The Daily - A Messy Return to School in New York

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

Iolani Grullon teaches dual-language kindergarten in Washington Heights in New York City, where she has worked for the last 15 years.She, like many colleagues, is leery about a return to in-person instruction amid reports of positive coronavirus cases in other schools. “I go through waves of anxiety and to being hopeful that it works out to just being worried,” she told our editor Lisa Chow.On top of mixed messaging from the city about the form teaching could take, her anxiety is compounded by a concern that she might bring the coronavirus home to her daughter, whose immune system is weaker as a result of an organ transplant.Today, we look at how one teacher’s concerns in the lead up to the first day back illustrates issues around New York City’s reopening of public schools. Guest: Lisa Chow, an audio editor for The New York Times, speaks to a kindergarten teacher in New York City. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: New York City was scheduled to reopen public schools on Monday. Mayor Bill de Blasio this week delayed the start of in-person instruction.Nearly 40 percent of parents have opted to have their children learn fully remotely through at least the first few months of the school year. That number reflects the deep divide among the city’s families about how to approach in-person learning.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. We're full steam ahead for September. The goal, of course, to have the maximum number of kids in our schools as we begin schools. Amid a raging national debate over how to safely reopen schools, the nation's largest public school system, New York City, has pledged to let every student return to the classroom, citing months of low infection rates. Nothing replaces the in-person experience.

There are some out there who suggest that remote education should be our future, and I want to say, no, it can't be. But from the start, it's been a messy process. Families are deeply divided about whether to send their children to school for two to three days a week, what the city is calling blended learning, or to opt for fully remote learning. I don't see enough information for me to make a decision yet.

So what's the schedule? I mean, how is it going to work with lunch? I mean, all those thoughts, it's not clear. While teachers fear that they aren't fully prepared for either option. I'm pissed off. You would think that the challenge that we are facing, the city would have brought its A game, and they didn't. They just didn't. Today, what the run-up to the first day of school has looked like through the eyes of a single teacher, Iolani Grillon, who spoke to The Daily's Lisa Chow. It's Friday, September 18th.

Just come out of the 181st subway station, and I am headed to meet a teacher. Is that her? Hi. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. My name's Lisa. Hi, Lisa. How are you? I'm Yolani. I'm doing well. Thank you. Yeah, I like your mask. Thank you. Okay, so let me, so why don't you just tell me, like, where we are right now? So we're in front of PS48 on 186th Street and Broadway in Washington Heights. And this is where I teach kindergarten dual language. And how long have you been working here? This is my 15th year. Wow.

At this school? Mm-hmm. This is Miss Frances. I'm so camera shy. No, no, no cameras, just audio. Oh, even better, wonderful. This is my good friend and colleague. Introduce yourself. Hi, I'm so camera shy. No, no, no cameras, just audio. Oh, even better, wonderful. This is my good friend and colleague. Hi, I'm Ms. Francis. I'm Iolani's good friend and colleague.

Are you walking with me? Yes, I'm gonna walk with you. All right, cool. Okay, see you tonight. I'll call you tonight, Ms. Francis. Okay, okay. Okay, so actually, let's just first describe what we're doing here.

So I have a mask on. You have a mask on. We're walking to your home. And have you been doing this walk every day during training? I haven't done it every single day, but mostly, yeah. I feel a little antsy getting on the bus. I mean, it makes me anxious to get in, to be in the building as well, you know, and every day we hear, you know, oh, another school

has positive cases. Oh, another school has, I mean, I don't even know what number we're up to at this point. I think it's like 55 teachers and, you know, they're expecting that and they've said they're expecting it. So what is, like, the conversation among teachers? I mean, what has that been like? Like, what are people feeling? Anxious. There isn't a lot of direction. The difficult part, what we were talking about today, some of my colleagues and I,

you know, spending the entire day in a mask is really hard. I can't even imagine like teaching kindergarten, you know, through a mask. I have to do letters and letter sounds in two languages. I'm a dual language teacher, so I teach in English and in Spanish. How does the mask complicate things? Well, because they can't see my mouth. I think I'm gonna get one of those with the clear plastic where the lips are. Maybe I'll invest in some of those.

