even when we say Asian-American students that represents families from so many different countries, but how would you answer that question?

Rong: Brian, yes I think the figure actually reflect the distrust among Asian parents to the city and to the DOE. I have to say these days when I cover the mayor's press conference, I felt lucky that I'm not the mayor because I know it's a hard job, but when I talked to the Asian parents I can feel the strong distrust.

I think the distrust has been actually formed before the school closure in March. At that time, in early March a lot of Chinese parents had already started to call the city to close the school because they saw what was going on in China and they knew how serious things could be, but when the city failed to do so, a lot of Chinese parents actually pulled their own children from out of the school by themselves.

I think at that time they had already not really believing what the city are doing. They don't know whether the city really know what it is doing. Now, like you see everything seems the last-minute decision, the last-minute change from the opening date to the inspection of school ventilation systems. The mayor announced it, one day, he said the workers has checked 317 school buildings in the past two days.

Although the mayor said, yes, we haven't just started to do this, we started in June. We have been doing this all the time, but really if you started in June by this speed, two days, 370 buildings, at this time it should all be finished. I think that's the reason that a lot of parents don't really trust the system. I think in terms of studying at home, they have already gathered some experience in the last semester. I think that's not a big problem.

Brian: Garry Pierre-Pierre from the Haitian Times, I see Black and Latino students are also opting to stay remote at a higher rate than white students. You want to add to what Rong was saying?

Garry: I agree with Rong. I think the ultimate problem lies within the DOE. This has been clear since back in even June that some drastic measures were necessary to make sure that parents can feel comfortable sending their children back to school, knowing that there'll be healthy. A lot of that wasn't done. There was all this protracted fight with the union. It was 11th-hour or we've saved a day, but really we're still very much unsure about what to do because to be quite honest, Haitian parents who I talked to and teachers, they don't have the luxury of a choice personally because it's a bad choice.

What are your choices? Send your kids to school and risk getting sick? Or keep them at home where you don't have daycare. A lot of these parents are essential workers, so they can't find adequate daycare for the younger children, so what do you do? It's something that's been talked about how the community can pull resources to help each other, the parents that can actually add the skills to help do so, you have buildings where people are pulling resources and parents taking turns helping out.

The community has to be very creative and I think that's what's going to help to a certain extent because like Rong I said, I don't wish to be in the Mayor's shoes. It's a very tough job, but I think we need to more decisive leadership at all quarters, including the DOE.

Brian: You're pointing to the incredible tension for lower-income New York parents in general, who of course disproportionately tend to be Black and Latinx, New York parents, and other immigrants and immigrants as a group which is that they need more than others to go out to their "Essential jobs" and so the daycare imperative becomes more complicated fan for some who can work from home or even if they're unemployed. At the same time, they're from the families who are the most likely to get COVID and seem to fear the most their children going back into the group setting of in-person school and then bring the virus home. Does that ring true to you, Garry?

Garry: Certainly, absolutely. That's the dilemma since the very beginning because a lot of these households are cross-generational. You have the grandparents living with the youngster and the parents. Sending a kid to school has those effects, as you mentioned, Brian so eloquently because it's a really wrenching decision and everybody is dealing with different issues simultaneously.

This pandemic has been cruel in many ways because it has exposed the vulnerability of poor people and immigrants in this city and despite its best intention, the city has still yet to deal with these underlying issues facing immigrant communities and poor people, if you look at who die the most and now we're talking about schools who has been affected the most. It's Black and Latinx people in the city by and large.

Brian: Listeners, we'll go to some of your phone calls in a minute if you want to get in. Parents and immigrant families from anywhere teachers, other education staff who wants to talk about the special challenge of teaching immigrant kids. Obviously, not every immigrant kid is the same. We're talking about so many different families and so many different stages of English, language learning, and everything else, but who wants to call-in so that we continue this conversation in a way that will help school, whether remote for some people or in-person for some people start out as productively as possible in New York many immigrant communities, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280 and Debralee Santos from the Manhattan Times and Bronx Free Press. Did you want to pick up on something that Garry was saying?

Debralee: I did. I wanted to underscore again that the cruelty of this disease is such that we are having many of the truths laid bare in a way that is discomforting and real. I'd like to point out that beyond the digital divide that we're often centered on in our discussion, many of the conversations of late have been about, for example, outdoor classroom space and the way that we can lend our ingenuity to helping children learn in different spaces.

That is terrifically difficult for communities that are more densely populated and have fewer green open spaces that are conducive to learning. It's critically important that we're having this conversation when there's a violent crime surge in the same communities that will lose to imagine their children in the same playgrounds and open spaces where shots are being fired on a regular basis.

