Council bid for summer schooling
A bipartisan band of City Council members are demanding Mayor de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter create an optional summer-school program for New York City kids whose academic lives have been upended by pandemic-related school closures.
“We are concerned that the money the [Department of Education] receives from the three subsequent federal stimulus bills will be spent frivolously and nonsensically, rather than helping students return to a more optimal pace of learning,” reads a March 11 letter signed by Republicans Joe Borelli, Eric Ulrich and Steven Matteo, as well as Democrats Robert Holden, Inez Barron, Chaim Deutsch and Alicka Ampry-Samuel. “Total federal stimulus from 2021 and 2022 for K-12 adds up to $193 billion. Let’s not waste our share.”
The proposal calls for the DOE to institute a one-to-two-month optional half-day summer program to make up for shortfalls, particularly with math and reading.
Though it’s not specified in the text, Borelli said he wants live, in-school learning “with a human teacher.”
New York state is on track to receive $100 billion from the federal government as part of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package.
“If it’s poorly spent, what good is all the money in the world?” Borelli, of Staten Island, told The Post. “The stimulus is worthless if it doesn’t go directly towards making up the year of lost reading and math instruction for students.”
Borelli said the cost would depend on how many students signed up for the program. There are currently 960,000 kids enrolled in city public schools. In October, the DOE reported that 52 percent of students were enrolled in full-time remote learning while 48 percent were in some form of “blended” learning.
High schools are reopening March 22.
The idea of summer school is gaining momentum.
“Canceling summer vacation may not be a popular idea, but it is a national imperative during a historic crisis,” former Mayor Mike Bloomberg wrote in an editorial Wednesday.
Even Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said just weeks ago that summer school is “a real opportunity for students to rebuild.”