NYC Mayor de Blasio Allows In-Person Elementary School Starting on December 7
The science was in front of your face the whole time, de Blasio.
Science has shown us for a while that schools are pretty safe from COVID-19 spreads. That didn’t stop New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio from shutting down the schools due to a spike in cases in the city.
Parents got ticked and *now* de Blasio acknowledges the science the Democrats supposedly embrace so much.
From The New York Post:
De Blasio shuttered in-school learning Nov. 19 after the city hit a seven-day rolling average 3 percent positive-test rate for the virus.
He came under fire at the time for sticking with that threshold even though tests showed lower coronavirus rates in the city’s schools than in their surrounding communities.In his sudden about-face Sunday, de Blasio said that while the Big Apple’s latest rolling average is 3.9 percent, the city is still reopening schools because “we have so much proof now of how safe schools can be” amid the contagion.
“This has come from real-life experience in the biggest school system in American, right here in New York City,” the mayor said.
Something tells me that de Blasio thinks people bought this act. The man could not come out of it without egg on his face.
He should have just admitted he was wrong.
The facts about school and COVID-19 spreads were in de Blasio’s face the whole entire time. He is either stupid or power-hungry. Maybe both.
De Blasio admitted the recent closure came with no reopening plan. His whiplash has only stirred anger among parents:
“My head is whipping trying to figure out what is what,’’ said Millie Gondor, 42, who has two kids in the system.
“They don’t make it easy,’’ she said of city officials.
Betta Buffallomonte, 37, who has a child in public school, added, “De Blasio is not very decisive. Open them, close them — doesn’t give you much faith in that they know what they’re doing.”
De Blasio’s orders only apply to elementary schools. Unfortunately, special education students cannot return to school until December 10.
Three days might seem little to you and me, but that is a lot for special-ed children.
The New York Post published a heartbreaking article on November 20 expressing concerns of parents with special-needs kids.
The parents are not lazy. It’s that special education teachers have specific training to teach these kids. Plus, some special-needs require different types of teachers whether it’s verbal, expression, or physical therapy:
“For us it’s not inconvenient, it’s devastating,” said Julia DeBlasio Olsheski, a data analyst who has a 7-year-old third grader in a specialized autism program run by the Department of Education.
“I’ve had to hold him like I am a human straitjacket just to keep him in front of the computer,” said Olsheski, who estimates her son has only received 18 of the normally 60 sessions of occupational, speech and physical therapies he usually receives by this time in the school year.
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Olsheski said her 7-year-old son has broken a number of devices and has even started hurting himself.
“He has started behaviors we have never seen before,” Olsheski said. “He is losing essential life skills that took seven years to gain and they are gone.”
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Maybe someone pointed out that public schools are a huge source of Communist indoctrination, and closing them was self-defeating (from a propaganda point of view).
Don’t worry, his schools chancellor (ha!) Richard Carranza has doubled down on every known indoctrination technique for teachers to use in person or shove down the internet to the kids screens.
DeBlasio is a curious politician, literally just sitting there most of the time. His original instinct, the only thing I give him credit for in 7 years, was not to close the schools to begin with last March. Lord Cuomo and angry teachers union folk drove him from that decision pronto, so it’s nice to see he at least has agreed to reopen the schools. With a man this weak, that’s the best New Yorkers are going to get.
But they keep voting Democratic
Or at least that’s what the voting machines say
This Sunday there will be a Medical Freedom Rally and March at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, which is less than 3 minutes’ walk from Chuck Schumer’s apartment, and less than half an hour’s walk from Bill de Blasio’s house (which now has a tenant in it until he has to move out of Gracie Mansion at the end of next year).
“For us it’s not inconvenient, it’s devastating,” said Julia DeBlasio Olsheski, a data analyst who has a 7-year-old third grader in a specialized autism program run by the Department of Education.
“I’ve had to hold him like I am a human straitjacket just to keep him in front of the computer,” said Olsheski, who estimates her son has only received 18 of the normally 60 sessions of occupational, speech and physical therapies he usually receives by this time in the school year.
Why exactly are these sessions the taxpayer’s responsibility anyways?
Because of the ADA
Why indeed?
Los Angeles, with around 600,000 students in LAUSD and many hundreds of thousands in private schools, is still almost entirely shut down, with no end in sight (privates here are under the same restrictions as publics, so there is no escape hatch). Some preschools are open, and the county instituted a waiver system for schools to get permission to have IEP kids on campus.
But, for the most part, no child in all of LA County has seen the inside of a school since March, and will likely not do so until March comes around again…or until the police are defunded and we’ve achieved perfect social justice and the entire world has joined hands to sing kumbaya, whichever comes later.
“[S]pecial education teachers have specific training to teach these kids. Plus, some special-needs require different types of teachers whether it’s verbal, expression, or physical therapy”
I am the father of a 9th grade autistic son. He was in special education in the public schools until 7th grade, after which we pulled him out and are now homeschooling.
Here is what my wife and I have discovered about special education:
1. Special education in public schools is either done very well, or piss-poor. Nothing in between. It is feast or famine.
2. The crucial difference is the special education teacher and the school administration. In the 7th grade our son (in addition to the usual issues 7th grade boys face) had the worst of both worlds: a rotating series of special education teachers and a clueless administration. Because he was never able to form a relationship with his teacher (there is no way to overstate how important that is) our son spent a distressing amount of time in fights. He had zero history of physical altercations with students, yet he beat up another boy in PE class. The school administration acted like they never had a special needs student in their school, and kept putting him in one situation after another guaranteed to frustrate him and and make him fail.
3. There are many excellent special education teachers in kindergarten and elementary school. Starting with 5th or 6th grade there seemed (to us) to be a noticeable drop off on teacher quality. Note also that many special needs students HATE being labeled special needs, as they equate that with being dumb.
4. There is no “one size fits all” that really works in education. This is especially true with special needs students. If you are not doing your child’s Individual Education Plan yourselves, your child will be ground up by the system. (It’s ok to get input from the professionals, but YOU should get the final say. Don’t outsource to anyone, no matter how many fancy degrees they have).
Since we started homeschooling I now have hope he will be able to attend college, or at least obtain training that will lead to useful employment (I had no hope before). This year our son is studying algebra, world geography , English I, Bible Knowledge, and Integrated Physics and Chemistry. He is also learning Maya, a 3D graphics program, and in the spring he will learn Python programming – two skills he probably would not get to learn in public schools.
Just in time for school to be out for winter break.
And for the Sean Hannity types who find pretext in virtually everything as a “war on Christmas”, I will phrase it for their benefit: Just in time for school to be ot for Christmas break.
In Wa state, the teachers unions are pushing for zero cases before they return.
We were told the hybrid model (2 partial days in school) will have even less teacher interaction than fully remote.