Teach insisted on in-person
Ed. official Marinacci reached neediest kids during pandemic
They didn’t get the pandemic love that doctors and nurses received, the accolades of a grateful city, the serenades at 7 p.m. every night.
But ask Nick Marinacci, and he’ll tell you that teachers were every bit as essential to New York as the health care workers who suited up in their scrubs every day and cared for coronavirus patients around the clock.
Few educators were as dedicated as Marinacci, a deputy school superintendent who volunteered at the height of the COVID-19 crisis to supervise a regional enrichment center in the South Bronx so students could attend in-person classes even as other children were learning remotely.
For his efforts, Marinacci has been nominated for a Daily News Hometown Heroes award in the education category.
“Their parents had to go to work,” Marinacci said. “These children couldn’t stay home like everybody else.”
And neither could Marinacci. He jokes that his wife wouldn’t have been able to tolerate him being home every day with three kids in a two-bedroom apartment, but it was his educational mission that drove him to the classroom during the worst days of the pandemic.
That, and the need to provide support for people on the front lines — like his brother, who is a doctor.
“I just needed to be a part of it,” Marinacci said.
For nearly two decades, Marinacci has been a leader within District 79, New York City’s Alternative Schools District, which covers childhood education, adult education and students in detention centers.
Among the students who crossed Marinacci’s path were the juveniles accused of murdering Barnard College student Tessa Majors, 18, who was stabbed to death while walking through Manhattan’s Morningside Park in December 2019, just months before the coronavirus hit New York City.
For Marinacci, teaching troubled students is part of the job.
“They were the kids that nobody wants,” he said. “They’re hard to love.
“But they have a right and a need for education, and they’re going to come out. It’s their right and our responsibility. A lot of the time they’re great students and they need a chance. That’s why they’re there. We celebrate their success as much as we celebrate anyone else.”
As with most students, remote learning was not working well for them. So Marinacci set up several centers where incarcerated students could receive in-person instruction.
“I hope we never go back to full remote learning,” Marinacci said. “Ever.”
But Marinacci knows to never say never, especially with the city in the grips of the pandemic. And if New York shuts down again like it did once before, he said he’s ready to step out yet again and do his part.
“I think the pandemic publicly hurt teachers,” he said. “It looked like we weren’t doing anything.
“Education wasn’t treated as essential. No one called them essential workers. We really are essential workers. A lot of us were out there doing stuff. We were bringing computers to kids’ houses,” he added.
Some parents learned to sympathize after being stuck at home with their kids all day, he said.
“The key to be a teacher is whatever the kid needs, you have to be there at that moment,” Marinacci said.
“Teaching is a hard job. What happens in school is just way beyond child care.
“Schools have to be as essential as hospitals.”