The Blaz, the Chok and Porter are juking the "Gold Standard"

Queens Chronicle

Since all school staff have been required to get vaccinated, the amount of in-school Covid-19 testing has all but ceased for building personnel, according to city data.

On Tuesday, only 26 teachers were tested citywide, compared to 6,661 students.

Only 33 percent of children ages 5 to 17 are vaccinated citywide, according to city data, so they continue to be regularly tested but many people would like to see rigourous testing of teachers to continue, too.

Ariela Rothstein, a teacher in Elmhurst, said she got a text from a colleague on Nov. 16 saying that the Department of Education changed its policy for staff testing and that they would no longer be included in the weekly surveillance tests. She said there was no notice from the school or the DOE and that she has not been notified of testing going on during work hours since.

“It’s very frustrating because we have family members, some of whom can’t be vaccinated — some are elders, some are little kids. So we’re all getting tested ourselves to help make sure we’re not bringing it home but we’re having to do that on our own time,” said Rothstein.

“Staff members with young kids are having to find ways to get tested and just, think about the drain — we’re already really overworked and then we have to find a site that is open and gives results with a good turnaround time,” she said.

Rothstein said she had to get tested at a tent in her neighborhood when she was exhibiting symptoms but did not get her results back for five days. (They were negative.) When she would get tested at her job, she would get results in 24 hours.

“We need an increase of testing, not a decrease,” she said.

According to the DOE, it did provide “courtesy testing” to staff who were not fully innoculated to ensure compliance with the state mandate and now that all staff must be fully vaccinated, it is “adjusting” the courtesy program to make it available to all.

Cuomo's COVID test favoritism towards his family and inner circle enabled contagion to spread in nursing homes

 

NY Post

The Cuomo administration largely ignored a county official’s pleas for COVID-19 tests for nursing homes at the pandemic’s height last spring — even as the governor allegedly secured the then-scarce tests for his relatives, The Post has learned.

The slight is the latest stumble in Cuomo’s pandemic response, particularly with respect to nursing homes, where thousands of residents have died of confirmed or suspected cases of the coronavirus.

Troubled by reports of COVID-19 running roughshod through nursing homes early in the pandemic, Jack Wheeler, the manager of upstate Steuben County, requested in April 2020 that the state Department of Health provide enough tests for every resident and staff member of three facilities in his jurisdiction.

The DOH, however, only came through with enough supplies for one of the three facilities, Hornell Gardens, with the precious diagnostic tests then hard to find, Wheeler told The Post.

That lackluster response came, as The Albany Times-Union reported last week, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo allegedly pulled strings to secure tests for bigwigs connected to his administration, as well as relatives includinghis brother, CNN host Chris Cuomo, and their elderly mother, Matilda.

“I’m furious because testing of the most vulnerable population should be the absolute priority and a simple request,” Wheeler told The Post. “But [that] high-level, connected people had that luxury when we couldn’t even get people in the nursing homes tested is just infuriating.”

Instead, Wheeler said he had to turn for help to Steve Acquario, the executive director of the New York State Association of Counties, to find tests for a second facility, Elderwood at Hornell.

Acquario undertook an eight-hour drive through several neighboring counties in search of spare tests to make ends meet.

“I knew where there might be some extra test kits in counties where they could afford to spare them, so I met them to pick up the kits at various drop-offs,” Acquario told The Post. “[Wheeler] and his county attorney reached out to me in despair and desperation. They were truly in a crisis.”

 

Andrew Cuomo prioritized COVID tests for himself, his family and his political allies

 

Times Union

 High-level members of the state Department of Health were directed last year by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker to conduct prioritized coronavirus testing on the governor's relatives as well as influential people with ties to the administration, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Members of Cuomo's family including his brother, his mother and at least one of his sisters were also tested by top health department officials — some several times, the sources said.

 The medical officials enlisted to do the testing, which often took place at private residences, included Dr. Eleanor Adams, an epidemiologist who graduated from Harvard Medical School and in August became a special adviser to Zucker. Adams conducted testing on Cuomo's brother Chris at his residence on Long Island, according to the two people.

