NYC Kids Must Go Remote if Parents Do Not Agree to the School Performing COVID Test Without Them
I came across this New York Post article about 12,000 kids not allowed to return to school after the Christmas holidays over lack of COVID-19 consent forms. Interest piqued because government sucks.
It turns out Mayor Bill de Blasio required a consent form to test your child for COVID without a parent present and would not accept test results from a private doctor.
EXCUSE ME?!
These 12,000 kids will go to remote learning and receive lessons from the principal.
From The New York Post:
Citing the need to limit traffic in school buildings, the agency barred parents from being present for the screens.The DOE also declined to accept results from private doctors, arguing that they needed simultaneous tests in order to establish representative school samples.The agency warned that kids without the forms and those who failed to show up for building instruction would be culled from the ranks of blended learners before winter break.De Blasio has said that principals will be able to determine if they can provide full-time learning once in-person rosters have been finalized.
Oh hell no. You will not do anything with or to my child without me being in the room. Nope. Nope. Nope. Do not care. If my child is under 18 years old I am in the room with them.
I have no problem with random testing, but it would not happen without me.
Parents, along with some teachers, sued New York City over the mandatory tests. They claimed “the Department of Education is not being wholly transparent over the fate of COVID-19 test samples:
They’re specifically looking for a contract the DOE signed with Fulgent Genetics, Inc., which was hired in October to administer the tests. So far, they have only been presented with an agreement, which the group’s attorney, Michael Sussman, argues does not explicitly state that the specimens will be destroyed.”To date, not a single contract has been produced by the DOE or NYC [Health + Hospitals] that proves what is, and is not, permitted to be done with specimens collected from in-school COVID testing,” a statement from NY Teachers For Choice reads. “All such agreements remain secret which is ridiculous as they are all public contracts and should be made available upon request.”The agreement posted on the DOE’s website states that testing labs hired by the agency cannot collect information and store it in any DNA database.
Michael Sussman, the attorney who represents Teachers for Choice, wants more and I do not blame him or the teachers:
But even with those agreements posted, Sussman says their release is not as important as a written contract that explicitly states the test specimens won’t go to any proprietary DNA database, which Fulgent is known for maintaining.“This is not a suit opposing testing the New York City school district. There may be people who oppose testing and they can have their lawsuit litigated in another forum, this is not that case,” Sussman said at a news conference on Monday.
The parents also allege that moving kids to remote learning over refusal to sign consent forms “violates Fourth Amendment privacy rights.”
So New York City has these restrictions, but to no one’s shock, incompetence has crept up in such little time.
The schools have not tested every student with consent forms:
But even with consent forms submitted, not every student has been tested for COVID-19 since the program began. At P.S. 107 in Park Slope, for instance, only one of two cohorts has been tested for COVID-19. When asked about this, de Blasio was skeptical of the lack of testing, despite data from the city Department of Education’s testing tracker website that shows testers repeatedly showed up on days when the same cohort was scheduled for in-person classes.”Any school that’s not going through the right cohort approach, that’s something we want to fix immediately. We can fix immediately,” de Blasio said at a news conference Monday. “That could be as easy as just changing the days when the testing occurs.”
But de Blasio is going to punish those who do not submit a consent form? Rude.
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