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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and now the President of the United Federation of Teachers, the New York City Teachers Union, Michael Mulgrew. Michael, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Michael Mulgrew: Thank you, Brian. Thanks for having me and I hope all is well.

Brian: With you too. I'm just going to put it right to you, I don't know at this point of any other constituency for Mayor de Blasio closing the school citywide as he did, other than the UFT. He did this to keep a promise to you, right?

Michael: Well, it's part of the plan that was submitted to the state. That's the plan he had to follow. It really wasn't-- The 3% was his number that he had come to us with that. Our big issue was all of the PPE, the safety procedures in the schools as well as the mandated testing program.

He is the one who said he wanted the 3%. When we brought it back to our doctors, they were like 3% is fine but we probably should do some more geographic targeting versus the whole city approach at that point.

Brian: Why couldn't you do some geographic targeting approach? You and him to come to some agreement on that last week, especially with the schools having such a low positivity rate?

Michael: Well, we have to put everything in the correct context. The reason the schools have a low positivity rate is all the work that we have done. The teachers of New York City have been phenomenal here. I mean, we're the only large school system that opened. We worked very hard, with independent doctors to put together a plan that we thought could keep our schools safe.

The doctors had told us that the schools will probably be some of the safest buildings in each community. At that point, there was no state plan. The state had no plan for schools. It was just they had a 5% plan to shut down everything in different areas.

In October of this year, the state came out with a plan on how to deal with schools. Now we have two different plans in effect and I think we should just move towards the state plan and not use the one that we submitted. We did it responsibly, we did the right thing, we had to have some sort of plan that would trigger schools going into remote because we did not want a repeat of what happened last March when we had to have a huge fight here in the city to get our schools closed.

I think now that the state has this plan, which supersedes anything we do anyway. We should just move towards that because the state plan also uses 3% as putting schools into remote. I've told the mayor that we're okay with that.

Brian: You've told the mayor that you're okay with what exactly and how would that affect reopening?

Michael: Moving and just following the state plan. At that moment, we would only do what the state is telling us. Now the city and the state always having different numbers and how they calculate is slightly different, which is why the numbers never match.

I wish we would just adopt one single number because they're both doing the same thing. The state has access to more information. We should use one single number and the state plan is the one we should be following.

At that point, it really comes down to what we're looking at is this big challenge that all the doctors are telling us that after Thanksgiving, they fully expect the number to rise across the city as well as across the state.

That's really the thing that we're focused on right now is trying to figure out if we can keep the number suppressed which is not just-- That's not the teacher's job, that's everybody in the community's job and hopefully, people are seeing that we have to start making some changes. Even though we're sick and tired of this virus, it's time to start really buckling down and putting this virus back at bay as best we can.

Brian: What's the number in a given area of the city that would trigger a reopening that you would sign off on?

Michael: You would have to be under 3% and you would have to have a trend rate going down. The problem we're facing right now, Brian, is all of the trend rates, whether you're looking at the city's numbers or the state's numbers, all the trend rates are continuing to go up.

If they continue the way they're going, we fully expect the city would probably be completely orange under the state plan, probably within a week after Thanksgiving.

Brian: Yet there are places where the trend lines are going up and they're not closing the schools. People are asking where's the science behind any closing? The positivity rates in the schools are way under 1% now, even though the city on average is above 3%, some neighborhoods are way above that. A school looks like the safest indoor place to be right now.

Michael: Again, I'm going to say that's because of the plan that we fought for and made sure that was in place but there's a big but in that plan. At the same time, we were putting that together and following all of the judgments that independent epidemiologists were telling us, they were also telling us loud and clear that you cannot-- If the community rate continues to rise, you cannot keep that school safe.

It will tip into the school, and then the school will become a vehicle for spreading the virus from different neighborhoods that are all connected to the school. We've seen evidence of that. That is already happening in different parts of the state and we're looking at different schools in New York City.

It's more about not allowing to be an abundance of caution and making sure that we're not going to allow our schools to become a vehicle for spreading the virus not in the city again and the doctors are very clear on that.

Brian: Listeners we can take your phone calls for UFT President Michael Mulgrew. Any teachers who happen to be listening right now in the New York City system, call and talk to your union leader, ask him a question, tell him you like what he's doing, don't like what he's doing, get some information from him.

