LOTS OF ROACHES — NO PPE
‘Disgusting’ and dangerous conditions at schools for kids with special needs rile teachers
A long-awaited return to school for some teachers was anything but a welcome sight.
Educators at a building for children with severe disabilities walked into dirty conditions, missing protective gear and incomplete ventilation checks, teachers and union officials said Tuesday.
“It was disgusting,” said Mark John, a teacher and union chapter leader at K368C, a District 75 program for kids with intensive special needs.
“There were bugs, no PPE, the rooms weren’t clean, just a lack of priority in terms of getting the building up and running for students and staff to be in — to the point where we had to come out of the building.”
The building never got a required ventilation inspection, according to union officials, and will be temporarily shut down.
Education officials “claimed yesterday that they checked every school,” said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew. “Well, this is one of their school sites. This wasn’t checked.”
Education officials said they delivered personal protective equipment when they learned of the shortage, and are working with officials from the statestate, which owns the building, to coordinate a ventilation inspection.
“We are taking immediate action to address any health and safety concerns, including in state-run facilities where we provide education,” said agency spokesman Nathaniel Styer.
In the meantime, teachers decided they couldn’t stomach working in the building, which was littered with dead cockroaches and had no hand soap in the bathrooms.
“We knew we had to come out of the building, because it wasn’t safe,” said John.
Mulgrew chided education executives for not showing enough urgency in delivering PPE to nervous staff.
“Our communications with the Department of Education and the leadership of District 75, the deputy chancellor reported to our folks at the UFT that it was not her job to make sure that the safety supplies were at the building,” he said. “One of the things that we’re going through right now as a school system in a pandemic is the bureaucratic response of ‘not my job’ is unacceptable, and if you say it, you should leave your job.”
The Brooklyn program wasn’t the only District 75 school to report safety concerns Tuesday. Nineteen specialized programs for kids with disabilities called a union hotline to report gaps in their buildings’ preparations, union officials said.
Tameka Solomon, a Bronx teacher and chapter leader at P352X, which serves kids from preschool to ninth
grade with intensive special needs, said teachers still lack the protective gear they need to conduct their work with kids — which often includes close physical contact like hand-holding and changing
diapers. d
“What their needs are, are very different … there’s no such thing as social distancin ng in a District 75 school,” said Solomon. Educators in the Bronx program asked for face shields, gowns, and gloves to help manage the additional risk, but Solomon said none of those supplies were w on hand.
An education spokesman said that school did receive the necessary protective equipment. e
Solomon said until staff get ironclad assurances they’ll get their needed gear, some are pledging to stay home.
“We have come to the conclusion that the buildings are not safe and ready for
entry by the staff and certainly not for the students in the next week and a half,” she wrote.
Staffers at the specialized Bronx schools are also awaiting more specific guidance about how to enter and exit their buildings and handle teaching activities that require upclose physical contact, Solomon said.
She said the first-day woes reflect a broader lack of attention to District 75 programs in the city’s reopening efforts.
“This whole planning process that the city has done has not talked about District 75,” she said. “When we ask questions, we don’t get answers.”