TEACHERS 'TESTY' OVER REOPENING
COVID exam for all – or we strike
The city’s powerful teachers union threatened Wednesday to walk out unless every student and staffer in the Big Apple’s sprawling public-school system is tested for the coronavirus before restarting in-classroom learning — a near-impossible task.
United Federation of Teachers chief Michael Mulgrew issued the ultimatum as he laid out a series of preconditions that City Hall must meet for teachers to return to classrooms — demands that he acknowledged could delay Mayor de Blasio’s planned Sept. 10 reopening by a month.
“The minute we feel the mayor is trying to force people into an unsafe school, we go,” Mulgrew said, throwing down the gauntlet.
Asked to clarify, Mulgrew said a walkout and a sickout were among options on the table.
“And it all leads to the same place under the law: the union receiving all sorts of penalties, I go to jail, all of that. And that’s all fine, we’ll do it if we have to,” he added.
The labor chieftain argued that reopening classrooms without requiring the testing of every student and staffer in public schools would be one of “the biggest debacles in the history of the city” and would allow the virus to potentially run rampant again.
“Every single person — both adult and child — that is to enter an NYC school must have evidence that they do not have the COVID virus,” Mulgrew told reporters at a press conference (inset).
“New York City must have a rigorous and intensive testing system in place,” he added. “What happened in March cannot happen again.”
At the end of the two-hour-plus press conference, Mulgrew again reiterated his threat of going nuclear in the dispute with City Hall.
“If all the schools open on Sept. 10, and everything that we just laid out is not in place, the union is prepared to go to court and/or go on strike, if we need to,” he said. It’s an enormous ask. Over the last week, an average of just 22,000 people in the five boroughs were tested daily for COVID-19.
There are more than 1 million children who attend public schools in New York City alone — and an estimated 700,000 are expected to resume in-person learning next month. The Department of Education employs more than 148,000 staff, many of whom would need to be checked, too.
The DOE quickly fired back. “The UFT is fearmongering,” wrote the school system’s top spokeswoman, Miranda Barbot. “We have the most comprehensive and rigorous plan in the country. “When we see a full plan that is rooted in data and science, we’ll review it — until then, it seems like they just don’t want to say the quiet part out loud: they don’t want to open schools at all for students and families.” But de Blasio couldn’t let the looming showdown with Mulgrew get in the way of his war with the Big Apple’s daily newspapers — as City Hall staffers barred reporters from The Post, the Daily News and The Times from attending a mayoral press conference about schools after Mulgrew issued his ultimatum.
Newly minted de Blasio press secretary Bill Neidhardt repeatedly refused requests from The Post for access to the event and said its reporters would not be allowed to ask questions before or afterward due to social-distancing safety guidelines — rules selectively applied to newspaper reporters.
“Any union leader who talks about doing something illegal should really think twice about what he’s saying,” de Blasio said at the event. “We’ve been working in good faith with the unions for months. We’re going to keep working with them regardless of what they say because we care about kids and parents more than these games.”
He continued on to call Mulgrew’s threat a “stunt.”