Mayor Bill de Blasio's No Good, Very Bad Plan by Dr. Michael Flanagan

Here in New York City, we just finished a very hectic week of preparing for the Blended Learning reopening of our public schools . Or as I like to call it, “Bill de Blasio’s  No-Good-Very-Bad-Plan.” 

That is not to say that other people don’t share the blame for this national embarrassment. Mayor de Blasio’s stuffed shirt of a Chancellor, Richard Carranza, has been conveying the de Blasio admininstration’s across-the-board incompetence like a lackey for a comic villain in an Austin Powers film. And of course, there is United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew, who portrays himself as a loyal representative of his union members while duplicitously trying everything in his power to enact this fiasco of a plan; all the while taking credit for our activism. 

Let’s first put it in layman’s terms. Let’s say we’re building a house. The house is Blended Learning.

Mayor de Blasio is our architect, while Chancellor Carranza is the engineer and UFT President Mulgrew our general contractor. 

Problem One: Not one of them has actually designed and built a house before. 

Problem Two: They refuse to heed advice from those who see all the mistakes they are making. They just continue to give press conferences touting themselves as the “gold standard” of house building. 

Now, the individual school principals are your project managers. They are generally skilled at their crafts, but have been told by the higher-ups to do things in a completely incomprehensible way. They are missing materials and working with poorly-designed blueprints. Imagine they have been told to construct the house from the top down, starting with the shingles, and not the foundation or support beams needed to stabilize the structure. They have also been promised laborers--teachers--many of whom do not exist yet, and have been instructed to commence building as if the workers were actually there. 

Following the guidance of these inept architects are your assistant principals. They are the job foremen of the building project. Like placing shoddy support beams in soft sand, some APs are programming the schools and assigning their laborers to climb them and start nailing those shingles. Other APs are running around looking for better hammers and nails, and still others are picking up the debris as it falls from the collapsing roof. 

So...the house is not even close to being finished and on the verge of crumpling. Meanwhile, our laborers are told, “Start bringing in the furniture for the new tenants.”

The new tenants--that’s right--our students.

Our tenants who are trusting us all to construct a safe house for them.

No one is listening to the laborers. The foundation of the house is weak, the support beams are clearly not secure, and the shingles are going to come crashing down, causing injury and possibly death. 

Listen to the laborers: The house is not safe. 

While “project manager” principals in many cases hear the cries of their workers, they  have to stick to the orders that their belligerently inept architects have given them. They have to move ahead with a plan they can clearly see will fail, even though they will be left holding the bag when the entire thing collapses. Even as they are bombarded by thousands of emails and phone calls from angry tenants who were lied to about the safety of their house.

Even though people will die.

Blended Learning. 

Welcome to the New York City Department of Education’s 2020 School Reopening Plan. Bringing new meaning to the term, “Ass-Backwards.”

Mayor de Blasio has now twice postponed the in-person reopening of schools. Why?  Because his lies have constantly caught up with him. The newest plan is a phased-in delay of in-person Blended Learning over the next ten days. This supposedly will give  the Mayor time to hire 4500 brand new, shiny, hot-off the-assembly-line “Instateachers!”

Because that’s what we really need right now, inexperienced people who have never taught before, thrown in to work with young children during a pandemic.

The mayor continues to buy time, insisting that his failing plan is going to work. 

For principals, it has been an incredibly trying time. They have been given a list of  ever-changing, impossible-to-implement directives to program their schools. With 30-40% of students opting for 100% Remote Learning, and 30% of their teaching staff receiving medical accommodations to work from home, principals are piecing together programs like Grandma’s patchwork quilt. Add to this the complications of creating a socially-distanced Blended Learning scenario, where the students who are supposed to come into the physical school buildings are divided into halves or thirds, entering on alternating days. 

Principals have to move ahead, and do, working with a plan that they can clearly see will fail. And when it does, THEY will be left holding the bag when our proverbial house comes tumbling down, and people die.

Angry and dissatisfied parents who were lied to about Blended Learning are waking up and calling in in droves. More and more parents are opting for fully remote learning. 

Unstaffed classes, inadequate technology, students without proper tech, incomplete programs, lack of funding, improper COVID-19 testing and tracing procedures, poor ventilation, and at least 55 confirmed cases of staff members already entering schools are just some of the issues principals--and all of us--are faced with. 

The question is...when does it stop? 

When do we, as professional educators and administrators, stop listening to the incompetent egomaniacs, and start doing what is right for our students? When do we take control and use the creativity and skills that we possess as educators to teach children as best as we are able, even within the limitations of remote teaching? 

Our students need us at our best right now. They are craving connection. Craving support and an education. They are ready and willing to work. 

Are we going to allow arrogant clowns like de Blasio and Carranza to take that away from them?

No. We must push back. COVID-19 is contagious, but ignorance should not be. 

Call for fully Remote Learning, and do it NOW. Let principals program their students and teachers themselves, and phase in the reopenings based on safety and sound planning. Let us start teaching our children now, and doing it safely.

Our children deserve better than Bill de Blasio, and his dangerous plans.