SCHOOLS ARE ‘PETRI DISHES’
Teachers fume: Carranza has put us at risk!
One after another, sick Brooklyn Technical HS teachers called union chapter leader Nate Bonheimer last week to tell him they had tested positive for COVID-19.
By Friday, five had shared the grim news. But after being notified about each one, the city Department of Education still ordered the 6,000-student school’s 350 staffers to show up for work last week, saying the building had been cleaned.
“The DOE did not close the school for any of the cases,” said Bonheimer, who worries that inaction exposed others to the virus.
The city failed to follow a March 9 directive by the state Education Department that “requires an initial 24hour closure, in order to begin an investigation to determine the contacts that the individual may have had within the school environment.”
DOE did not attempt to identify close contacts, Bonheimer said.
“They did not alert the people who needed to know the most to protect themselves, their families and everyone else they came into contact with,” he said.
One infected teacher was so torn by the secrecy that he took it upon himself to personally let all his students know of his condition.
Around the city, teachers and administrators are outraged that Mayor de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza resisted a drumbeat to close public schools in the name of safety.
Some renamed the coronavirus the “Carranzavirus.”
“You say equity and excellence, but every other school district closed before you did. You had these kids like petri dishes spreading this to their families,” an administrator fumed.
Other DOE employees believe de Blasio and Carranza kept a lid on the cases popping up, putting kids and families at risk.
“The blood is on their hands,” one said.
DOE staffers think the two leaders tried to cover up the cases because they wanted to keep the 1.1 millionstudent system running despite increasing pressure to shut down. Finally, with Gov. Cuomo about to do it, the mayor relented and closed the schools for students on this past Monday. They will remain shut until at least April 20.
An expert agreed the failure to notify health officials was dangerous.
“The chancellor was not properly following state policy,” said Aaron Carroll, a health-sciences researcher and pediatrician at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.
The information freeze started March 10, when Carranza, in an e-mail obtained by The Post, told administrators not to alert city health officials about COVID-19 cases among students or staff.
“At the moment, there is no reason for any school to call [the Health Department] to report potential or confirmed cases,” Carranza wrote, repeating the statement later in the same e-mail.
Carranza said that the DOH would get test results from labs, and that school personnel should help “by keeping their phones clear.”
Health Department spokesman Patrick Gallihue said Friday that the agency “was in agreement with DOE on the directive.”
At several campuses and DOE offices citywide, multiple staffers have tested positive, but affected buildings remained open as workers, students and parents were kept in the dark, whistleblowers said.
At the Grand Street campus in Williamsburg, which houses three high schools, a staffer returned from a trip to China over the February break. Despite reports of the outbreak, he did not self-quarantine, but returned to teach kids in all three schools Feb. 26 through Feb. 29, a staffer said. The teacher then became sick and stopped working. The school was not closed, and employees were not notified, insiders said.
At least four other staffers have since become sick, they said.
On Thursday — after Grand Street teachers worked three days in a row in the building — the principals sent a joint letter saying that “members of our school community” had self-reported positive COVID-19 tests. It did not say how many members or give other details.
The DOE would not comment on Grand Street or the other cases.
At the Jamaica HS campus, which houses three schools, Carlos Borrero, principal of the HS for Community Leadership, blasted a robocall to parents on the Sunday before schools closed, reporting the school had “one confirmed” case and another “preliminary positive” case identified over the prior two days — while students attended. One was a teacher, Borrero said.
Asked about the call last week, the DOE would not give details.
At the Grace Dodge HS campus in The Bronx, a teacher self-reported a positive COVID-19 test on March 12, staffers said. The DOE did not close the school the next day, when kids still attended. Teachers received a form letter from Carranza confirming a staffer had tested positive, saying the building was “disinfected.”
At The Bronx’s Alfred E. Smith campus, teachers reported for three days of training on remote-teaching this past week.
“Ten minutes before the end of the last day, the union representative walked through the hall and said, ‘You’re free to leave,’ ” a teacher recalled. She asked why — and as custodians arrived in hazmat suits, the union rep replied, “There’s coronavirus in the building.”