What do you think you would need to be, like what do you think the schools would need to be ready? We need to go remote for a little bit you know I'm listening to doctors and scientists I know that you know that's like controversial these days but what I've been reading experts are saying that we need to brace ourselves for this fall and winter. So why not? Like, we still have time to come up with meaningful, remote lessons, learning. We can meet about it.

We can create things together. We've been so busy cleaning classrooms and setting them up like it's a regular school year. It feels like the higher-ups are in denial. What do you mean? Well, we've been putting together our classrooms as if it were a regular year. Meanwhile, we've also been told, be prepared to go remote at any given moment. How can I prepare to go remote at any given moment if I'm busy setting up a room? I don't even know. I'm not even sure what's going to be allowed. I heard a rumor. I read it somewhere. I don't know how true it is that, you know, we're not going to be giving students paper nor collecting paper from them.

So what am I doing? Am I teaching them on an iPad? I don't know. I don't know that yet. So what have your feelings been over the course of the past week and kind of coming into this week? Um, I go through waves of like anxiety and to being hopeful that it works out to just being worried am I going to be prepared I need to do I need to know what I'm doing when I'm teaching in person like is there somebody that's going to be teaching those kids when they're home the kids that I that are blended but when they're home am I going to be responsible for that? How am I going to pull that off? Right. It's like three different jobs. Yes.

Yes, it is. It's the full remote, the in-person, and then the blended. And then the blended remote. Yes. And I'm just, I think about that, like, my eyes will pop open at 3.30 in the morning, and that's it for me. I'm awake. You know? And then my own, of course, personal situation

where I can't bring this to my daughter, and I could be asymptomatic and bring it home. And that is what weighs on me the most, of course. Oh, my goodness. Oh my goodness. Okay, so we just arrived in your apartment building? Yep, this is my building. Hey, please come in. I'm just going to wash my hands, Lisa. Can you just walk me through your routine?

So I'm washing my hands. Usually when I get here, I go immediately to take a shower. But I'm not going to make you wait. So since I'm not going to do that today, I make sure to wash my hands. As a matter of fact, I usually take the shoes off and leave them by the door. Because my routine is to just go straight into the bathroom. And shower and spray some Lysol in there. This is Layla.

Hi, Layla. Layla, that's Lisa. Hi, I'm Lisa. Yeah. Recording. I want you guys to say hi. It's just audio. It's no video.

It's not your face. Hi, I'm Lisa. You're talking to two 13-year-olds, Lisa. Hi. What's your name? I'm Chloe. And what's your name? Layla.

Okay. Hi, Layla. And let's go to, let's go sit in the living room. Cause it's easier. We're gonna sit here, Pop, because I can socially distance with Lisa from here. So can I sit on one end of the couch? Lisa, come in.

Okay. Lisa, come in Okay So tell me about your kids So My kids are great They're very independent Liam is an amazing Amazing big brother

He, you know He's very attentive With his sisters He will be in charge Of remote learning because he's learning remotely. So they'll be home together, the three of them. The girls are obviously not going to go into the buildings. Chloe, being immunocompromised, it's not advised that she go in the building. So they're going to be learning remotely.

that she go in the building. So they're going to be learning remotely. And so on the walk, you were talking to me about how this is weighing on you, obviously. And we didn't get into it much, but can you talk to me a little bit about that? Like, in terms of just your work and thinking about your family, like, what keeps you up at night? Possibly infecting my daughter. Absolutely. That's number one. She was born with a congenital heart defect. She had her heart transplant at about 15 months old. Even though she has a heart transplant, she's a healthy girl. But you know, there have been a

lot of bumps in the road as well there have been times that she's you know we've done Christmas in the hospital for different things or whatever um whenever she does have a fever you know I have to bring her to the emergency room she can't just like sit out a fever at home she can't do that so whenever she does why is that? Because you don't know what it could be from. It could be her heart. I mean, rejection could sometimes show in a fever. So yeah, but I, you know, but taking care of her and her heart is a full-time job as well. It's a full-time job as well. So this is something that you live with day in and day out.

