Dear Governor Cuomo: Keep Schools Closed by Christine Vaccaro

Dear Governor Cuomo,

First, full disclosure: due to your records on education and teachers union issues, I was forced to betray our Italian heritage by voting for Cynthia Nixon last primary election. However, during this life-altering pandemic, things between us took a dramatic turn. Through your daily, must-see TV press conferences, I was fully won over by your fact-based, fearless leadership, dedication and incisive intelligence. You have been an unparalleled leader not just for the state, but for the nation. Your effort and foresight spared the lives of untold New Yorkers, including everyone I love and care about. For that, I cannot be more grateful. Thank you. 

One of bright spots of your daily chats were the moments you idealistically reframed this crisis into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rebuild the broken parts of our society. Specifically, you discussed reimagining education. Reimagine, you said. Be still my heart. A complete sucker for a redemption story, I had as much confidence in the possibility of your transformation as I had in your gloriously data-stuffed powerpoints. I believed you saw the error of your past ways, and were ready to co-create with teachers an innovative, flourishing system with the same bold vision used to guide us to safety.  But all you needed to do was say “Bill Gates” one day -- and just like that, this fever broke. Then the next day, the official cure: debuting a nearly teacher-less Reimagine Education Advisory Council with essentially zero New York City representation.  I girded myself for more disappointment -- and I am afraid that time has come.

Teachers, particularly many of us in NYC, have been anxiously eyeballing this first week of August for the big reveal of your school reopening plan, hoping for you to once again save the day. As schools have served one preposterous return plan after another, the refrain amongst many of us has been along the lines of, “Cuomo will take care of this. He knows it is not safe.” But after months of messaging that the buck stops with you, I watched Monday, dejected, as you appeared to take that buck, and pass it. Your briefing hinted that your ultimate decision on the school debate will be a laissez-faire approach: let the market decide.  With impressive political finesse, you deftly sidestepped ownership on the call (and thus any resulting collateral damage), and gently laid the responsibility in the lap of parents. 

You cited concern, and rightly so, about the inequity endemic to remote learning. But the fact is, these inequities can be addressed with dollars - if districts were focused on allocating resources to developing better remote plans, and not ridiculous, stopgap hybrid models. In truth, it is your plan that is imbalanced. In this situation, parents of means will wield the power. These are the folks who will have the privilege of keeping their children home. They are also generally the strongest voices in shaping school and district issues, and once they have the option to keep their kid safely home, there is no reason for them to advocate having buildings stay shut for the rest of us. 

I think about my students in the Bronx, many of whom know no such privilege. They are the children of parents unable, afraid or unwilling to advocate for them. These kids will be the ones trudging into school with the sniffles, via mass transit, and returning to confined, multi-generational homes. How is this fair? How is this safe?  If the money spent attempting to launch fantastical hybrid models was instead put into developing sustainable and equitable remote learning practices, we would have our best shot at consistent, safe education. For all students. 

Governor, in my cherished classroom, located on the 3rd floor of a school I feel lucky to call my work home, I teach truly awesome 9th graders. As an English teacher,  I appreciate symbols, and love getting my students excited about them, too. If I could be with my students, I would ask them to think of one symbol that emblemized the New York Covid experience. Thanks to you, I’m pretty sure that most would agree: it is the mask.

Every single day, I get at least one sassy tweet from you, reminding me to wear a mask --  which I do, religiously. (And I don’t stop there. I relish giving the malocchio to any unmasked passersby.) Mask-wearing has been the cornerstone of your campaign to keep us safe.  I remember the briefing when you proudly showed off that tapestry of masks, and the one that brought tears to my eyes when that Kansas farmer sent you his last N95 for a NYC doctor or nurse. You had your daughter head up a video competition for a wear-a-mask PR drive. (Yes, I voted.) Then, you even went national with the #MaskUpAmerica campaign. 

Those of us science-followers understand why you are so into masks. We get their importance in containing the spread. They are a small thing that make a huge difference. And they are also a simple and concrete microcosm with which to explore the implausibility of a safe return, particularly in New York City.

1.1 million 

That’s how many students are in the NYC Department of Education. Let’s say just half show up for in-person learning. The city says it will furnish masks for students every week- that’s 500,000 masks every seven days. This brings to my teacher-mind a number of hygiene issues. I’m no epidemiologist, but how is it even remotely sanitary to have the same, sweaty child wear the same mask for five days? How is it sanitary to have that child wear that dirty mask for 6 hours, in the same seat, in the shvitz-show that is a non-air conditioned September classroom? How is it sanitary when that child removes that mask to eat lunch in that same room, as has been proposed by the Chancellor? (And of course, once that child takes his or her mask off, there is now cross-contamination onto the hands...and whatever those hands touch.)  How is it sanitary for that child to wear that dirty mask out of the classroom, onto public transportation, and into their home? Who will be responsible for picking up the dirty masks that will be strewn across the school? Yes, inside a hospital, Covid rates are controlled by wearing masks. But sir, schools are not filled with medically trained, germ-aware professionals. They are filled with small armies of virus spreaders known as children and teenagers. Those masks will function as disease contagions as much as they will protectors.

20,000

In May, when we hit the tragic 20,000 mark of Covid deaths, New Yorkers were still chafing at wearing masks. Since then, our numbers went down, but Covid-fatigue went up, and consequently mask-wearing has lapsed. You know this is true, or you would not need to remind us daily. Then of course there is the politicalization piece, entitling some to forgo a pandemic-preventing piece of cloth, as if this was a patriotic act akin to pouring tea in the Boston Harbor. If we can’t get adults to comply, how will we get their children to? Imagine a classroom of 10 kids, maybe two of whom come from homes in which parents are anti-maskers. Teachers know exactly how you behave at home, because your kids imitate it in school. Now what?  Would you want your child in that room? Where one or two kids, frustrated, tired, scared or just hot, decide it's ok to take off their mask?  Whatever “teaching” is going on will be hijacked by a major classroom discipline issue, and one that creeps into the career-ending realm of corporal punishment. (By the way, the current guidance offered by the NYC DOE is to “send children home” who refuse to wear masks. My question is: if they are being sent into school because parents need childcare, how will that work?)

5

This is the number of weeks left until some form of school presumably begins. We will be facing a cohort of children, many of whom have been through social-emotional and psychological trauma that no mask can hide. Many of our students are the children of first responders, who themselves are contending with PTSD. Many of our students were sick themselves, or watched family members die of Covid. If we are going to bring them back, where are the plans to deal with what’s going on behind the masks? What trauma-informed professionals, or state-wide professional development for teachers are being put into place? Surely you know the science, and cannot expect there to be effective instruction happening in trauma-addled brains - so why are we risking these lives?  These resources? This time and energy? Why are we not instead focusing on how to put together stronger, more holistic infrastructure for a return later in the fall, or the year, when this nation has more control over this scourge? 

Governor Cuomo, I implore you: as a veteran NYC educator, these schools will be ticking time bombs. People will die unnecessarily, and time and money wasted. Please don’t be like another tough-talking outer borough Italian politician who shepherded our great city through crisis, only to stop short of full integration of its lessons. I will happily volunteer to be on your Reimagining Education Council. (Let’s face it, you could use some more teachers on there.) I promise I will stop calling it the Tappan Zee. Please, just continue to do what you have done throughout this crisis: making judicious, proactive and forward-thinking calls in the best interest of New Yorkers.  

Do the NY tough, smart, united, disciplined and loving thing. Keep these buildings closed until it is safe to return.  

Sincerely,

Christine Vaccaro

High School ELA Teacher, Bronx, NY