"If their job was to go test an old lady down in New Rochelle, that’s one thing — that’s actually good," one of the people with knowledge of the matter said. "This was not that."

Others who were given priority testing include Rick Cotton, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and his wife, as well as Patrick J. Foye, head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Members of the media, state legislators and their staff also were tested in similar fashion, although there is no indication those tests were done by high-level health department officials.

Foye and Cotton both announced last March they had tested positive for coronavirus. Foye was tested after exhibiting symptoms, according to a spokesman for the MTA.

 Officials in the Cuomo administration said the testing in those early days of the pandemic in March 2020 was not preferential, and they noted public nurses were being driven to private residences in New Rochelle — the site of the state's first outbreak — to test people who were symptomatic or who had been exposed to the virus. During that period, State Police troopers were largely being tasked with driving those samples to the Wadsworth Center laboratory in Albany, which was initially the primary testing spot for coronavirus.

"It's being a little bit distorted with like a devious intent. ... We made sure to test people they believed were exposed," an official in Cuomo's office said on background. "All of this was being done in good faith in an effort to trace the virus."

Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to the governor, characterized the allegations of preferential treatment as "insincere efforts to rewrite the past."

 

 

Waiting for COVID-19 free test results is the hardest part

THE CITY

A national surge in COVID cases has coincided with agonizing delays for New Yorkers getting tested at free sites run by the city’s public hospitals network.

Patients and staff at some NYC Health + Hospitals sites describe waits far longer than the advertised “three to five days” — a lag that increases risk of potentially exposing others to the deadly coronavirus.

Chelsea Williams-Diggs, 27, got tested at a mobile H+H unit in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, on July 6.

“I was told three days for results and have called twice to make sure there wasn’t an error,” she told THE CITY.

She says she was eventually told that results could take upwards of 10 days, but she was still waiting as of July 20.

One New Yorker who didn’t want his name used said he got tested at an H+H location in The Bronx on July 1 — but didn’t receive results on the system’s MyChart app until July 12.

He said he had quarantined nearly the entire time, but had to go to the grocery store when he ran out of food.

“I was hesitant to go, but needed supplies so I went because it had been so long,” the 31-year-old told THE CITY.

At an H+H testing site in Woodside, Queens, COVID-19 test results are now taking 10 to 14 days to come back, according to an employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“If you’re at the 14-day mark, the test is invalid before you even get the result,” the employee noted. 

“Because assuming nobody is 100% quarantining in those 14 days before receiving the result, it’s highly likely for them to be exposed and become infected.”

de Blasio fails to deliver COVID-19 tests as promised

NY Post

The cavalry is caught up in red tape.


Last month Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that a Midwestern company would be sending 50,000 coronavirus tests per week to the Big Apple.


“I’m sure New Yorkers wouldn’t have thought that the cavalry would come from Carmel, Indiana, but it has,” de Blasio boasted during an April 14 press conference about the deal with test maker Aria Diagnostics.


Over two weeks later, the city received just 25,000 of the promised 100,000 tests from what de Blasio described as a “reliable partner” — after blasting the feds for failing to provide the materials.


“We need to be able to test everybody who is symptomatic or asymptotic. If they want a test, they should be able to get a test,” Councilman Stephen Levin (D-Brooklyn) told The Post.


“They just announced yesterday they were doing them in Los Angeles. We need to be able to do that here in order to safely reopen New York City,” Levin said.


Mayoral press secretary Freddi Goldstein claimed the tests are delayed due to “unforeseen supply chain issues.”


A rep for Aria, Susana Duarte la Suarez, told The Post there’s a problem with the transport medium for the testing kits.


Both parties said they’re working together to resolve the issue.

 I agree with Council Member Levin, everyone should be tested. Especially if we all are going to be rushed into going back to work. I can also understand if he wants to plead with strangers on social media to procure these tests just to prove a smarmy point.