Yes. I'm very stressed out by it because I know for a fact that Chloe wouldn't do well with COVID. She just wouldn't. I don't even like to really think about what could happen, but I know what could happen. Let's go back to the end of the school year. So back in June, when school wrapped up, what was the message coming from your principal, from the mayor? Were city leaders basically saying,

we're going to be opening in person or? There was no message. There was no message. Nothing was said until about maybe sometime in late July, the mayor announced we will be reopening. Do you remember what your reaction was? Yeah, complete disbelief. I could not believe that they were going to open this way with no real like concrete plan. Just pick a model. Let us know what the model is and make it work. And principals then decided which of the models their school would be using as far as blended and remote.

Families were told you can your children can be remote only, but schools couldn't go remote only. But teachers couldn't. Right. When the mayor announced that schools would be reopening and have a blend of remote, in-person, and you were in complete shock. After that, then what happened?

And you have this situation at home with your daughter. Were you reaching out to the DOE? I filled out an application for remote accommodations immediately. They came out, I believe they came out July 15th, a few days after the announcement was made. So teachers could apply for remote accommodations based on their own health. I applied anyway, and I submitted a letter from my daughter's transplant team, immediately denied because I'm not the one at risk. But it just doesn't make sense. When you look at the CDC list of possible health issues that you have in order to receive remote accommodations, At the very top, one of the top three things is immunocompromised

because of a solid organ transplantation. It literally says it. Okay, so I'm not the one with the solid organ transplantation, but my daughter is, and we're dealing with a highly infectious virus. It just doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. My daughter's cardiologist, one of her cardiologists actually asked me the last time we spoke, are you going to stay home? And I was like, no. They were like, what? Are you really? Do you need a letter? What do you need? And I was like, no, you guys have given me what I would need, but it's not enough. So it was just denied. It was flat out denied.

It was just flat out denied. And I've had advocates that have pushed for me from the city. And the city has told, there's a person that has been pushing for me. I taught her daughter. Coincidentally, she happens to work for a New York senator. It's coincidence, right? And she said to me that when she's asked about it or pushed for it, what the city has said to her, the DOE has said to her, is that teacher sure she doesn't have one of these listed conditions it's like of course i'm sure if i who

wouldn't be sure of their own health are you trying to get me to come up with a condition like what what are you doing why would they ask are you sure that's been twice yes i, I'm sure. You know, and I'm not going to lie. I do not smoke. And thankfully, I am healthy. My daughter's condition should be enough. So you think that they're trying to push you into saying that you have one of these conditions so you can get exempt, but not tell the truth, which is that you don't have these conditions, but your daughter does? Yeah. What are you supposed to make of that? does. Yeah. What are you supposed to make of that? Well, it sounds like they might want to help you, but also, you know, they're trying to follow the rules.

It's just not the way things are supposed to be done. We'll be right back. So you're asking for an exemption, but I'm just wondering, do you feel like that teachers, if they didn't have high-risk people living at home with them, and they didn't have these conditions listed on the CDC, you know, website, do you think that they should be teaching in person? No, they should not be in-person teaching. It can be done remotely, and it can be done well remotely. All we needed was some time to get it done and some real training on it. And maybe the city buy a platform for it that everybody can use or have a choice of platforms.

There are so many resources out there and the city chose not to. Do you know your schedule next week yet? No, I don't. Not yet. So there could be days where, I mean, are all five days, are you going to have some sort of in-person interactions or are there going to be some? Oh, yes. Next week, as in the week of the 21st. Yeah, they're coming. The kids are coming. I'm getting group A on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then group B Thursday, Friday and the following Monday. And then group A again, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. And then group A like it's what job can anybody have where they say, hey, I need two days out of the week off.

