Gotham Gazette

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Opinion

For Students’ Sake, New York City Should Keep Schools Open


ric mental hyg

(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


As the city’s seven-day rolling average positive test rate for COVID-19 approaches 3% and with the Mayor and Department of Education seemingly on the brink of closing schools again, public school parents, like me, are anxious and angry. Students, teachers, administrators, and parents have done everything we promised to keep our schools open, safe, and healthy. Shutting down schools that have experienced few or no covid cases makes no sense. Shutting down all in-person schooling is an assault on parents and students. 

When the 3% threshold was agreed to by Mayor de Blasio and the teachers union there was great uncertainty about the safety of opening schools. Setting a conservative threshold to respond to reasonable concerns of teachers made sense. However, through small classes, social distancing, mask compliance, and a robust testing and tracing protocol, we proved that schools can open safely under the right circumstances. Even as the citywide positivity rate has increased, the positive test rate in schools has remained far less than 1%. 

In my family, I was, and still am, the parent responsible for remote learning. I am the one who essentially left the workforce to give our kids stability at home. I know first-hand that, despite Herculean efforts by our teachers and administrators, remote learning is hurting our children’s academic progress and harming their mental health. It is widening the achievement gap between wealthier, predominantly white, students and poorer students, who are predominantly students of color. 

Yet, despite all the challenges of remote learning, many parents decided to start the year fully remote. After so many months of chaos, parents just want to provide continuity for our children. Many parents felt that the best way to do this was to start the year all-remote because the possibility that kids could return to school, only to have them shut down as in the spring, would be devastating and harmful for their children. For many, the plan was to opt back in to some in-person learning after winter break if the opening went smoothly, which it did.

Despite this success, the city is going to throw it all away by adhering to an artificial threshold that flies in the face of science and data. Parents are now again stuck with the fear that they could opt their children into blended learning with some in-person school days, only to have school buildings close shortly thereafter, creating even more disruption and chaos in their lives.

Likewise, students already in the hybrid model are doing well. They are happy to be back in school, with their friends and teachers, returning to some semblance of normalcy. Taking that away from them is unconscionable.  

It is time for the city to make decisions by weighing the very substantial harm that remote learning is doing to our children with the risk of keeping schools open. The harm has proven high and the risk has proven low. Schools can and should remain open unless and until there is significant linked transmission within schools. The entire school system should not shudder all buildings to in-person learning unless community spread of covid is so significant that it has overwhelmed the ability to provide the robust testing and tracing required to keep our schools safe. 

Our children are suffering and hurting from the lack of in-person instruction and parents are hurting from the mayor and Department of Education’s ad hoc decision making. If we are going to meet our obligation to provide a quality public education for every New York City child, it is far past time to prioritize the health, well-being, and education of our children over all other considerations. 

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Doug Schneider is a parent who lives in Brooklyn and a candidate for New York City Council in District 39. On Twitter @DougSchneiderBK.

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Before New York City Schools Close Again, This is What Students with Disabilities Need


nyc schools mayor class visit doorway

The mayor and chancellor at a school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


Over 300,000 New York City students with disabilities still do not have the means to learn and receive services effectively online. And families can no longer emotionally endure being full-time caregivers, teachers, and therapists. The city needs a plan right now.

The pandemic has further widened the achievement gap between students with disabilities and their peers. Remote learning and teletherapy -- speech, occupational, and physical therapy, as well as counseling over a screen -- does not work for most students. Students need to be able to engage independently or need to have an adult available to support them.

Students with disabilities need consistent access to devices, broadband, and space for their learning environment. They need live and in-person instruction with licensed special education teachers. For effective teletherapy services, providers need more training on how to deliver quality services online. In their annual special education report (via Local Law 27) issued earlier this month, the New York City Department of Education conceded that it does not know how many students received any or all of their mandated services from March through June of this year when all school buildings were closed.

The city also needs to communicate clearly and directly with families on covid exposures, as well as school-based and system closures. Communications must be expedient, accessible, and multilingual. School closure has already been especially traumatic for students with disabilities and that continues to be further compounded by lack of timely information from the city and individual schools.

The constant disruption to students’ routines, schedules, and access to their school communities often triggers behaviors that prevent learning from occurring. The city must provide immediate guidance to schools and educators on how they can address the social-emotional needs of students with disabilities, including students with significant developmental and intellectual disabilities.

All students need high-quality learning and social opportunities, but in the current environment, students with disabilities are especially isolated. A persistent lack of in-person interactions and community will have an irreversible, long-term impact on their academic progress, behavior, and future independence, education, and employment.

This year, remote and blended learning have created many educational gaps and provoked much analysis. The city needs to have a plan to provide in-person instruction and services for students with disabilities right now before it closes all school doors again.

