Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York has further proven that ego can make even the most strident progressive as blind as President Trump is to his own absurdity.
On Thursday, just three days before in-person classes were due to begin, the mayor announced a second last-minute delay in the opening of America’s biggest school system. He again cited manifest realities that he had been denying for weeks. He again offered no apology to the families as he went de Bonkers.
“I think our parents—and I was one for a long time in our public schools—they’re a lot more pragmatic than you might imagine,” he said at a press conference. “[They] are overwhelmingly working-class people and lower-income people... They are people who understand the realities of life and they’re not shocked when something this difficult has to be adjusted from time to time.”
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That would be fine if he had been making an honest effort acting on knowledgeable advice rather than seeking to affirm his notion of himself as a great progressive leader. The usual New York response to such heedless behavior is something like, “You gotta be kidding me,” or maybe, “Give me a freaking break.” The mayor of New York was proving that he remains essentially a guy from Boston who is far from wicked smaht.
Back on Aug. 27, de Blasio announced that classes would resume on Sept. 10, thereby making him the leader of one of the few big city systems to reopen during the pandemic.
“We have to keep moving forward,” he said. “Our kids need us. We have to find a way to get it right.”
He spoke in the grand tones he employed during his ridiculous run for president. He had proven the true priorities behind his progressive cant when he flew back to New York from a presidential debate, worried he might be late for a TV interview with Oprah. He had the NYPD detectives in his security detail keep the other passengers seated until he deplaned.
“The good thing about New Yorkers is they look the same whether they’re really pissed off at you or they like you,” he said during the campaign, a delusion not even most out-of-towners could harbor.
In reopening the schools, de Blasio may be hoping to echo the one remaining big success of his seven years as mayor: the creation of citywide pre-kindergarten. De Blasio had also achieved a laudable reduction in crime, but that had begun to crumble after he sought to play both ends against the middle during the protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis.
And de Blasio lost any chance for glory in the fight against COVID-19 when New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo rightly received credit for flattening the curve and steadying the state.
The schools offered the mayor a chance to be a pandemic poobah, and de Blasio became de Bonkers as he proceeded recklessly ahead in the name of “our kids.” He said he was not to be dissuaded by 31 of the 51 members in the City Council who had joined various other city leaders in arguing the school system was not yet adequately prepared to reopen safely.
“Honestly, I respect my fellow elected officials,” de Blasio said on Aug. 27. “But if all of them say one thing, but the majority of parents say another thing, I’m with the parents. It’s their children. We are here to serve them and their children. Those are the voices who matter.”
Five days later, nine days before what was to be the big day, even de Blasio realized he was headed for disaster. He suddenly announced that remote learning would not begin until Sept. 16. In-person classes would start Sept. 21.
“We have a huge obligation to get the health and safety part right,” de Blasio said. “These challenges require a thoughtful approach.”
Central to the health and safety approach was contact tracing. De Blasio said on Monday that such tracing would quickly identify those who had been exposed by any infected person in the schools. He sounded almost Trumpian as he seemed to minimize the impact on students and staff who test positive.
“Those folks will immediately get support,” he said. “They’ll be helped to get home, to safely separate. The contact tracing will go into effect right away. And after two weeks, those professionals will come back to work and they’ll complete the entire school year.”
He went on, “The same will happen with some students. Some students will test positive at some point in the year, and they’ll go home for two weeks and then they’ll come back and they’ll complete the school year.”
He was never more de Bonkers than when he then said, “We have to remember that for the very small percentage of people who test positive for the coronavirus, it is a very temporary reality. People will go through that period of safe separation, quarantine, come back, and get right back into their job, get right back into their studies, and continue forward.”
Four days before he said this, a group of teachers from Middle School 88 had posted online an open letter concerning contact tracing. A teacher there had tested positive after the school system opened on Sept. 8 for staff to prepare. A fellow teacher had shared a classroom with the one who tested positive and was understandably nervous even though they had both been wearing masks. A third teacher also reported that she had been in close enough contact with the infected person to be worried.
Neither of the possibly exposed teachers had been contacted when the city announced that the contact tracing had been completed.
“Less than 24 hours after learning we had a positive case, we received an email stating that the investigation was concluded, the building is safe, and we should report back to work in person immediately,” the letter reported. “It quickly became evident that despite the assurance that rigorous contact tracing was completed, we know this to be false.”
The letter continued, “It has now been more than 36 hours since our coworker reported her positive test result, and at least 2 of the teachers who were in close contact with her have still received no communication from contact tracers or city officials.”
This in a city where 78 Department of Education (DOE) employees died from COVID-19 between March 16 and May 8. M.S. 88 had not suffered any fatalities, but it remained shaken.
