Comptroller Stringer Releases Recommendations to Safely Reopen New York City Schools Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

(New York, NY) – Today, New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer released a set of recommendations to safely reopen New York City schools for Fall 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Comptroller’s report, Strong Schools For All: A Plan Forward for New York City, focused on the need for the nation’s largest school system — one in every 300 Americans is a city public school student — to come up with a reopening plan that places paramount importance on the safety and protection of everyone in the school community. Specifically, the report called for the New York City Department of Education (DOE) to follow the guidance of the latest medical and scientific knowledge and implement rigorous safety and cleaning protocols at every school in consultation with public health experts, partners in labor, and parents – before any reopening decision is made. These safety and cleaning protocols would need to be reviewed periodically to ensure they are being followed appropriately and that swift action be taken in case of violations. The report called for allowing individual school communities to appoint a health safety director, charged with reviewing and raising up to the DOE any complaints about the health environment of school buildings, and monitoring health safety protocol implementation according to evolving public health guidance. Comptroller Stringer also urged Washington provide robust, swift federal aid to support parents, students, educators and school staff in the largest educational enterprise in the country.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a huge toll on our students, parents, school staff, and education system. Since the shutdown of our schools back in March, students have had to adjust to the challenges of remote learning — while as parents we tried our best to give our kids the support they need to succeed in these unprecedented circumstances. It’s imperative that the DOE act with urgency to provide a strategic roadmap to reopen city schools,” said New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer. “As we approach the next academic year, New York City should be leading the nation in figuring out how to safely reopen our schools with a high standard of instruction that maintains academic excellence. If we aren’t smart and prepared for a robust upcoming school year, our students will suffer— especially lower-income students of color who are already facing severe challenges – and our economic recovery will be severely hampered because without school there can be no real return to work for so many of our families. We can’t let down our guard on the quality of our city’s educational system at this moment — and we can’t afford to make mistakes with our children’s futures.”

The report calls on the DOE to provide effective and transparent communication about current virus transmission rates within school communities while also guaranteeing a commitment to supportive, high quality instruction with clear guidance on instructional standards for remote learning. This approach will ensure that schools can be opened in the fall and function safely while providing the necessary education and continued pathways to academic success that the city’s students urgently need.

The Comptroller’s report called on the DOE to implement the following safety measures to reopen schools: require consistent use of masks or face coverings for students and staff; mandate physical distancing; establish consistent, small cohorts of 10 to 12 students to limit the potential spread of COVID-19; provide pooled testing, aggressive contact tracing and daily temperature scans; provide a full-time nurse on staff at every school in the city; invest in enhanced cleanings and the latest technologies; repurpose available spaces and identify outdoor and other well-ventilated spaces for learning activities; prioritize social-emotional learning by ensuring every school has a full-time social worker and guidance counsellor; and make accommodations for high-risk teachers, administrators, and other school staff.

Additionally, the Comptroller’s report outlined the following recommendations to ensure strong instruction continues uninterrupted: increase staffing in classrooms; build days that offer the most in-school class-time for the most students; sustain the capacity of the child care sector; invest in high quality remote learning; give every student a free internet-connected device; and engage and support parents and caregivers in multiple languages.

Recommendations

Comptroller Stringer outlined the following recommendations for reopening schools safely in the fall:

• Require consistent use of masks or face coverings for students and staff
  • Students in second grade and older should be required to wear a mask or face covering for their nose and mouth. In New York State, all children over the age of two are subject to the Governor’s mandate concerning covering the nose and mouth with a mask when in public and unable to maintain social distance. In a school setting, children in early elementary school – kindergarten and first grades – may be too young to wear masks properly, so face shields could be considered as an appropriate alternate face covering for this age group, as well as for children with medical or other needs that would make wearing a face mask while in the classroom challenging. All adults in the building should also be required to wear masks.
• Mandate physical distancing
  • To maintain proper distance between students requires many schools, particularly overcrowded ones, to stagger schedules and further limit in-classroom instruction for the coming year.
• Establish consistent, small cohorts of students to limit the potential spread of COVID-19
  • When students are grouped in small, consistent cohorts each day, the number of students potentially exposed to someone infected with COVID-19 is lessened. These groups of students remain together throughout the day in the same classroom or other designated area of the building as much as feasible, with teachers, rather than the students, changing locations. The size of cohorts would likely be dependent on the individual capacities in each school building to maintain adequate physical distancing, although given the space constraints of most New York City classrooms it is expected that smaller cohorts of 10-12 students will be the “new normal” for city classrooms.
• Provide pooled testing, aggressive contact tracing and daily temperature scans
  • Universal testing for all NYC students and school staff will be necessary before the start of school.
  • To continue to test the student body at regular intervals throughout the school year, the DOE could employ pooled testing.
  • The DOE must establish a transparent protocol for contact tracing within school communities to quickly identify and contain any outbreaks.
  • Current public health guidance recommends temperature scanning or symptom checking prior to entering any school building
• Provide a full-time nurse on staff at every school in the city
  • The global pandemic revealed the depth of public health need in city schools: as many as 70,000 students attend a school that lacks a school nurse. At a time of acute concern over the health of every child, this is not acceptable, and the DOE must move aggressively to ensure that every school building has a full-time nurse on staff.
• Invest in enhanced cleanings and the latest technologies
  • The CDC has already advised that students remain six feet apart while in school, which will be a serious challenge in many of the city’s most crowded schools. The City should have transparent and stepped-up cleaning protocols for every school building.
• Repurpose available spaces and identify outdoor spaces for learning activities
  • As the City conducts a thorough inventory of classroom, cafeteria and gymnasium space in every school building, there should also be consideration given to repurposing other available spaces outside of school facilities to support classroom needs, including vacated office buildings and underused shared work spaces.
• Prioritize social-emotional learning and ensure every school has a full-time social worker and guidance counsellor
  • Many students whose lives and families have been impacted by COVID-19 have experienced serious emotional trauma, particularly those who had significant mental health needs prior to the pandemic disruption.
  • When schools reopen, it will be critical to ensure that robust mental health services are in place across all schools, and that there is a rich continuum of supports available specifically for students with significant mental health needs.
  • Such supports should be distinct from mental health consultations or trainings for school staff; rather, schools need access to boots-on-the ground mental health professionals who can provide direct, integrated, trauma-sensitive support to students experiencing emotional or behavioral crises. Specifically, at a minimum every school must have a full-time social worker and guidance counselor on staff.
• Make accommodations for high-risk teachers, administrators, and other school staff
  • Given the proper tools and training, teaching staff working remotely could be assigned to facilitate remote instruction for groups of students or help provide curricular support for families and caregivers. They also could provide remote one-on-one tutoring for students who need additional academic support.
  • Given the cramped office spaces within most schools, many administrative staffers will need their workspaces configured to ensure proper social distancing can be accomplished. Additionally, the DOE should announce certain HR provisions such as exemptions from sick day limits as well as state and local worker safety regulations.

