[[link removed]]Dear John,

Parents, teachers and students are looking anxiously towards September, wondering how they will cope with whatever iteration of school will be available to them. None of the options are good. But fatalism won’t help our kids: so let’s do all we can to make the plans better.

The DOE is rightly planning staggered schedules to keep class sizes small, one of many steps needed to reduce the possibility for transmitting the virus and make school safer. But without a plan for child care and workplace accommodations for parents, there’s no way that the DOE’s plan will work. How can parents go to work when their kids will be in school just a few hours a week, on different days each week? Under the proposed DOE plan, you can have a kid, or you can have a job, but you can’t really have both [[link removed]] .

Sign our petition for a real plan that works for working families, and share your ideas for how to make back-to-school work better in the fall. [[link removed]]

The fall out from this plan will land the hardest on low income, Black and brown families, parents who don't have the option not to work and whose kids are already at a disadvantage due to limited access to technology and space for remote learning at home, and more crowded and under supported classrooms at school.

And it’s not just a disaster for parents. How can our communities function if grocery store and retail workers, construction workers, sanitation workers and home health aides, office workers — indeed teachers themselves — don’t have child care for their kids?

I’ve proposed a draft plan [[link removed]] to address some of these gaps, by scaling up child care across the city and requiring that employers accommodate the schedules that the public school system is imposing on parents. Nothing about this fall will feel like normal. But a fall where parents have to choose between earning a living and caring for their children is unacceptable.

Join our effort to win accommodations for working parents and expanded child care. [[link removed]]

There are so many other critical issues we must face together in making schools safe, healthy, places of education and healing for teachers, students, and their families. What’s necessary to actually make the buildings safe, and how can we be confident DOE will really do it? How will the different tracks really work? Where will the funding come from?

And while I’ve heard a ton of questions and a lot of very understandable anxiety, I’ve also heard some really creative proposals: Like outdoor learning [[link removed]] . Using school space at PS 32 and 676 to maximize opportunities for early childhood and students with IEPs. Schools that focus next year (and beyond) on healing in the face of trauma [[link removed]] . Reducing or eliminating the use of screens in admissions [[link removed]] next year. One step I’ll be calling for is an early decision to cancel New York State ELA and Math tests next year -- there’s no way kids can be expected to be ready, so all we’d be doing is provoking even more anxiety.

To get answers to some of the questions, I’m hosting a town hall with DOE next week (co-sponsored with Community Board 6) to give parents an opportunity to ask questions to DOE officials about the plan for the fall. Register here to join us on Thursday, July 23 at 7 PM. [[link removed]]

I’ll be honest: I think Mayor de Blasio sounds utterly ridiculous when he says next year will be “the best academic year NYC has ever had.”

But I do believe this: We can model for our kids how we take action together to keep each other safe, how we make sure all families have the support they need so we don’t leave the most vulnerable behind, how we rise together in the face of crisis to support and heal and learn.

They would remember those lessons for a very long time.

Brad

Lander for NYC
456 Fifth Avenue, 3rd Floor, Suite 2
Brooklyn, NY 11215
[email protected]

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