 I wonder if the logistics were done by "Contractor Gadget"

The White House will cut funding for coronavirus testing sites

All Things Considered

Some local officials are disappointed the federal government will end funding for coronavirus testing sites this Friday. In a few places those sites will close as a result. This as criticism continues that not enough testing is available.


In the Philadelphia suburbs, Montgomery County has a drive-through site that has tested 250 people a day since March 21.


"It has been a very successful site. We are hoping by the time it closes Friday afternoon that we will have tested a little over 5,000 individuals," says Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, who chairs the commission in the county of more than 825,000 people.


Montgomery County has been hit hard by the pandemic. By Tuesday the county identified 1,294 positive cases and reported 32 COVID-19-related deaths.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tells NPR, "Many of the Community-Based Testing Sites (CBTS) are not closing, but rather transitioning to state-managed sites on or about April 10."


The agency and a spokesperson for FEMA say the CBTS program originally included 41 sites. It was intended as a stop-gap to bring testing to critical locations, especially for health care facility workers and first responders.

"The transition will ensure each state has the flexibility and autonomy to manage and operate testing sites within the needs of their specific community and to prioritize resources where they are needed the most," the HHS spokesperson said.

Mayor de Blasio stands surrounded by soldiers to protect him from his constituents cries

NY Post

Three livid bystanders heckled Mayor Bill de Blasio — demanding coronavirus tests and better healthcare — as he tried to speak to medical personnel outside Lincoln Hospital in The Bronx Wednesday.

“Yo, de Blasio; I need a test, de Blasio!,” shouted a young man from behind a fence outside Lincoln Hospital, about 40 feet from where the mayor was thanking members of the US Air Force, who were deployed to the public hospital to help treat coronavirus patients.

“I need a test brother. Some people right here need a test. Where they at? Seriously I see you addressing these people what about these homeless right here,” the man yelled, pointing to a crowd outside the hospital.

“All these people right here are sick. Ain’t nobody addressing them,” he screamed.
The group was furious about the dramatic shortage of tests in New York City, a problem plaguing communities across the country — and one that experts chalk up to a series of missteps made by federal officials during the early days of the pandemic.

Coronavirus stats lag of homeless people sleeping outside and in the subway

THE CITY

Hidden in plain sight between a children’s playground and the stream of traffic into Brooklyn, a homeless encampment sits hard by the Manhattan Bridge.

Three makeshift “bedrooms” allow residents to hunker down for the night under an open sky, just a few feet from one another. There’s no sink or soap to follow the city’s wash-your-hands admonition and no sign of hand sanitizer. A pale blue surgical mask lies in the dirt.

A table in one of the bedrooms includes a paperback copy of “Birth of Tragedy,” by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

In the time of coronavirus, this encampment lies outside the reach of the frantic effort to contain an illness that had killed more than 770 New York City residents as of Sunday afternoon. And as the virus spreads, it’s touching the ranks of New Yorkers who live outdoors, bedding down on sidewalks and subways.

 

A man camps out in Times Square on March 24, 2020. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

Last week, only one unsheltered person had tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, according to city officials. By Saturday, there were four — three of whom remain hospitalized.

As for the rest of the estimated 3,200 New Yorkers living on the streets and in subways, keeping tabs on where they are or on who is infected is proving a steep challenge.

The city has stopped tracking down close contacts of those who have COVID-19 as the number of those infected skyrockets, so there is no account of who these four unsheltered individuals had contact with in the days before they tested positive.

Meanwhile, police are breaking up encampments around the boroughs, THE CITY has learned.

“This population is finding it remarkably difficult to do the things they’re being told to do,” said Josh Dean of HumanNYC, a group that presses to house the unsheltered homeless. “The general guidance is to stay at home and wash your hands and unsheltered homeless people can’t do that.”

