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NY Post
Mayor Bill de Blasio officially presented his school reopening plan Friday — calling for a weekly “blended approach’’ of in-class and online learning for “a vast majority of kids.”
Most students will physically be in class two to three days a week, the mayor said.
“You can certainly say, ‘Yeah, it’s gonna be tough, it’s gonna take a
lot of work,’ ’’ Hizzoner told reporters in a conference call.
He said the city’s daily positive-test rate for the coronavirus must
remain below 3 percent for the plan to work. He said Friday’s figures
show it remains steady at 1 percent.
The discovery of a vaccine for the deadly contagion would help bring
schools “back to full strength,’’ de Blasio said, referring to all
in-school learning.
He said it was “conceivable’’ that schools could fully reopen for
on-site instruction without a vaccine if the number of virus cases in
the city becomes virtually nonexistent but added that the scenario would
be “difficult.’’
Each school’s plan will vary between one to three days of in-student
learning, with the rest of the school week remote, depending on such
things as its enrollment and layout, city officials said.
NY Post
The city is going to extremes to make sure this school year doesn’t get flushed.
Department of Education workers have been spotted using pieces of toilet paper stuck to the ends of sticks to gauge the airflow inside classrooms as kids return in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
One stunned city councilman exposed the bizarre testing method in all
its low-tech glory by posting a tweet Wednesday showing a worker poking
at a ceiling vent with bathroom tissue affixed to a flimsy piece of
wood using a binder clip.
“The official and comprehensive NYC inter-agency classroom ventilation inspection process,”
Mark Treyger zinged in the post.
When quizzed about the tissue rig, Mayor Bill de Blasio conceded that
he wasn’t qualified to issue a “a great technical answer” — but
insisted that folks shouldn’t not to diss the Charmin.
“That’s actually the way the CDC recommends you test these things,” he explained.
De Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced this week
that the DOE would vet all city school buildings for adequate
ventilation to guard against coronavirus transmission.
The pair said that DOE engineers would spearhead the sweep and that
the vast majority of schools would be cleared for operation by September
1.
PIX News
Update by THE CITY
An inventory of COVID-19 deaths at New York nursing homes released by the Cuomo administration Friday provides an incomplete picture of how dire the situation is inside the facilities, medical workers and elected officials said.
The long sought-after list of nursing homes and adult care facilities whose residents have died of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 only accounts for one-third of the 3,316 such deaths reported statewide as of Wednesday.
That’s because the new data excludes deaths of residents who were transferred to hospitals — and, in some cases, doesn’t report fatalities thought to be COVID-related where formal virus tests weren’t conducted.
The state’s data sheet says only “some” nursing homes reported the number of “presumed” COVID-19 deaths.
Only one-fifth of the city’s 171 nursing homes were identified by name in the latest state data. Of them, nine reported 30 or more deaths stemming from COVID-19.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo acknowledged that the information might be incomplete since nursing homes self-report the deaths that occurred in their facilities to the state.
“We only know what they tell us,” Cuomo told reporters in Albany.
But City Council member Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn) said a lack of widespread testing at nursing homes is deflating the number of known patient fatalities because not every nursing home is reporting deaths where there wasn’t a confirmed positive.
The testing deficit also is clearing the path for introducing the virus from outside — because asymptomatic staff members have been allowed and even encouraged to work, he noted.
Treyger said he’s been hearing a host of concerns about nursing homes in southern Brooklyn, and called on the city and state to come up with an action plan to ensure adequate levels of staffing, protective equipment and testing kits.
“I believe the situation at nursing homes is much worse than what’s being reported to the public,” said Treyger.
From the
Queens Chronicle:
More than 900 Howard Beach residents, and close to 6,000 others in Queens, have dropped out of or were booted from the city’s Build it Back program since 2014, according to an analysis by Comptroller Scott Stringer.
The comptroller’s study, detailed in a Sept. 25 letter to the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations, states Queens had the largest drop in applicants to the trouble-riddled Sandy recovery initiative — from 9,284 who first sought help to 3,584 today.
Many of those dropoffs occurred in Rockaway, and mostly on the western end of the peninsula. In Howard Beach, there are now 936 fewer homeowners in the Build it Back pipeline. Broad Channel saw 530 applicants get out of the program.
Citywide, 20,275 people sought help from the initiative, first established by Mayor Bloomberg in 2013, but now only 8,310 have or are set to be assisted by the program.
Stringer — along with Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn), chairman of the Council’s Recovery & Resiliency Committee — said “the reasons why individual applicants have left the program” are not clear, but are “likely attributable to many causes,” including dissatisfaction with projected timelines, people turning to other sources of aid, getting lost in “the tangle of bureaucracy,” and some being removed for not meeting “stringent entry requirements.”
And in some cases, according to the comptroller, some applicants died while waiting for assistance.
From the
Daily News:
The City Council threw its support behind landmarking the Coney Island Boardwalk on Thursday, passing a resolution urging the city to protect the iconic stretch.
Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn) got unanimous support for his resolution, although the Landmarks Preservation Commission has balked at making the move.
Treyger wants the landmark status in part to stop plans to convert much of the boardwalk from traditional wood planks into concrete and fake wood.
From
Sheepshead Bites:
City Councilman Mark Treyger has introduced a bill to block the Department of Buildings from penalizing homeowners and tenants who are trying to recover from natural disasters.
“Nobody should be left worse off by the recovery process than if they never participated in it at all, and the onus should be on the city and contractors to comply with rules and regulations related to Sandy Recovery work, not residents,” Treyger said in a press release. ” It undermines the public’s trust, faith and willingness to participate in recovery programs.”
Treyger cited several examples of Sandy victims being penalized by the DOB while awaiting long-overdue assistance from storm recovery programs. He highlighted the story of a Brooklyn resident received a $500 penalty for failing to repair his Sandy-damaged property. The man testified at a hearing that Build it Back had investigated the damage and he was “was waiting for promised financial relief and advised not to make any repairs until he received it.”
From
DNA Info:
"I feel like things move a lot quicker in Manhattan than in Ridgewood, Queens, and Williamsburg, Brooklyn," said City Councilman Antonio Reynoso, whose district encompasses both of those neighborhoods. He has spent eight years working to get landmarks protections for parts of his district, he said.
"Is one to assume that there is less history in south Brooklyn?" said Councilman Mark Treyger, who was frustrated by the process of protecting parts of his turf.
And Harlem historian Michael Henry Adams railed against "all those affluent white neighborhoods that are protected while ours are not."
From
NY Mag:
Hide your calls, hide your texts: The City Council is considering a new bill that would outlaw both of those activities for cyclists, putting an end to the showoff-y, "look ma, no hands" biking. Councilmember Mark Treyger's bill would slap first-time offenders who talk or text without a hands-free device with a $50 ticket, which could go as high as $200 for repeat offenders.
The bill would also ban using a tablet, or, for the very adventurous, balancing a laptop on your bike while riding. Worse, the only way for a first-time offender to avoid the class would be by taking a bike safety course.
