Union fires back on bug
Hits city safety claims on S.I. school
A positive COVID-19 case in a Staten Island middle school that triggered dozens of teacher quarantines has now set off a war of words between the Education Department and city principals union.
An Education Department spokesman said Thursday night roughly 50 teachers from I.S. 51 Edward Markham in Staten Island are in mandatory quarantine because social-distancing protocols “were unfortunately not followed by school staff.”
But the city principals union hit back Friday, claiming school staff followed all social-distancing rules, and calling the Education Department’s accusation “unfounded.”
“The principal and school community deserve a retraction and public apology,” said Council of School Supervisors and Administrators President Mark Cannizzaro. “With mistaken public comments like this, the DOE will no doubt further erode trust with administrators and teachers.”
The brouhaha began when a staffer reported a positive COVID-19 test earlier in the week. Investigators from the city’s Test and Trace Corps determined that roughly 50 other teachers were “close contacts,” and should therefore quarantine, because they shared a room for an extended period of time during a Tuesday staff meeting.
Education Department spokesman Nathaniel Styer said disease detectives asked school administrators a series of questions, and “based on the answers we received, it was determined social distancing was not reliably followed at all times.”
But school and union sources say teachers at the Tuesday staff meeting wore masks and kept their distance — violating no safety protocols.
“Staff were assigned seating to make sure each person was more than six feet apart from one another and all staff wore masks the entire time,” wrote principal Nicholas Mele in a statement posted Friday to the school’s website.
The city’s Health and Hospitals agency lists several criteria for determining “close contacts” of an infected person, including spending 10 or more minutes within six feet of someone with COVID-19. It doesn’t mention being in the same room with masks and social distancing. Some school principals have opted not to hold in-person staff meetings while teachers are working from their school buildings, but the practice is not banned by the Education Department.
DOE officials maintain safety guidance for schools has always included the assumption that anyone who shares a room with an infected person for an extended period, even if they’re spread out and wearing masks, would constitute a “close contact” for quarantining purposes.
“This is not new guidance — we have been clear that a classroom pod would be quarantined regardless of mask wearing or social distancing, and that is what happened here via a large meeting,” said Styer.
Mele, the principal, said he only learned after talking to Education Department officials that “any meeting lasting more than 30 minutes would require everyone in the room with the identified person with a positive test to quarantine even if all safety protocols were followed, which they were.”
Principals union officials also took umbrage at the DOE’s statement Thursday night that the alleged social-distancing violation “will be addressed.”
“While we acknowledge that the DOE response is not an accusation against the school administrators or any specific staff member, it was highly irresponsible and incorrect for the DOE to state that safety protocols were not followed at this school,” said Cannizzaro.
Education Department officials said no one will be disciplined over the flap.
“The information in this case led to a cautious approach to quarantine aligned to our protocols to ensure staff are safe and any spread is stopped,” Styer said.