 

NYCHA weaves a tangled web

From the NY Times:

Mikaila Bonaparte has spent her entire life under the roof of the New York City Housing Authority, the oldest and largest public housing system in the country, where as a toddler she nibbled on paint chips that flaked to the floor. In the summer of 2016, when she was not quite 3 years old, a test by her doctor showed she had lead in her blood at levels rarely seen in modern New York.

A retest two days later revealed an even higher level, one more commonly found in factory or construction workers and, in some cases, enough to cause irreversible brain damage.

Within two weeks, a city health inspector visited the two Brooklyn public housing apartments where Mikaila spent her time — her mother’s in the Tompkins Houses; her grandmother’s in the Gowanus Houses — to look for the source of the lead exposure, records show. The inspector, wielding a hand-held device that can detect lead through multiple layers of paint, found the dangerous heavy metal in both homes. The Health Department ordered the Housing Authority to fix the problems.

The discovery spurred the Housing Authority to action: It challenged the results.

Rather than remove or cover the lead, the Housing Authority dispatched its own inspector who used a different test, documents show. The agency insisted that however Mikaila was poisoned, there was no lead in her apartments.

Construction workers seek drug testing

From NY1:

Dozens of construction workers want the city council to enforce drug and alcohol testing for employees.

The Associated Builders and Contractors Empire State Chapter rallied Monday at the steps of City Hall, calling on the city to enforce the testing.

"Construction is hazardous enough already, without having to worry about if the person next to you is under the influence of something," said an advocate at the rally. "So I think testing that's done by a third party would be beneficial to help give workers the confidence to know that their job site is as safely run as possible."

A performance report that the group released says drug and alcohol use account for nearly one-third of construction accidents nationwide.

City falsified lead testing records

From the Daily News:

City workers falsified records to claim day care centers had tested for lead in drinking water when no tests were actually performed, a city controller audit released Friday found.

Starting in 2008, the city was supposed to make sure all day care centers tested drinking water for lead. But Controller Scott Stringer's auditors found that by 2011, the city Department of Health & Mental Hygiene had dropped the ball.

DOHMH — the agency that's required to inspect all 11,000 child care centers in New York City annually — had more or less given up on the task.

"We have supervisors who told employees to falsify these tests and they never bothered for four years to go back and do the testing," Stringer said. "This is outrageous. Neglecting this lead test is a gamble on the health and safety of our kids."

At first, Stringer found, the city tried to enforce the lead test requirement. But by 2011, inspectors were finding the providers weren't keeping up with the testing requirement.

Soon DOHMH supervisors were instructing underlings to simply mark "tested" at sites that had not be tested. This allowed the city to renew or approve a new license for day care providers without actually testing for lead in drinking water at their sites.

Under pressure to keep child care centers open, the agency's bureau of child care management directed staff to claim that the agency had received lead water test results, regardless of whether such tests had been received.

NYCHA discharging sewage into Hallets Cove

From HarborLab:

The NYC Department of Environmental Protection has discovered that one of the NYC Housing Authority buildings on Hallets Point has been discharging untreated sewage into Hallets Cove. This was revealed when the DEP put blue dye into the system and observed the dye entering the cove, a method for which HarborLAB has long lobbied publicly and in private meetings with the NYCDEP. We’ve been the leader in lobbying for water quality improvement at Hallets Cove and are very grateful for the NYCDEP’s extra efforts, despite many other obligations, which produced this great new progress. We also thank NYCHA managers for requesting additional testing of its systems.

Further testing, as promised by the NYCDEP, must be done. This first clear identification of a contamination source, however, is a great start. HarborLAB looks forward to providing educational and fun programming at Hallets Cove if water quality there vastly improves.

...a NYCDEP official released exciting this exciting information to HarborLAB:

Erik – On September 22, DEP personnel responded to a request from management to inspect the sanitary drains in the Astoria Houses. They discovered uncapped drains that were allowing sanitary flow from one of the buildings to enter the storm sewer and discharge into the cove. This was confirmed by means of a dye test. They issued a Commissioner’s Order for the condition to be corrected (within 30 days), and a follow-up inspection will be made to confirm that the work has been done or the Houses will be issued a Notice of Violation to be adjudicated before the Environmental Control Board.