When you look at a district, for example, like district nine in the Bronx where the economic need index is about 93% and you look at district 26, which is Bayside Queens, and that's about 49%, the students there, the families have opted respectively for 32% of all remote learning and district nine in the Bronx and a 49% in Bayside. That speaks a lot to the fluidity of the space around them.

When you can look at your school as a center of the community, one that lends itself not just within its four walls, but the parks nearby and the spaces around it and the people in a way that it's just not possible in certain areas, you are more likely to trust the system to do right by students. That is just not going to be the case and we talked about the family's mistrust issue.

That's not a small matter when you're talking about families that have already been busted in very harsh ways by this disease and are asking themselves, "Why would we go through this again? We've already lost family members in some of these same buildings, these children are going through spaces where they've lost teachers and principals in buildings that were for them, and mainstays." We're revisiting that in ways that we are not acknowledging as we prepare to open with a small delay.

Brian: John in Brooklyn you're on WNYC. Hi, John, thank you for calling.

John: Hi.

Brian: Hi there. We got you. What would you like to say, John?

John: Hello.

Brian: Hi, John, we can hear you, can you hear me?

John: Yes, can hear it now. I just find it very amazing the contribution that this radio is contributing on this subject today. Me being a parent and immigrant, having my kid in this situation where everybody has 1,000 questions about how this pandemic is spreading out and exposing kids, going back to school where there is no something effective yet done in order to ensure they are safe is a very complicated for we parents.

We also thinking that sending kids back to school is also a danger for we parents because when they're going to school they're not safe, they're going to end up by bringing those viruses to parent. We will all be victim of the same willingness of sending that kid to school which is very complicated and we need to really a big assistance on that area in a sense that we still need our kids to learn in-person because they need to speak English in a sense that's not the way that we learn it in a hard way.

They were born here. One of the best way for them to integrate the culture, to define the identity as American they need to go and they share with their colleagues in the school, but at the same time seeing the way the virus is spreading and the damage that the virus has done in the community is a very, very complicated. That's why we all come back to the option of saying learning remotely right now, it's still the main option, and that the community have to come up with something that is going to help children of immigrants to be very effective when it comes to learning English and the culture and the different stuff.

Brian: John, can I ask if you have school-aged kids at home yourself and if so what you thought worked well or not so well with remote learning in the spring?

John: Myself, I was trying to take some classes online, it couldn't work fast because of the many resources that I required to access those education online even for my kid to in order work safely in a sense way that either the internet was not strong enough or the technology was very complicated. It was a very, very hard until we have to spend our own money to have some new technology to have those classes to be accessed online.

Brian: John, thank you so much for your call and good luck with you and your family this semester. Rong Xiaoqing, he really laid out the complexity of the situation and the decision-making and the threats coming from different directions, educational threats, viral threats, and with respect to learning the language. I wonder if you want to reflect on his call and some of what you're seeing in the families that you cover.

Rong: I think John actually made a very good point by saying that the community has to do this together. The community has to all mobilize the end, provide whatever they could to make things go better. I have seen some of these efforts in our community like some Chinese parents formed this network who will-- If I go to work I have no time to take care of my kids, I can send my kid to your home and to study together with your children. That's already been happening, but I think maybe the community-based organizations should do more. They should offer their own maybe even online workshops or gatherings, kids’ activities to make the somehow boring semester or school year more interesting.

Brian: Let's take a phone call from a teacher Sam on Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hi Sam, thank you for calling in.

Sam: Hey, thanks for having me. I just want to throw a monkey wrench in this conversation because I'm a white male teacher and I'm trying to do my best to not be oppressive. I find that remote instruction is really pushing everything in a text-driven assessment direction, as opposed to verbal and everything I'm being told is whiteness tends to privilege texts. There's a big concern for me that I got a lot of students that I lost touch with because they're afraid to put their writing online or communicate that way.

Brian: That is a needed monkey wrench I think. Garry Pierre-Pierre you want to react to that text tends to favor whiteness, verbal tends to even things out and is harder than text to through in a remote situation.

Garry: That's a very, very interesting point and I think the caller is absolutely right. I do teach at City College a course in journalism and I'm finding out the same thing. First-class was on a Tuesday and there was a sense of dread from the students. They were not really excited or eager as they used to be. I can see exactly that getting a course to the Zoom or Skype video is nothing compared to being in class and trying to motivate students. It's a very complicated situation as we've established.

The previous caller, I forgot his name I think it was John, put it exactly when he said that we're all in this together, we cannot be the city, the DOE versus the parents and the teachers. The solution is going to be not one-size-fits-all. It's going to be very type of solution based on a lot of certain because one of the things too, Brian, we haven't talked about in discussing the impact in the immigrant communities, but the immigrant community as you laid out earlier in your intro is not monolithic because a lot of decisions are based on class as well.