You can do that teachers, or parents of New York City public school kids, or any other stakeholders. 646-435-7280 or tweet a question @BrianLehrer. Michael, an article in The Times today suggests the mayor had to close the schools to regain the confidence of teachers and principals after his halting effort to reopen the schools in September and an impression of past promises broken by him. Did that opening in a seemingly clumsy and unprepared way, make the closing more inevitable in your opinion?

Michael: No. The only thing that would make the close-- From the very beginning, whether we stayed open or went to remote, is based strictly on community infection spread. It's really that-- We are literally just following the numbers.

When we had to put our plan together, in late August, beginning of September, the state required us to have a plan and part of that plan was when schools should go remote. Then when they could reopen, which is basically based on the number of three.

The city took the approach of a city-wide shut down. We at that point in August and I know people questioned us but it's just a fact. Just ask the people at the table. We at that point had asked the city to go to a borough or school district approach rather than a city-wide approach.

This has nothing to do with-- This wasn't a promise. This was a plan submitted by the city to the State Education Department, which they had to attest to, which is a legal document saying we will follow our plan.

I know there's a lot of speculation in the media, but it really is something that goes to the heart of there's a number out there, we're following the numbers. We would be more than-- We think it's prudent at this point not to have two separate plans and just to have one and clearly the state one takes precedent over what any municipality is doing.

Since that is based on a 3% number, we think that's the one we should be following but we definitely have to get through this challenge that we're facing right now, which is a rising COVID positivity rate in our city.

Brian: Well, you're quoted in that Times article saying, "Basically the mayor has so lost the trust of educators that you're going to seek a revision of the state law that gives the New York City Mayor control over the public schools." Can you confirm that?

Michael: I've been saying that actually for a couple of years. I didn't get interviewed directly for this article but the union's official position is that the CEC board should not be directly under the control of the mayor, because we should have the ability to have other people part of the final decision-making process for our schools. That has been our position for years and I will stand by that.

Brian: Has his handling of COVID contributed to your arguments in support of that?

Michael: March was not good, Brian. March was one of the ugly-- I mean, look, the whole city was going through a horrible time. We still don't know everything about this virus but the unknown at that point, we saw the rates were rising and for us to have to go and basically have a fight to get our schools closed and we thought our schools closed too late which is why, unfortunately, we have had so many deaths of members who worked in schools and that caused a big problem.

The trust was definitely broken at that point in time. At this moment, we're just trying to figure out how to get through this virus and try to do as best we can for all the children in New York City. Remember, New York City is the only large school system in the country that is open and we fought to open it despite the fact that we got hit harder as a school system than anybody else.

Brian: Can you say you fought to open it, didn't you fight to keep it closed when mayor de Blasio was fighting to reopen it?

Michael: No, because what we were saying is that we had to have the things that independent medical experts were telling us had to be in place. We weren't doing this based off of politics, so we had to have the PPE all in place, we had to have new clean procedures for our schools, we needed electrostatic cleaners for every school building.

We had to make sure that each school had a COVID response team in place to do the procedures for each building in terms of feeding children, getting children in and out and doing all the training that we were going to need to do with our students and staff and then we needed the mandated testing program.

We said, if all of those things are in place, we will open because that is what independent doctors are telling us. We got those things and we did open and we proved to everyone that as long as you can keep the community rate down, we can keep schools safe.

Nobody else in this country at any large school system has done this. Yes, I can absolutely positively say we fought to open our schools, but we fought to open them safe.

Brian: Let's take a phone call. Nina in Queens, you're on WNYC with UFT president Michael Mulgrew.

Nina: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. Michael, thank you so much for all the work that you do for us. I'm a chapter leader in Queens and really appreciate what you do. Brian, I'm surprised at you, at your questions, they sound a little bit loaded, a little bit biased and attacking. I have to say that if I work in--

Brian: Forgive me for holding officials accountable for their actions, but go ahead Nina.

Michael: Nina, it's okay. Brian's doing his job but actually Brian unlike a lot of other people actually let's me answer, so Brian's always been really good at this in terms of being fair.