Additionally, Comptroller Stringer outlined the following recommendations for maintaining high-quality instruction inclusive of both in-person and remote learning in the upcoming school year:

• Increase staffing in classrooms
  • While the city’s fiscal condition remains precarious, it is inescapable that if school is going to happen this fall, the DOE will need to increase staffing in all schools to maintain social distancing, provide targeted supports and help facilitate remote instruction.
  • Establish a large-scale hiring pipeline through a CUNY professional training program for classroom paraprofessionals.
  • Work with existing teacher training programs to expand in-classroom experience for teacher candidates.
  • Leverage educational non-profit partners to provide in-classroom supports.
  • Identify and reassign personnel working in Tweed/Central and field offices to provide in-classroom support.
• Build days that offer the most in-school class-time for the most students
  • Given the varied experience – and outcomes – of remote learning in New York City, the DOE would be wiser to establish schedules that will provide the most in-person instruction to the most students.
• Sustain the capacity of the child care sector
  • Engage providers in exploring new strategies and settings to safely increase child care access, while protecting the child care workforce and connecting parents to available slots.
  • Allow child care centers that were closed in April to reopen if they can demonstrate compliance with public health guidance.
  • Ensure public health support and technical assistance is consistently and readily available, virtually at a minimum, to all child care programs, including family child care, to troubleshoot problems and address any concerns in the coming weeks and months.
  • Use Federal CARES Act and other child care block grant funds to support both center-based and family child care providers with fixed costs as well as new expenses associated with reopening and building capacity safely, respectively.
  • Work with the State to develop a plan to expand income eligibility for child care assistance.
  • Consider creative strategies for safely transitioning capacity to other settings, which could entail repurposing vacant space in City-owned buildings and expediting the enrollment and training of informal care providers, who care for up to two non-relative children.
  • Utilize educational- and youth non-profits as a resource in helping to buttress traditional childcare providers.
  • Convert unused office spaces for classroom space.
  • Engage educational partners in providing off-hour care, homework help, or enrichment programming in available spaces to help families manage staggered school schedules.
• Invest in high quality remote learning
  • To ensure that there is a baseline for instruction and outreach, the DOE should provide more support to educators to improve remote learning through supervision and observation, and establish clear best practices about how to make robust instruction available even when teachers and children are not together in the classroom.
  • Additional instructional staff can support remote learning particularly in the event of future, extended school closures or a staggered attendance schedule.
• Give every student who needs one a free internet-connected device
  • If there is one takeaway from the City’s experience with remote learning, it is that a lack of technology greatly reduces children’s ability to connect with their school community and access resources they need to progress.
  • To sustain students’ access to technology, the City should issue every student who needs one a device when they enroll in public school.
  • In addition to device distribution, students and their families must have reliable broadband internet access, especially if remote learning continues in some degree in the years ahead.
• Engage and support parents and caregivers in multiple languages
  • Parents are an indispensable partner in helping their children learn, and many parents have become more active in their children’s education during this time of school closures.
  • To better support parents and families, the DOE should formalize a process for parent feedback at the school and district levels with more opportunities for parents to learn about expectations for remote learning and understand the curriculum and available resources.

Comptroller Stringer’s recommendations build on a letter he sent to Mayor de Blasio and DOE Chancellor Carranza in June calling for concrete answers on the successes and failures of remote learning, the future of remote instruction, and a comprehensive reopening plan for schools ahead of the start of the next school year.

To read Comptroller Stringer’s report, Strong Schools For All: A Plan Forward for New York City, click here.

To read Comptroller Stringer’s letter to the City on remote learning and a detailed roadmap to reopen schools, click here.

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