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Barbara A. Glassman is the Executive Director of INCLUDEnyc, a non-profit helping young people with disabilities, their families, and the professionals who support them; including a Help Line for assistance in English, Spanish, and over 200 languages. On Twitter @GlassmanBA and @IncludeNYC.

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For an Equitable Recovery, New York Must Utilize Our Manufacturing and Industrial Sector


pow mov ya

DNJ Mechanical Corp. moving into Maspeth (photo: BOC Network/Maspeth Industrial Business Association)


As we get deeper into the current crisis, it’s becoming clearer that New York won’t simply bounce back to “normal.” We need effective strategies to transform our city’s infrastructure and economy. Policies aimed at protecting and growing industrial jobs can improve not only our citywide economy, but the nearby low-income residential communities and the lives of the predominantly of-color manufacturing workforce.

As industrial business service providers, we ask our current and future decision-makers to look more closely at the role industrial land, businesses, and jobs can play in ensuring an equitable recovery in New York City. 

New York City has 21 officially designated Industrial Business Zones (IBZs) whose land is zoned for industrial uses, including traditional manufacturing of goods like furniture, clothing, and machines, as well as food production, wholesale, and sanitation facilities, warehousing, and research labs. Not all of the city’s manufacturing land exists within these areas, but the protection offered by the IBZ designation helps to mitigate the impact of speculation and prevent industrial businesses from being pushed out of the city in favor of other, more lucrative uses.

So why does it matter if we keep industrial businesses in New York City? 

We are at the intersection of three crises: the COVID-19 pandemic; an economic collapse triggered by the pandemic and worsened by decades of disinvestment and inequality; and systematic racial injustice highlighted by this year’s massive protests and the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on low-income communities and communities of color. The manufacturing and industrial sector provides a key to addressing all three crises. New York’s industrial businesses make and distribute PPE and other medical equipment, boost our local economy, and provide good jobs for workers of color and minority-owned businesses.

In 2019 in New York City, manufacturing jobs paid an average annual wage of $69,161. Meanwhile, food service jobs paid $30,685 per year, and retail jobs paid $38,450. Mayor de Blasio and the City Council has devoted lots of creative energy to ensuring that restaurants can continue operating; we want to see that same energy aimed at ensuring the success of industrial businesses that pay twice as much to a workforce that is 80% people of color and 50% foreign-born. These are the jobs for the people who have been most impacted by COVID-19, situated in the neighborhoods most impacted by COVID-19.

Many aspects of city policy affect the industrial sector’s ability to thrive: land use and planning, transportation, economic development, workforce development, small business services, environment and sustainability, and others. We need to see our city’s leaders taking a smart and integrated approach to these areas that recognizes the critical role of manufacturing.

The Department of City Planning’s recently released draft framework for a Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, which puts forward the goals of resiliency, equity, and health, is one example of a process where this approach is important. We want to see a strong emphasis on the waterfront’s role in providing equitable economic activity, not only for port use but also as a home and supportive ecosystem for the industrial employers and workers that sustain the health of our communities.

Here are three ways the city can support manufacturing jobs:

Adopt a new approach to land use that preserves the industrial business zones and additional manufacturing land. This approach, which the Department of City Planning explored in the North Brooklyn Industry & Innovation Plan, would prioritize more intensive, job-generating industrial uses that support the city’s resiliency, and restrict non-compatible uses like stand-alone office space and recreational facilities.

Increase alignment and collaboration between and among city agencies whose work impacts the manufacturing sector. This includes agencies that may not be assumed to focus on economic development, but whose purview affects business growth, such as the Department of Transportation, Department of Sanitation, and Department of Buildings.

Make better use of the resources that the IBZs already have, including the support networks built and sustained by the Industrial Business Service Providers. Many of these organizations have historical roots in New York City’s industrial neighborhoods, and they have the ability to leverage their deep knowledge of the communities’ needs to inform city policy and to disseminate information about programming to businesses in their respective communities.

As New York City continues to confront these deep-seated crises, we hope that decision-makers will recognize and embrace the manufacturing sector’s role as part of the way forward to a more equitable future.

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By Leah Archibald, Executive Director, Evergreen Exchange; Nancy Carin, Executive Director, Business Outreach Center Network; Quincy Ely-Cate, Director of Industrial Business Development, Maspeth Industrial Business Association; Niles French, Vice President of Projects, Staten Island Economic Development Corporation; Ben Margolis, Executive Director, Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation. The authors are all members of the Industrial Jobs Coalition, a citywide alliance of community groups, policy advocates, and service providers fighting to protect and preserve manufacturing as a sector in New York.

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