DeBlasio planning to destroy something that actually works

From Huffington Post:

Even though nearly 70 percent of New York City's public school students are black or Hispanic, very few will be attending the city's most elite public schools when the doors open next week. According to some alumni of these specialized high schools, that doesn't mean their admissions systems are necessarily unfair.

The chance to attend one of the eight exam-based institutions -- like Stuyvesant High School -- depends on the student's score on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT). These schools are considered among the city's best, and competition to get in can be fierce.

"In my opinion, the test system is purely on the basis of merit. There's no room for discrimination or bias," Larry Cary, president of the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation, told The Huffington Post.

Cary is part of the newly formed Coalition of the Specialized High School Alumni Organizations, which represents over 100,000 graduates of those New York City schools. This week, the group announced that it believes the admissions process based on a single exam should remain unchanged.

According to data from the NYC Department of Education, black and Hispanic students last year made up only 12 percent of incoming ninth-graders offered spots at the exam-based high schools. This year, the numbers are basically the same: The share of black and Hispanic students accepted to the prestigious schools adds up to 11.5 percent.

The New York state legislature established the entrance exam system in the early 1970s for Stuyvesant, Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School. As more specialized schools opened, they adopted the same system for the most part. (The city has a ninth specialized school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, that chooses its students based on a combination of auditions and academics.)

Over the years, there have been attempts to reform the admissions process to ensure that the benefits of attending the best public high schools reach all communities in the city. Just this June, state legislators introduced a bill that would require the specialized high schools to factor multiple measures, such as GPA, into their admission decisions, as opposed to relying only on the SHSAT.

The Coalition of the Specialized High School Alumni Organizations disagrees with that approach. The group argues instead for a new initiative to give underrepresented communities access to better SHSAT test preparation and for a policy of letting students on the cusp of admittance apply again.

There are bright children of all races. The reason why there are fewer Black and Hispanic students accepted into prestigious schools is mainly because they tend to be stuck going to shitty middle schools which don't prepare them adequately for test taking of this caliber. So instead of fixing the middle schools, DeBlasio wants to dumb down the admissions process. Of course, the graduates of these schools are smarter than DeBlasio.

Students still have a long way to go

From the NY Post:

New York state fourth- and eighth-graders are slightly better at math and reading than two years ago and about average compared to the rest of the country, say new tests.

But at least six out of every 10 New York students in those grades are below the level called proficient, said the study known as the ­nation’s report card.

Standardized reading and math tests have been given to a sample of US fourth- and eighth-graders since the 1990s to measure basic skills.

The new results, released Thursday by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, found that 32 percent of New York public-school eighth-graders were proficient in math, up 2 percent over tests given in 2011. Only 35 percent were proficient in reading in 2013, the same as two years ago.

The good news is that fourth-graders are doing a bit better. Forty percent of them were rated proficient in math, up 4 percent over 2011, and 37 percent were proficient in reading, an ­increase of 2 percent.

Brownfields not actually tested post-Sandy

From the NY Post:

For more than a month, the Environmental Protection Agency has said Hurricane Sandy did not cause significant problems at any of the 247 Superfund toxic-waste sites it’s monitoring in New York and New Jersey.

But in many cases, no actual tests of soil or water — just visual inspections — are being conducted.

The EPA conducted a few tests right after the storm, but a spokesman couldn’t provide details or locations of any recent testing when asked last week.

The 1980 Superfund law gave the EPA the power to order cleanups of abandoned, spilled and illegally dumped hazardous wastes, such as the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.

“The EPA and the state of New Jersey have not done due diligence to make sure these sites have not created problems,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey.

Concrete tester accused of faking results

From CBS880:

A concrete-testing laboratory faked results for a LaGuardia Airport control tower, the new Yankee Stadium, the Lincoln Tunnel, a hospital and more than a dozen other projects around New York City, according to an indictment.