Nina: Okay. I want to say that teachers did want to go back to school. A lot of us love our jobs and care very much for our students. We wanted our schools to be safe and I have to tell you that my school did not have testing in October. The mayor promised that students would be tested once a month, did not happen in the month of October.

I also have to say that 50% of the students in my school brought their permission slips in so that they could be tested. There's a lot of students in our school that are not being tested, so I don't believe that we're getting an accurate picture of COVID in our schools.

Also, they tested the same cohort twice in my school, so that's not good either. The other thing I want to say is if we're looking at hotspots, my school might be in a zip code where COVID is-- The numbers are not high, but we have kids coming from neighborhoods where the numbers are quite high, and so that's a little bit scary. We're all traveling through the city, we're using public transportation and I think that's more where the worry comes from.

Brian: Nina, can I ask you as a teacher in the New York city public school, what conditions would you like to see before your school reopens?

Nina: I want to make sure that all students are tested, that they have their-- I don't think that students should be allowed to come into the buildings if their parents have not given permission for them to be tested.

I think that there should be a lot more testing and that all cohorts should be tested. They say the teachers, if a teacher refuses to get tested, they're sent home that day, yet you're allowing students to come into the building who may not have given permission to be tested, and that just doesn't seem fair, it doesn't seem respectful of faculty who are in those buildings, risking their lives, who really do care about their students.

Brian: Nina, thank you so much and thank you for your service as a New York city public school teacher. Michael, on the particular issue that she's identifying that's real, right?

Michael: That's real. [crosstalk].

Brian: Parents do not have to get their kids, it's voluntary.

Michael: Yes. No, it's not. The mayor keeps saying publicly it's mandated, but when we get down to the school level, it's not being followed as a mandated testing program. One of the things before we do reopen is that I don't believe anyone should be allowed to come back into a school building without whatever permission or legal authorization to test people, they shouldn't be allowed in and that goes for the adults and the children.

This is a big component, this is our early warning system for school, is the testing. PPE is the first and most important thing, but the testing on is our early warning system and it actually has kept a lot of school community safe.

At different times, over 500 schools were basically in remote for a period of maybe one or two days up to two weeks, since we reopened school, but that's completely because of our testing program but we can't act like we have a mandated testing program when it's not real in a school and that goes back to the trust again, that educators have with the administration.

Those permission slips have to be done for anyone to come back into the building. Then the other piece, Brian is, as we're now heading into what all the doctors are telling us is really big challenge of this winter, starting this Thursday with Thanksgiving. You've heard all the things-- Everybody's heard about Thanksgiving and how this going to cause a huge spike.

We have to do more testing at the school level when we reopen. We should focus like a laser on doing weekly testing, not just monthly testing. I believe we now have the capacity to try to get that done, but those are two of the big things that I think need to be in place before we can reopen.

Brian: Here's a parent. Hoda in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Michael Mulgrew, UFT president. Hello, Hoda.

Hoda: Hi, good morning, Brian. How are you? Thank you again for taking my call. Michael, I've called in two times previously, first time in the summer, at the onset of this expressing my concerns on the impact that this has to many, many families and the health crisis that this has for learning outcomes to single parents and everything else, and I called again last week on the news that we were going to be having a potential shutdown.

I think most parents recognize the importance for community safety, school safety. The parents who are still a small percentage relative to the parents who have kept their kids home, have been practicing all the safety protocols.

The science is there to show that the schools are safe, that the transmission rate is incredibly low. We have been extraordinary compliant with all of the requests that have come down and now for many parents, they're signing up to do testing.

Speaking, candidly though, I would be a miss if I told you, I don't inherently trust the UFT. I have deep concerns with you, your leadership, your changing the goalpost, you coming out now saying, well, you know what? This is actually what we wanted, when you were one of the first advocates of shutting down the schools and putting out really ludicrous demands that were unreachable and unattainable for any other industry working other than teachers.

I also have a lot of concerns with the fact that we have been into this pandemic for months now and we're still discussing the plan to reopen, when you should have been working on this for the past couple of months. Why is there even a question mark of what we have yet to do? But we're talking about our children here, we're talking about their futures, and I have to be honest with you, I don't trust you.

