Making our schools truly COVID safe

On Wednesday, I made a child cry. That morning, a teacher brought her to my fifth-grade classroom, explaining she was on my roster, and I panicked. No, she can’t come in. I already had 25 kids in front of me. No.

Twenty minutes later, my assistant principal appeared at my door, same child. Again I said, No.

I was told I had no choice. The little girl sobbed. My heart lurched. I went inside my room and grabbed Rosita the red bear. Here, sweetheart, she will comfort you, I said as I whispered a yarn in her ear about Rosita’s wayward brother, which made her giggle.

I put an arm around her shoulders and said, welcome honey, welcome to our class.

That’s when I decided I had to leave. I’d been teaching for three days this year, my 18th year on the job. It will be my last.

My school, in Brownsville, Brooklyn, cannot keep me — or my students — safe. Class lineup in the morning takes place with 200 plus kids in an unventilated gym. Teachers wait for up to a half-hour for their fourth and fifth graders who slowly trickle in after their morning health screenings downstairs. I have to drop off and pick up my class every afternoon in the lunchroom, where 120 plus kids are eating, so many of the children are unmasked and not socially distanced.

Twenty-six kids, most in ill-fitting masks drooping below their noses, were in my small classroom barely a foot apart — nowhere near the three feet recommended by the CDC. Deep cleaning? The week before classes began, my sister and I spent six hours scrubbing the classroom. Workbooks, projects, book reports, from March 2020 looked as if they had been preserved in amber, and were covered in a layer of grime. PPE? It wasn’t until that Wednesday, after I had been asking for days, that I was given a half-dozen children and adult masks, a box of gloves, and a container of disinfecting wipes.

The mayor insists schools are safe. They were last year when most kids were remote and in-school classes were organized in pods with five to 10 kids who did not leave their rooms. That is not the case this year. We are in a social experiment that frightens me. Yes, I believe it’s best for kids to be in school.

But has the DOE implemented competent plans to keep the students and staff safe? Maybe in Park Slope, but certainly not in Brownsville. According to the latest data on the Department of Health’s website, only 49% of the people in the zip code where I teach (11212) are fully vaccinated, way below the city average. In my opinion, schools in communities with low vaccination rates need to take additional safety measures to keep their kids and staff safe. I didn’t see that happening.

On Thursday, I filed for a medical accommodation following the guidelines the UFT reached with arbitrators. I’ve been using accumulated sick days ever since. I will not return to my building, to my kids. I have been fully vaccinated since Feb. 13, but I have underlying medical conditions that make me vulnerable if I were to get a breakthrough infection.

The DOE denied my initial application. Did they even read it? I was denied because my medical condition didn’t warrant an exemption for refusal to be vaccinated. But I am vaxxed, for pete’s sake. I filed an appeal and am still waiting for the decision. I have little faith I will be granted the accommodation. In the meantime, my school sent out a notice of a positive case last Friday. I found out later that the positive case came from my fifth-grade classroom — just what I had feared. Today, I found out that a fourth-grade classroom has also been quarantined for 10 days because of a positive case.

I was 46 when I became a New York City Teaching Fellow. I asked to teach in Brownsville, and I have been there for 18 years. I had planned to get to 20. I was with two busloads of kids on a freezing January to celebrate Barack Obama’s inauguration. I campaigned at subway stops with my fourth-grade political action committee. I had to hit the sidewalk one morning when gunshots rang out on my way down Sutter Ave. But I have never been scared; I have never been so afraid that I made a child cry.

Friday, I should have been marching down the hallways with my students, carrying posters attached to yardsticks proclaiming solutions to climate change. Instead, I took a long walk in Prospect Park. Then I returned home and my message machine was blinking.

I pressed the button. A child’s voice. “Ms. Vail, Please come back.”

I’m sorry. I can’t.

Vail has been a teacher in Brownsville, Brooklyn, for 18 years, and at P.S. 156 for the last 13 years.

denied my religious exemption. They told me they are only accepting Jehovah’s Witnesses, not Christians!

Marisol Ventrice