Some weeks, three days. What days? I don't know. It's going to constantly rotate. What job is going to do that for people? How are people going to go back to work? How fraught does this moment feel for you? Like, in terms of just conversations with your non-teacher

friends, like conversations with, with friends who are parents who are really struggling at home with kids because their kids are, are learning remotely. Like it does, does it feel sometimes like there's just a constant running tension between sometimes between parents and teachers. Yes. Yes, there is. You know, especially under these circumstances. There are people out there and parents out there that think that, oh, teachers are putting up a fight because they don't want to go back to work. up a fight because they don't want to go back to work. These parents, I think some of them are under the assumption that we were home doing nothing in the spring when that is not the case. We were home behind the computer and some of us were very anxious about just our computer skills and feeling like, oh my

God, am I doing enough? Am I doing enough? Am I doing enough? That was the running question in my mind all day, every day during the spring. Am I assigning enough? I don't want it to be too much. It is a pandemic, but I don't want it to be too little where it seems like I'm not doing my job. It's just crazy. And yeah, there have been parents that have made some comments like, you know, like we just don't want to go to work. That's not the case. Remote was not easy.

So it's not a walk in the park to go remote either. It's just about safety at this point. This is like a cluster. You know what I mean? Gosh, it's so disorganized. But here we are running back to school six months in. And I feel like, you know, if I were the mayor and I opened up New York City schools, the largest school district in the nation, that would look pretty cool on my resume, on my political resume. Do you think this is like a political move for him? Partly, yep. I do. Partly, yep.

I do. In terms of the question of, like, kids falling behind, you know, like, that is a concern that Mayor de Blasio has talked about, kids falling behind. You know, we have, you know, the number of kids in, especially in New York City, the number of kids that are poor, the number of kids that are with special needs, and this idea of being out of school without in-person instruction since March. But, you know, what do you think of that? Well, I think that those are real concerns,

Well, I think that those are real concerns, especially around the area of the students with special needs. OK, but we are in a global pandemic. So when we think about kids falling behind, yeah, it is a real concern. And I get it because I'm a mom, too. But I also think about it as a teacher, like falling behind what? They're home, safe, healthy, and alive. If your kid's alive and healthy, we can work on it. How are teachers communicating with each other during this time? Well, those of us that know each other personally, you know, we call, we Zoom,

we have group chats going. We have a page on Facebook for teachers only where you can post anonymously or you can comment on somebody's post. And this is how we find out about a lot of the other conditions in other buildings aside from our own. Do you want to read some of the comments that you're reading? Yeah, like somebody wrote today, you know, day five in the building and no temperature checks. What are we waiting for? Anybody else's protective plexiglass not clear? Can't see out of it.

Somebody wrote, I still don't know what I'm teaching. I have spent almost 100% of my time getting devices ready for and out to families. Teaching a new grade. I'm so overwhelmed and so confused. That's another one. And then there's also this going on. What's this? This is, people are also posting

like about the people that we lost in the union, you know, and posting up pictures and just saying, you know, we should be thinking about them at this time too, you know, which is true, which is true. What is that specifically? Do you want to read that one?

This one is about a teacher. I'm not going to say her name. But she was 52 years old and she was a wonderful teacher, active, enthusiastic member of the school community. She mentored new teachers. She reached out to students with disabilities or those having a difficult time at home and was always there to applaud performances. Just, you know, what a wonderful person she was. It's a long, long post. And she passed away on Saturday, April 4th. 16 days after schools were closed.

That's heavy. schools were closed. That's heavy. And the whole thing has been out of the mayor's mouth. Kids need this. They need it. They need it. They need it. Yes, they do. I agree. At what cost?

Do you ever think about getting sick? Yeah. I've thought about it. Of course I've thought about it. I'm just so, like, overwhelmed with Chloe's situation that I haven't given much thought. You know, it's not written anywhere that if I do get sick that I'm not going to be the one to have a hard time with it.