“This new year has already evoked memories of last spring, when we had numerous cases among staff, tried to support our students through the loss of parents, grandparents and extended family, and had a colleague in the hospital, fighting for his life for 88 days,” the letter said.
The teacher from M.S. 88 who survived 88 days in the hospital was Dave Paris. He teaches English and is also a Salsa dancing estrella who wowed the judges on Dancing With the Stars. His temporary reality included 30 days on a ventilator and moments when what he later termed “dream characters” told him he was going to die.
The threat of COVID-19 has subsided and the streets are no longer filled with continual ambulance sirens, but the virus is still out there, just as dangerous for whoever contracts it. And the failure in contact tracing at M.S. 88 was not the only worrisome incident in Brooklyn before classes had even started.
At Public School 139, a teacher tested positive taking a near-instant test on Friday only to subsequently test negative with the generally more accurate diagnostic test. The contact tracing had in the meantime reported a second teacher who may have been exposed to the first teacher but came up negative with an instant test. The second teacher returned to the school on Monday only to test positive on the diagnostic test.
The second teacher’s colleagues had reason to count themselves lucky that they had staged a “work-out” that same day to protest inadequate cleaning in the building. They all worked outside using extension cords, sitting in socially distanced folding chairs.
Social distancing also would have to be maintained inside P.S. 139 and the DOE’s 1,800 other buildings. That meant fewer kids in a classroom, which meant more classrooms, which meant more teachers. And there would have to be additional teachers for the remote classes.
For weeks, people all around de Blasio told him that the city would need many more than the 2,000 new teachers it was hiring to meet the demands of the pandemic.
In de Bonkers’ version of a thoughtful approach, the city made it known at 3 a.m. Wednesday that it could not make good on a promise to provide daily “live” classes online to students whose families had opted for “blended” remote and in-person learning. The shortage of teachers further caused the cancellation of two in-person monthly classes.
Just as parents were adjusting to that last-minute jolt, de Blasio hit them with a bigger one on Thursday morning. He announced that the start date for in-person classes was being changed again. He was grander than ever, sounding as if he imagined himself to be a savior rather than a screw-up.
“We’re in a country right now that’s going through a lot,” he said at the press conference. “We’re in a city that’s going through a lot. We’re in a democracy that is struggling and everyone can see. The hope, the hope [of] the city, I hope of this country, the hope of our democracy, is to protect and preserve public education. This is what has always been the foundation of a fair and just society.”
To that noble end, only special needs students and youngsters in de Blasio’s vaunted pre-K program would be starting on Monday. Elementary school students would not come in until Sept. 29. Middle and high school students were to start on Oct. 1.
In the meantime the city would be hiring 2,500 more teachers on top of the 2,000 already being hired, for a total of 4,500. The mayor who had spoken a few days before about the “temporary reality” for people infected with COVID-19 now said “the reason the numbers keep changing is all because of the pandemic reality.”
Meanwhile, teachers across the city were proving to be geniuses at making the most out of a challenge, having gone for decades with too little of everything except dedication. A teacher at P.S. 39 in Brooklyn started out with a virtual first grade class by asking everybody to show their favorite stuffed animal. That allowed them to introduce themselves to her and to each other while also learning that online learning can have its advantages.
At P.S. 139, Megan Jonyas knew on Wednesday just how to begin her virtual fifth grade class in time of a pandemic.
“Guys, what do you notice about me?” she asked the 31 students in virtual attendance.
“You’re wearing your mask!” came the reply.
She was indeed and she explained why masks are important.
“Now it’s your turn to show me your favorite masks,” Jonyas then said.
The stunt produced a remarkable array.
“Some kids said, ‘We only have the ones,’” Joynas later told The Daily Beast. “I said, ‘Those are great! Show me!”
Joynas finds that she has some difficulty taking what she calls “the emotional temperature“ of her students.
She sought to remedy that on Thursday morning.
I said, ‘Tell me how you’re feeling today with an emoji,’” she reported. “I saw some lighting bolts. We also had smiley faces. A few kids of course did the poop emoji because they’re in the fifth grade.”
One girl posted a peppers emoji.
“I said, ‘What does that mean?’” Joynas remembered. “She said, ‘I’m feeling a little fiery today.’”
Joynas later said she was not sure if the emojis would have changed if the kids had known about the mayor’s new start date. She was told that The Daily Beast had asked the mayor’s press office what his emoji might have been for the day, but there had been no response.
“There are several emojis I can think of,” Joynas offered.
She was speaking as a union chapter leader as well as a teacher. She has no doubt that her fellow teachers will as always give it their all, but not even they may be able to work around a pandemic. She predicted the schools will end up going all virtual.
She has a definite opinion about what is driving de Blasio to open them in-person.
“It’s all about his ego,” she said of the mayor who has gone de Bonkers.
