Saturday, October 17, 2020

77,000

 Mayor Bill de Blasio (right) and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza (center) tour New Bridges Elementary in August to observe the school’s PPE delivery and reopening preparations.

 

Gothamist

New York City Public Schools are still lacking 77,000 learning devices like tablets and laptops, nearly a month after classes began, and fewer than 15% of students attending schools in person have consented to getting randomly tested for COVID-19.

These details on the rocky reopening of public schools across the five boroughs came from a long-awaited City Council hearing held by the Education and Health committees on Friday. It was the first such hearing that Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza testified at since schools reopened on a staggered basis beginning on September 21st. Councilmember Mark Treyger, chair of the education committee, was forced to delay the hearing that was originally scheduled on September 29th, the day middle school children were returning to school.

"How many requests are you in receipt of as of this moment for devices and internet as of today?" Treyger asked Department of Education deputy chief operating officer Lauren Siciliano.

"As of this moment we have about 77,000 requests, but again we then go and verify the need for the school so it's a constant evolving number," Siciliano replied.

Data released by the DOE on Thursday showed that schools comprised of more Black and Hispanic students had low student engagement during the spring when they transitioned completely to remote learning. In some cases, the devices are the only way for children to learn given that more than half of the city's one million public school students have opted for remote learning only.

"We engage with the school and to better understand which is a device that is needed in the hands of a student, which is a device that has been requested to replenish supply, and it's not uniform across the entire DOE," said Carranza.

Treyger pointed out that Mayor Bill de Blasio had been saying for weeks that every student who needed a device had gotten one.

"The fact that thousands of our kids, particularly from under-resourced communities still don't have a device is unacceptable and shameful. And I want to lay the fault squarely with the mayor and his office for being in denial about the severity of this issue," he said.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Getting things done, like having good government, depends on a culture of discipline and focus - and unfortunately that requires accepting a certain cultural norm - you can be from any background or culture, but there is a certain norm you have to adhere to get make decisions and get the job done.

Woke is BS. Giving jobs to people because of the color of their skin or their ethnicity is BS. You can be from any background but the only why you get things done timely and properly is to adhere to the ethos of a culture that the woke crowd is trying their best to tarnish.

Ain't gonna work.

Anonymous said...

Go back to books, paper, and pens. Lazy teachers.

Anonymous said...

More people know about nodding lady and the fly than this !

Anonymous said...

Joe Biden is an East Coast mob boss. Change my mind!

BoredWithFascists said...

Hope you local fascists aren’t planning on kidnapping the Mayor. Didn’t work out too well for your cohorts in Michigan. You people are running out of ideas now that old Cheese head is going to get his ass kicked by a guy who should be in a retirement home.

Anonymous said...

Coach potato Bored didn't show any of the great readers of Queens Crappy to be liars Bored is just afraid people will agree with what we have to say.

Anonymous said...

Any body else he a halfway decent education without all that crap?

Thought so. Chalk and and a blackboard. Get er done