So, yeah, I mean, I've thought about it. Of course I have. But, you know, my immediate thought is, oh, my God, if I do, I'm going to bring it home. That's my more immediate thought always about bringing it home. And what if I have to quarantine? Because I've been around someone or one of my students and say, oh, they closed down my class. Where do I go do that? I've already came up with a plan with my coworker that you met because she's one of my very best friends. I've said to her,

if I call you and I tell you that I have to quarantine before I can go home, you have to go and get my kids out and get them to pack. Put them in and we'll put them in an Uber airport and they're going to North Carolina. That's where Liam's father lives. And that's that's that's your plan. If I have to quarantine, they got to get out of here. Because where am I going to go? I can't go quarantine in somebody's house. I'll put them in danger.

So if I have to quarantine, they got to go before I walk in the house. That's a ridiculous way to live. And quarantining, I mean, that just means that, like, a kid in your class tests positive. Or was exposed, and they decide that we need to all quarantine. Yes. I mean, that could very well happen.

Oh, absolutely. Of course it could happen. Of course. I mean, our numbers are good, but they're not zero. So it absolutely could happen. Absolutely. At any given moment, I could have to quarantine because of either the class or maybe the school itself, whatever the reason. And if I have to quarantine, they got to go. You feel very strongly about that.

Yes. I will not quarantine with my kids in this house, especially not with Chloe in this house. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. So this morning, I start with our clear, strong dedication to our public schools and to in-person learning. On Thursday, two days after Lisa spoke with Iolani Grion, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio delayed the start of in-person classes. I also want to be clear and very straightforward about the fact that real concerns have been raised by my colleagues. During a news conference, the mayor acknowledged that the city had failed to overcome the obstacles to bringing students back and that teachers and administrators were not yet comfortable with the city's preparations. Yesterday morning they reached out to me and they said they had real concerns about specific things that had to be done to make sure our

schools could start effectively, start safely. Although they acknowledged that some real progress had been made, that not enough had been made and more had to be done to make sure that things would be as strong as they needed to be. Instead of opening on Monday as planned, elementary schools, including Grillon's class, will open on September 29th. Middle and high schools will open even later, on October 1st. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to nerdy.

I have been a Republican for my entire life. I am a McCain Republican. I am a Bush Republican. And I am voting for Joe Biden because I truly believe we are at a time of constitutional crisis. constitutional crisis. In an unusual move, two former Trump administration officials are endorsing Joe Biden, saying that President Trump has badly mismanaged the pandemic and the presidency. It was shocking to see the president saying that the virus was a hoax, saying that everything's okay when we know that it's not. The officials are Josh Venable, former chief of staff to Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education, and Olivia Troy, a top homeland security aide to Vice President Mike Pence, who recorded a video explaining her decision. The truth is he doesn't

actually care about anyone else but himself. And officials in New Jersey have agreed to adopt a so-called millionaire's tax to alleviate shortfalls caused by the coronavirus in what may become a model for budget-strapped states across the country. We do not hold any grudge at all against those who have been successful in life. But in this unprecedented time when so many middle class families and others have sacrificed so much, now is the time to ensure that the wealthiest among us are also called to sacrifice. And literally, by the way... The measure would tax earnings over $1 million at 10.75%, up from the current rate of 8.97%,

and is expected to raise nearly $400 million over the next year. The Daily is made by Theo Balcom, Andy Mills, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lindsay Garrison, Annie Brown, Claire Tennesketter, Paige Cowan, Michael Simon-Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Chung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Lee Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Mark George, Luke Vanderploeg, Kelly Prime, Julia Longoria, Sindhu Yanasambandhan, M.J. Davis-Lynn, Austin Mitchell, Nina Patuk, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guimet, Hans Butow, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoit, Bianca Gaver, Aastha Chaturvedi, Our theme music is by Special thanks to Michaela Bouchard, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Nora Keller, Mahima Chablani, and Des Ibequa. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.