CLASS WARFARE
Wealthier folks send kids to school, while struggling fams can’t afford to take chance
Ruth Diaz helps her 8-year-old with online learning after his school, PS 169, sent kids home after an increase in COVID cases in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
As frustration grew last month over the city’s chaotic restart of in-person learning, Mayor de Blasio defended his plan to reopen school buildings by arguing it would benefit the city’s most vulnerable families the most.
“We’ve particularly heard … from parents who are less privileged … and desperately want the positive environment of the classroom again,” Hizzoner said in a Sept. 16 press conference, a day before he announced the second delay of in-person classes.
But in two of the city’s most diverse, and segregated, districts — Manhattan’s District 3 and Brooklyn’s District 15 — the whitest and wealthiest schools are so far welcoming back far greater numbers of students for in-person learning than schools with mostly low-income students of color, according to a Daily News analysis of middle and elementary school enrollment data provided by the state.
The snapshot of school reopening in two districts where some of the city’s wealthiest and poorest residents live in close proximity complicates the assumption that low-income families are most likely to leap at the opportunity to send children back to school buildings — while posing new equity questions for districts that have long struggled with glaring educational disparities.
“It’s depressing,” said Brooklyn City Councilman Brad Lander of the in-person learning discrepancies in District 15.
The unequal reopening is another way in which “inequities that were already deep in the school system are both exposed and amplified” by the pandemic, he said.
In District 15’s seven wealthiest elementary and middle schools — which are each more than 50% white and less than 20% poor, and clustered in Park Slope and Cobble Hill — a combined 71% of families opted for in-person classes.
In the district’s 11 poorest schools — which are each at least 80% poor and 85% students of color, and mostly located in Red Hook and Sunset Park — just 41% of families enrolled in face-to-face classes.
In District 3’s wealthiest eight schools, concentrated on the Upper West Side where fewer than one in five kids live in poverty, 73% of families are signed up for in-person classes — compared with 53% in the district’s poorest schools clustered in Harlem, where more than four of five children are poor.
Families’ reasons for selecting or rejecting in-person learning are often idiosyncratic, and hundreds of thousands of lowincome families across the city are choosing to send their kids back to school buildings. But interviews with families and educators offer some clues to why, at least in two diverse districts, wealthier families appear quicker to return to school buildings.
City officials have argued low-income families are most dependent on school for child care. But low-paid workers are alsol the most likely to be out of work — leaving them temporarily stuck at home. Those still working are less able to weather the financial impact of losing income if they fall sick — a vulnerability that can amplify the fear of exposing their kids.
“When you have few resources, it increases the panic,” said Ruth Diaz, the mother of a third-grade student in Sunset Park and part-time building cleaner who opted to keep her son home.
Immigrants across the city are less likely to have access to quality health care or insurance.
Education Department officialsil haven’t tracked the rate of opting into in-person learning among low-income families citywide, but they have measured by race — and found white families citywide are significantly more likely than Asian, Black and Latino families to choose in-person classes.
Officials say the numbers in Districts 15 and 3 may not be representative of the city.
“The situation each family in New York City is facing is complex and nuanced, and there are no clear trends across the city by district,” said Department of Education spokeswoman Katie O’ Han lon .“What we do know is
that inn a school system serving an ov verwhelming number of high-needs students, it is our duty to provide high-quality, trauma-informed care and education to all of our students, and we firmly believe the best place to do that is in person, face to face.”
Sunset Park’ s PS 169 and Park Slope’s PS 118 — on opposite sides of District 15 — vividly illustrate the different appetites for in-person learning in buildings barely 2 miles apart.
At mostly white and wealthier PS 118, 71% of parents are registered for in-person classes. At PS 169, where more than 90% of families are poor and just 4% are white, just over 20% of families are returning for inperson classes.
PS 118 parent Sarah, who asked to use just her first name to protect her family’s privacy, said despite some initial safety concerns, she selected in-person classes after having encouraging conversations with fellow Park Slope families and a trusted physician.
“After talking to my doctors, they weren’t concerned,” said Sarah, a freelance graphic designer.
On the other side of the district, PS 169 mom Ruth Diaz decided to keep her son home because she had pressing health concerns — and few places to turn if something went wrong.
Diaz is covered by Medicaid, but doesn’t have a personal relationship with a doctor she can turn to for advice.
She has little faith in the city hospitals because of the soaring death rates during the height of the pandemic.
“They say in the hospitals they’re killing people,” Diaz said. “People go and they don’t come back. … That’s my worst fear.”
Diaz works as a building cleaner. Much of her income dried up at the height of the pandemic, and she had to cut her schedule to part time this fall while she stays home with her son for remote learning. But she’s OK with that sacrifice because she’s even more frightened of another possibility: falling ill and losing her work and income on a more permanent basis.
“If you don’t have help or support, you have to make decisions for your health,” she said.
That’s a common story at PS 169, according to Jeanette Echeverri, a third-grade duallanguage instructor who teaches Diaz’s son.
“A lot of my families are undocumented,” she said. “They don’t have medical insurance. A lot of the parents I have, for example, work off the books. They can’t afford to get sick. … Their children’s education is very important, but at the same time I feel like they’re thinking about survival.”
Some educators point to another reason some of the district’s schools may be in a better position than others to welcome back large numbers of families for in-person learning: the organizing and fund-raising capacity of upper-middle-class families.
At schools with well- organized and well-funded PT As, parents have stepped into help fill financial and logistical voids around parts of the reopening plan like ventilation and outdoor learning. One PS 118 parent floated the idea in a September call of raising $10,000 to improve the building’s air quality, according to another parent on the call (it’s unclear what came of the idea). Other PTAs have raised money to buy tents and other supplies for outdoor learning.
PS 169 in Sunset Park doesn’t have the luxury of turning to its PTA for support. Educators won city approval to host classes outside in Sunset Park, but many haven’t done it yet in part because they can’t afford tents and outdoor seats and desks, said a teacher at the school who requested anonymity because she’s not cleared to speak.
“I feel like that has to be an equity issue,” said the teacher. “What kind of different resources do they [other schools] have access to that we don’t?”
Sarah’s daughter has been attending in-person classes two days a week at PS 118 — a godsend for both mother and daughter. Remote learning was a“disaster” for the little girl, who couldn’t sit still. “For my daughter personally, she needs the structure,” Sarah said.
Diaz’s son is faring better this fall in remote learning than he did last spring. Diaz says she’s learned to play a more active role. “It depends on us as parents,” she said. “I make him read every day.”
Families will have the option to switch from remote back to in-person learning sometime this November, according to city officials. So far, testing data suggest schools haven’t facilitated the spread of the virus. Only 15 public school students and staff out of more than 7,000 tested in the past two weeks showed positive results—an infection rate of 0.2%
Diaz said she’s unlikely to make the jump. A recent spike in COVID-19 cases in Brooklyn that triggered a temporary shutdown of more than 100 schools, including PS 169, reinforced her fears. “I think everyone is hoping this thingends,” shesaid.But with the recent school closure announcement, she added, “We’re going backwards.”