Middle-class Haitians are making completely different decisions than working-class Haitians in the city. It's really important because I know a lot of friends of mine who are not sending their kids to school because of obvious reasons, but there are many, many others who don't have that option and then it's complicated things for them in many different ways.

Brian: Which brings up the question of pods that Rong was referring to earlier, Debralee, pods, groups of parents getting their kids together in groups and in some cases hiring teachers to function or other people to function basically as tutors in the remote learning environment keeping their kids home and not everybody can afford that so that exacerbates inequality.

Debralee: It does. There are some instances, in fact, where there are collaborative communities that have grown organically by families, women of color that simply lean into the existing ecosystems in their homes and their communities and they care for each other in a way that allows for there to be that mutual aid. It can do that and it can also lend itself to an exaltation of the community patchwork that frankly immigrant communities excel at.

I do want to say something though that I think we cannot move away from in so far as immigrant communities are not monolithic by any stretch, we would be remiss if we didn't point out that what is in fact close to being quite the monolith is the leadership around this issue. While we don't look to doubt the validity of their experience and their legitimate need to serve as public service, the fact of the matter is that the mayor, the governor, even as he's also had quite a bit of input in this process and the timeline that's been forged and the chancellor and labor leaders that were at the table recently when this new timeline was announced, are all men.

With the exception of the chancellor are all white men and with the exception of the mayor who has probably the one with the most tangential relationship to the public school system, as he often touts, do not have children in the system. I wonder how much of that we work around and we don't acknowledge as part and parcel of the system. When we talk about a monolithic immigrant community not being that then we should also talk about who it is that's making decisions. It should always raise questions for us. It should be a curious state of affairs for us anytime that the voices of the greatest import are those with the least proximity to the matter at hand. I feel like that's something that we just cannot get away from.

Brian: I'm glad you brought that up. Let's take one more call before we run out of time in this segment, Mark in Brooklyn, Mark you're on WNYC. Hello?

Mark: Hi, good morning just a quick thing as far as the spitting mask that's requested at the behest of EMS personnel, not necessarily PD's decision. In terms of the education question now my significant other is Haitian we have a four-year-old daughter who's returning to Catholic school via online. The main question is grandma's essential home health care worker and God bless all of them.

We love them very much. I'm also an essential worker and I just wanted to-- It's been a bit of a discussion and hasn't been too much weed from the schools. I think everybody just needs to take a step back. I'm fortunate in the situation that my child is kindergarten age, where there may not be that much impact. I would encourage parents who have older-- Get them outside, go to nature.

Brian: Can I ask in your experience Mark if Catholic schools-- I'm sure you only really know about your own kid's school, but are handling this with remote versus in-person or whatever combination differently than what you're hearing about the public schools?

Mark: You broke off a little bit, I would say that I'm sure every teacher in whatever school is going to be hyper diligent, I'm sorry diligent or vigilant and doing everything possible to keep the students safe. I think parents need to let that go a little bit. One of the main reasons we did not decide to send her in-person was the busing situation, which she is eligible for. We weren't sure how that was going to work out. We're going to wait to see. We've committed to the virtual segment until I think December and we're going to see if things straighten out, but we want [crosstalk]

Brian: The Catholic school like the public schools gave you that choice as an individual family remote or in-person?

Mark: Not as a hybrid. She was given an option of five days a week. The older kids were given a split kind of thing three days and two days are virtual et cetera.

Brian: The younger kids either all-in or all-out. Mark, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Garry Pierre-Pierre, you want to get a last comment on that? We've got about 30 seconds.

Garry: It's just a fascinating that we're here in September when we know that this was coming. To Debralee's point is that we have to do better moving forward and making sure that we're able to rise to the-- Rise to the occasion rathe and make sure that everyone understands that it's difficult. We just have a sense that this was not a priority. Even if it was it was not taken seriously until the last minute.

We should have been talking about this back in July. We just was not a priority. To me anyway, as someone who's looking at the city a bit large and not necessarily just the Haitian community, but as a resident of New York, it just felt like we didn't take this seriously enough, but we know it was coming. Hopefully, things will go smoothly, and that the students will be smart enough to social distance and do everything that needs to be done to stay healthy. So it has to come from the school and also from the home.

Brian: Garry Pierre-Pierre, journalist with The Haitian Times. Rong Xiaoqing, reporter with Sing Tao Daily. Debralee Santos editor of The Manhattan Times, which is upper Manhattan, and the Bronx Free Press, which you can figure out where it serves. Thank you all so much for joining us.

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