American Standard Testing and Consulting Laboratories Inc., President Alan Fortich and five staffers were expected to be arraigned Thursday on racketeering and other charges, becoming the latest of a string of concrete labs the Manhattan district attorney’s office has prosecuted on similar charges.

New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based ATSC’s phone number is disconnected, and Fortich didn’t immediately respond to an email message Thursday morning. Defense lawyers’ names weren’t immediately available.

Bloomberg's education statistics are damned lies

From the Wonkster:

For those of you who missed it over the holiday weekend, Sunday’s Post featured an illuminating look at how New York State dumbed down its standardized tests. Among other things she zeroes in on the time frame — 2007 to 2009 — details the extent of the changes that turned New York Sate into an academic Lake Woebegone and traces the changes back to then state education commissioner Richard Mills.

For example, Edelman finds that in 2006 sixth grader had to correctly answer 16 of 39 question to get a level two (out of a possible four) — the lowest level need to get promoted in New York City. By 2009, the students only had to get 7 questions right.

Edelman makes it clear that the test results provided a major boon to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who used the scores to good advantage in his narrow 2009 re-election victory.

Council looks at raising age for FDNY exam

From NY1:

Hundreds of would-be firefighters sat for the New York City Fire Department's entrance exam back in 2007, hoping to fulfill a dream of become members of New York's Bravest. Many aced the exam, but that test, and two others before it, were thrown out because federal judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled they illegally discriminated against blacks and Hispanics.

No firefighters have been hired since and the city can only hire candidates from the invalidated test if the court signs off on the method used. Four years have passed and now many candidates are too old to take a new test that's currently being drafted by the city.

Under the current rule, candidates must be under 29 years of age on the day of the test. NY1 has learned that on Monday, a bill that would formally change that age requirement to 35 will go before the City Council.

Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano supports the age extension and even met with some candidates to tell them he's behind them.

Sources say it's not likely the FDNY will give a new entrance exam until sometime late 2011. Based on its hiring practices in the past, it will take about a year and a half to hire from that list, which means it could be a very long time before the fire department sees any probationary firefighters among its ranks.

The 3 people pictured all passed the test but it was invalidated by the court decision and they are now too old to take it again.

Testing schools for PCBs is inadequate

Hi,

I saw that you posted about the recent study that showed 3 out of 3 NYC schools tested for PCBs had levels above the federal standards. PCBs were most commonly used in construction materials between 1950 and 1978. During that time period approximately 750 Public Schools were either built or renovated (Here is a link to a list of schools built or renovated in that time period). But the DOE's only response so far is to test two schools next summer.

NYCC joined with the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest to demand that the DOE tests all schools possibly contaminated with PCBs and devise an aggressive plan for remediation.

Best,

Olivia Leirer
Online Outreach Coordinator
New York Communities for Change.

NYC schools still suck

From the Daily News:

Over the last four years, the number of children deemed "proficient" on standardized English and math exams has steadily climbed, particularly in the city. In English, 57% of city eighth-graders scored proficient in 2009, up from 37% in 2006. In math, the number rose to 71% from 39%.

While the gains reflected rising achievement, there is fresh and stunning evidence that New York's definition of "proficient" has been a fraud.

To wit: Almost half the eighth-graders who scored at the lowest level eligible to qualify as proficient will never graduate from high school.

To wit: Almost three-quarters of city teenagers who make it through graduation and go on to City University community colleges require remediation before they can tackle course work.

State Education Commissioner David Steiner is about to use these and many other dismal statistics to explain why New York must dramatically overhaul how it measures whether students are actually on track, not only to graduate from high school, but also to attend college.

The exercise will be painful, starting with soon-to-be-released results of this year's standardized tests. As Steiner put it in a meeting with the Daily News Editorial Board, "a lot" of students will be notified that they are sub-par - even though they previously had been graded as proficient.

Instructors who had been satisfied with their students' performance will discover they have not really been getting the job done.

Schools that have seemed excellent will confront being rated as mediocre.