I have a lot of concerns with you, your leadership, your way of communicating, you're trying to come out now as though we all agree now or whatever, and I'm telling you, I'm speaking on behalf of many parents.

Brian: Hold it, take us to the bottom of this and Michael we'll get you to respond in a minute it. Is it that you don't trust him to be working in the best interest of the students, as opposed to be overly protective beyond what the science would determine of the safety of his teacher members or what is it that you don't trust him to do?

Hoda: I don't trust he's putting the interests of our children first because the science tell us otherwise. I think there's a political holdout that's happening here. I don't think he's being fully transparent. I'm encouraging that the journalists that are out there do an enormous amount of digging to figure out what the intentions are here for the teacher's union, because if really the protocol, the objective here was to protect the children, the teachers, the communities, the science and the evolving nature of this pandemic [crosstalk] would be the top priority?

Brian: Hoda, thank you very much. Michael, go ahead.

Michael: I'm sorry I'm interrupting and I'm very, I'm sorry she does not trust me, but the facts are that New York city is the only logical system open and we fought and worked really hard to get our school system open.

Everything that we have asked for has been told to us are things that are needed to keep children safe and to keep their families safe as well as keeping other people who work inside the school building safe. They were told to us and guided us were all independent medical epidemiologist experts in this field.

We held a press conference, but I'm not going to sit here and become defensive about this. We held that press conference with these doctors from Harvard, from Northwell, all saying these are the things that were needed in order to keep children and their families and anyone who works in schools safe during a pandemic.

Yes, you could ask anyone who was at the table in August. We did ask for a geographic rather than a city-wide approach. The city did not want to do that. The most important piece for us was the PPE, all the procedures, the cleanings, the ventilation, and the mandated testing program.

Our schools will be opened again this school year, but it's not just the job of the teachers and the parents and the students to follow the rules, it's the job of everyone in every community in New York City to follow the rules because that's how we're going to continue when we get open to stay open. When people follow all the rules, when keep this virus at bay, we know how to keep our students safe inside of their school building.

Brian: Hoda, thank you for your call. How prepared do you think the city is now for remote learning compared to when it started in March and what role is the union playing in that?

Michael: It's better than it was in March, but it's not as good as it should've been. Every teacher in New York City now can set up an electronic digital classroom and put their entire class inside of it, but we could've done more, the school system could have done more.

Most of our efforts during the summer with the safety aspects of the school, just think about the amount of PPE that the school system is using. It's basically like mobilizing an army. The people we work with at the Department of Ed on the operational side have been nothing but phenomenal moving heaven and earth to get those things done, ventilation issues that weren't solved for years, all of a sudden, we brought in outside folks to take a look at that and everyone worked together and came up with solutions for ventilation.

The remote piece, the department of education instructional side, I think, could've done more, it is better than it was last year. I'm concerned and actually quite frustrated with the fact that there are still students without devices. The department of ed should've had an additional bank of devices ready to go. Those things frustrate me.

It's nowhere near the numbers we had last year. Last year was close to 300,000 students, but students move around, students change schools. We have new students every year. We should've had basically a cachet of devices ready to go, but we are definitely much better than were last year.

It's really the testament to the teachers of New York City who have embraced the online learning and make it better every day. That's just what teachers every day, no matter how good a lesson goes, we always fixate on what went wrong and try to figure out how to make it better. That's just the nature of anyone in education.

Brian: Is that a negotiating point because I hear from parents all the time who are so frustrated that remote learning seems so much less than what it should be and to my ear anyway, based on the callers who we take, they're not blaming the teachers.

They're looking at teachers and saying, "Teachers are doing their best under really difficult circumstances, lack of training, having to have split attention sometimes when school is in session in-person between the kids in the room and the kids at home. Teachers are trying, but the training isn't there, the tools aren't there, there are still 60,000 kids who don't have either the equipment or the Wi-Fi connectivity to do it right."

Is this a point of ongoing negotiations between the union and the city to get some particular things to make remote learning better now that we're back in that space? We were always at that space, but now that we're back in it universal.

Michael: The instructional plan of the school is under the direction of the Department of Education and of the principal. I know the principals are just as frustrated as we are. I speak to them and their leadership all of the time.

