TERRIFIED TEACHERS THREATEN WALKOUT
• Union boss: Test every student or risk strike • Team Blaz: It’ll be fine, don’t buy scare tactics
Mayor de Blasio and the city’s powerful teachers union are squaring up — a fight card that could determine when and how public schools reopen.
The United Federation of Teachers upped the reopening ante Wednesday, threatening to strike if city officials don’t tick off a list of safety checks that includes testing every teacher and student before schools open.
“This city went through hell and back, and we are not going to hell again because of shortsighted political agendas,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who was joined by doctors and elected officials at a news conference.
The union is also demanding verification that every school has adequate ventilation and personal protective equipment.
Mulgrew said if any of the conditions aren’t met at a school, it shouldn’t open Sept. 10 — the likely start date for in-person classes — and conceded it would likely delay reopening until late September or October, an idea the city principals union floated last week.
Union honchos said they’ll plead their case in court. State law bars publicsector unions from striking, but Mulgrew said the UFT is willing to roll the dice.
“If the court deems we’re breaking the Taylor Law so be it,” said Mulgrew.
“Our position is clear – the school should remain in remote-only operation” if the safety conditions aren’t met. “No one should enter the building and put themselves and their family at risk,” he added.
City officials quickly fired back, calling the demands “fearmongering.”
“We spend hours a day, literally, talking to the UFT about policies and procedures and have delivered on a robust and practical testing protocol, a nurse in every building, and a 30-day supply of [personal protective equipment] for every school,” said city Education Department spokeswoman Miranda Barbot.
“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,” Barbot added.
City officials have promis
ed that at reopening, every school will have adequate protective gear and be stocked for at least 30 days, and that rooms or buildings without effective ventilation won’t be used.
The city plan also recommends coronavirus testing for every teacher before school starts, but doesn’t require it — and doesn’t lay out any testing guidelines for students.
During a tour of a Brooklyn elementary school Wednesday afternoon, de Blasio groused that the UFT “moved the goalposts” with its testing demands.
“We have been in meeting after meeting with them. They have never talked about mandatory testing before. And it’s not like this is a new topic,” Hizzoner said.
He laced into union officials’ strike threat, calling the announcement a “stunt,” and noting it came on the same day that the city recorded its lowest COVID-19 positive test rate since it began tracking that data in March.
Union officials now counter that kids and staff shouldn’t get through the front door without proof they’re virus-free.
Mulgrew suggested each student and staffer first get a COVID-19 antibody test, which, if positive, would serve as permission to attend in-person school for two months. If it’s negative, each adult and child should get a COVID-19 virus test within 10 days of the start of school, union officials say.
It would be a huge undertaking to test the 1.1 million public school students and the more than 100,000 Education Department staffers; the city tests an average of 21,000 people a day.
Even after an initial round of testing, union officials say, a random sampling of staff and students from each school should be tested monthly to stay ahead of COVID-19 clusters.
City officials have rolled out a contact tracing procedure that involves closing buildings for two weeks if two or more cases in different classes crop up.
The union three-page checklist include ventilation tests — for example, of working exhaust fans in any school that relies on air flowing in through open windows and out through exhaust ducts. A Daily News analysis found 650 school buildings had at least one deficiency in their exhaust fans last year. There are about 1,500 schools in the city system.
The checklist also calls for a “Building Response Team” for each school building that includes nurses, custodian engineers and school safety agents.
City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza insisted Wednesday “the majority if not all of those things are things we’ve already worked through, have guidelines, are developing guidelines.”
Scores of city principals have sharply criticized the slow pace of Education Department guidance on urgent reopening questions — including how to staff a hybrid model with large numbers of teachers out of the building because of medical accommodations.
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) and city Comptroller Scott Stringer, both presumed mayoral hopefuls , are supporting the union demands.
The city health care workers union, 1199 SEIU, also endorsed the UFT plan.
“While New York City is no longer the epicenter of the virus, we know that we are far from post-COVID,” said 1199 President George Gresham. “Our priority must be to protect our children, while also ensuring that they receive the instruction they need to continue to develop academically.”