WFH OKed for more city teachers
The city Education Department and teachers union reached an agreement Friday to allow staff who aren’t responsible for teaching students in-person to work from home rather than reporting to their schools.
Previously, only teachers with approved medical accommodations could work from home.
Tens of thousands of city teachers have been reporting to school buildings since Sept. 8 to work on planning and teach online classes even though most students won’t start in-person classes until next week.
Teachers argue the requirement to travel to school buildings when they don’t have any kids to teach there increases their risk of COVID-19 exposure, creates needless childcare crunches, and taxes schools’ overloaded internet networks.
“This policy will keep us safer and reduce the traffic on overextended school Wi-Fi networks,” United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew in an email sent to members Friday night.
The policy applies to teachers “who have full days of remote responsibilities as well as” those with “on-site assignments who have work that can be done remotely when no students are assigned to be in the school building.”
The Friday deal also encourages schools to allow teachers living with vulnerable family members to work from home so they don’t put relatives at risk.
The guidance says schools must give teachers who are the primary caregivers for family members with underlying medical conditions priority for any open remote teaching positions.
Previously, only teachers who had an underlying condition were eligible to work from home by seeking a medical accommodation. Roughly 16,000 teachers have been approved for accommodations.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many teachers would be affected by the new agreement.
Nearly half of the city’s million schoolchildren are scheduled to start the fall in full-time remote learning. The more than 500,000 kids scheduled for “blended” in-person learning will alternate between remote learning from home and traveling to their school buildings.