They're quite frustrated and feel that they're out there on their own just trying to figure this out. We could push more into making it part of collective bargaining, but there's things that should have been just basically-- It's a pandemic.

We know this is only for the time of the pandemic. We should've had-- School districts should have been picking one or two or three different curriculums and saying, "This is what we're doing and we're training everyone on it."

Using curriculums that were not digitized, I don't want to get too technical, but using curriculums that we never digitized, it's very difficult to use them in a remote process and then the training itself on the people at the department.

The experts on remote learning right now, the only people who have done it are the teachers of New York City, not the administrators at the Department of Ed Central, they've never done it.

The fact that we're waiting on them to train us and they really don't ask enough of the teachers and they should be going to the teacher saying, "What's working, what's the best practices, and then how do we spread them?" We do a lot of training on it, but it's just it's so frustrating. It is better, but it's extremely frustrating.

Brian: One more teacher calling.

Michael: There's no substitute, Brian, for in-person instruction, which is why it was important that we did open and we are going to get back open.

Brian: One more teacher calling. David in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with UFT President Michael Mulgrew. Hi, David?

David: Good morning, everyone. How are you?

Michael: Good morning David.

David: I have tried to reach out to the union leadership many times. I'm going to do it over a phone call instead. Look, here's the point. I think that the woman who called before had an excellent point about our changing message.

Over the summer, early in the summer, that was the time to really mobilize people behind the idea that we had no business reopening schools in September. We had no way of guaranteeing that we were going to get any of those things that we talked about anyway.

The bottom line was we should've spent our time and energy figuring out how to improve remote learning from last year, address all the problems that we saw. We could have dedicated two months to that, we could've also given parents a heads up, and it would have given them two months to figure out solutions for childcare and all those other things that we were worried about.

Instead, the principals, the mayor spent the whole summer debating whether or not to reopen schools and whether to have kids come in one or two days a week and what crazy schedule they were going to follow.

When we had the debate, we had it on a false premise. We were talking about, if we reopened schools, these are all the benefits that are going to fall on to our children. First of all, the mutual benefits of attending school in-person on non-existent.

When kids are going in one to two days a week, they're not getting the typical education experience, they're not getting the typical interaction with fellow students doing group work, having teachers stand over them at a desk and work with them.

We had no business reopening these schools because the benefits are so few and the problems are so many. When you talk about reopening schools and you have COVID rates, and you say they're 3%, 2%, everything else, that's insanity.

Brian: David, I'm going to have to get a response for you.

David: The data lags behind the reality. We can't go by the 3% rule. Look at this. By the time you find out where the percentages, that's the percentage as it was two or three weeks ago.

Brian: There's the other side, forgive me. I will say that he was making a universal statement about the in-school school experience. I know from hearing from parents, particularly of younger kids that they think the in-school experience is largely very positive, but go ahead, Michael, and finish up, and then we're going to be out of time.

Michael: This is the issue that we're all dealing with right now and that's why it's important that we try to try to get focused on moving us forward. We had a lot of people, lots of people who said we should never open our schools.

Now we have people saying we should have closed the schools. This is what's called a pandemic. No matter what decisions are made, there's going to be problems with them. The goal for us is to maintain safety standards, and at the same time, figure out a way to get to the finish line, which we're now seeing that there's a possibility of a finish line at the end of this school year.

Of course, people are going to be upset with whatever decision is being made. I think it's very important that when we can open schools, we open them and we do it safely. There's the damage being done in our city.

Our member assistance program with teachers completely overwhelmed, but to students, the amount of social, emotional crisis out there, we're going to be doing work for years repairing so much of the damage that has happened in this one period of time known as COVID.

I'm just hoping, I get people passionate, angry, and frustrated, but in the end, we just got to keep focus on our safety, and at the same time, when we can, there's nothing that is a substitute for in-person teaching.

We just got to continue to move down that path. The most important thing, Brian, is the teachers have done their jobs. The teachers show you can open schools safely, large schools in the inner city, but they can't do it by themselves.

That the community has to be there working hand in hand with us and keeping the rates low. That's the way we're going to get to this by everyone working together and moving forward.

Brian: UFT President Michael Mulgrew. Thank you so much.

Michael: Thank you, Brian, and happy Thanksgiving.

Brian: You too.

 

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