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.

Chancellor Porter screwed up, enables superspreader at Astoria school

Astoria Post 

The city shut down an Astoria public school for 10 days due to a COVID-19 outbreak among students and teachers.

The Department of Education closed the doors of P.S. 166 The Henry Gradstein School beginning Wednesday after 25 positive cases were reported in the last seven days. All classes are being held remotely during the 10-day closure, which ends on Nov. 19.

According to DOE data, 22 students and three staff members tested positive for COVID-19 from Nov. 3 through Nov. 9.

P.S. 166 is only the second school to be fully closed due to a COVID-19 outbreak since the start of the school year. The first was in East Harlem.

The DOE aimed to reduce the number of school closures — which parents said interrupted their childrens’ learning last school year — when it introduced a new COVID-19 policy this term.

The current policy states that schools will only be closed when the city’s health department determines that there is “widespread transmission” in the school. The DOE, however, doesn’t specify how many cases determine the threshold for widespread transmission.

Previously, the DOE shuttered school buildings for two weeks when at least two unrelated coronavirus cases were confirmed. The policy resulted in frequent closures, which parents said created instability and confusion for young students.

The policy change appears to have resulted in fewer interruptions thus far.

Prior to a full closure, the DOE shuttered several classrooms at P.S. 166, meaning full classes of students and their teachers were quarantining and learning remotely.

Since classes began on Sept. 13, there have been 37 total positive cases among the 975 school members — both students and staff — at P.S. 166.

This school already had 15 staffers test positive and Porter kept this "gold standard" going for another 8 weeks. Even more deranged is that a vax short bus was going to stop by PS 166 to get kids inoculated for and I quote Dr. Davey Fauci Jr. "extra layer of protection"

A student died of COVID-19 and Mayor Bill de Blasio, Chancellor Meisha Porter Dr. Dave Chokshi and Dr. Mitchell Katz will not reveal any information about what school the student's from, how the student got infected or when exactly the student died

 

 

 

Gothamist

Another New York City child has died of COVID-19, according to data posted this week by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The death raises the city’s reported toll among the youngest New Yorkers to 30.

Citing privacy concerns, the mayor and the health department wouldn’t confirm the child’s age, when they died and if they were exposed at school. But it’s the first COVID-19 fatality reported among minors (which covers ages 0 to 17 years) since public school students returned to classrooms on September 13th. The city’s last pediatric deaths were counted on August 2nd, when the health department raised the childhood figure from 26 deaths to 29.

Fewer COVID cases have been reported in children over the course of the pandemic, due in part to the lockdowns and the prioritization of adult patients. But infected children are way less likely to be hospitalized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Thank god our youngest kids have been the least affected,” Mayor Bill de Blasio told the Brian Lehrer Show on Friday

Yet when pediatric hospitalizations happen, the kids can suffer routine complications such as respiratory failure and also stand a small chance of developing a later-stage condition known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) (or as it's commonly known as Long COVID - JQ LLC)

 “Thank god our youngest kids have been the least affected,” Mayor Bill de Blasio told the Brian Lehrer Show on Friday

 Admin note: apologies for the long headline, but names have to be named since the city refuses to do it.

Chancellor Porter allows assistant prinicpals who fostered culture of cheating at Maspeth High School to remain at their positions

NY Post 

 Let them work at Taco Bell.

Maspeth High School created fake classes, awarded bogus credits, and fixed grades to push students to graduate — “even if the diploma was not worth the paper on which it was printed,” an explosive investigative report charges.

Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir demanded that teachers pass students no matter how little they learned, says the 32-page report by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools, Anastasia Coleman.

“I don’t care if a kid shows up at 7:44 and you dismiss at 7:45 — it’s your job to give that kid credit,” the principal is quoted as telling a teacher.

Abdul-Mutakabbir told the teacher he would give the lagging student a diploma “not worth the paper on which it was printed” and let him “have fun working at Taco Bell,” the report says.

The teacher “felt threatened and changed each student’s failing grade to a passing one.”

The SCI report confirms a series of Post exposes in 2019 describing a culture of cheating in which students could skip classes and do little or no work, but still pass. 

Kids nicknamed the no-fail rule “the Maspeth Minimum.”

Chancellor Meisha Porter, who received the SCI report on June 4, removed Abdul-Mutakabbir from the 1,200-student school and city payroll in July pending a termination hearing set for next month.

But she left Maspeth assistant principals Stefan Singh and Jesse Pachter — the principal’s chief lieutenants — on the job.

Singh and Pachter executed the principal’s orders, informants said, and helped create classes to grant credits to students who didn’t have to show up — because the classes weren’t even held, according to the report. 

Abdul-Mutakabbir, Singh and Pachter all refused to answer questions by investigators, citing a right to remain silent, SCI says.

In addition, three teachers in the principal’s “clique” – a favored few who followed orders and got lucrative overtime assignments — also remain.