Schools, out, of, money

 

NY Daily News 

Cuts to the city’s education budget will be deeply felt in public preschool and summer programs, as well as so-called “community schools” that provide extra services to families beyond what a typical school can offer, Mayor Adams’ administration said Thursday.

The revised plan would shave $547 million off the Education Department’s overall budget this school year — a figure that will grow to $602 million in the 2024-2025 school year and even more in the 2025-2026 year, budget documents show.

“It is about to get really tough,” Schools Chancellor David Banks warned a parent-led education council on Staten Island last week. “The city is in a bad financial situation, the mayor’s been saying. I don’t know if people fully appreciate it.”

Public schools were already headed toward fiscal woe before Adams announced cuts he blamed on the city’s growing cost of housing and caring for migrants.

Many of the educational programs to be trimmed have been buoyed in recent years by federal stimulus. With the end of the pandemic, those funds are set to expire in less than a year — and the city has lacked a plan to save them.

“That money is going away. It’s almost done,” Banks said.

Some $120 million will be saved annually by eliminating thousands of the 37,000 unfilled slots in public preschool programs, which city officials say has been underused by parents and children. Mayor Adams’ staff did not say how many of those seats were on the chopping block, but that decisions would be made with education officials over the coming year.

The Adams administration is also cutting $18 million from community schools over the next two years. Community schools partner with local organizations to provide services not only to students, but their whole families. While kids receive healthcare and mental health counseling, parents can take adult education classes and other services.

NYC health department drops vaccine extortion mandate for school sports participation

 

 

THE CITY 

Students who participate in a range of extracurricular activities including sports will no longer face a COVID vaccine requirement, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday, ending the only mandate that applied to public school students.

In August 2021, the city announced that students participating in “high risk” extracurricular activities must be vaccinated against the coronavirus, a policy that covered roughly 20,000 students in the Public School Athletic League who play sports ranging from bowling to basketball. It also included students in chorus, band, and musical theater programs that weren’t part of their regular course loads.

Adams scrapped that requirement on Tuesday along with the vaccine mandate for private employers just before receiving the latest bivalent booster in front of reporters. But other vaccine requirements affecting public schools still stand: All staff must be vaccinated, including coaches who are employed by the city, and so must any visitors to school buildings, a policy that some parents have criticized.

City officials did not present a clear explanation about why the vaccine mandate is being peeled back in some contexts but not others.

Members and sponsors make THE CITY possible.

“I don’t think anything dealing with COVID is — makes sense,” Adams said when asked about dropping the vaccine mandate for private employees but keeping it for public ones. “You make the decisions based on how to keep our city safe, how to keep our employees operating by taking the vaccine.”

 Sounds like Adams knows how stupid, spiteful and wrong this vaccine mandate is but doesn't have the guts to abolish it entirely. Truly the most compromised elected official in this town.

30,000

 

NY Post

New York City public schools are on track to lose close to 30,000 students by this fall, according to new city data.

Projections from the Office of Student Enrollment, shared with The Post Friday, showed the city Department of Education expects to enroll roughly 28,100 fewer students this fall, and another 2,300 students by the end of the school year.

The figures account for students in all geographic district schools — but do not include those enrolled in charter schools, schools for kids with disabilities, and other nontraditional public programs.

“Here’s what’s happening with the Department of Education,” Mayor Eric Adams said at an unrelated event this week.

“We have a massive hemorrhaging of students — massive hemorrhaging. We’re in a very dangerous place in the number of students that we are dropping,” he said.

By the end of next school year, the largest school district in the nation expects to serve a student population of just 760,439 children, the data show.

The second largest public school system — the Los Angeles Unified School District — enrolls over 600,000 students in kindergarten through twelfth grade, according to its website.

The DOE on Friday doubled down on School Chancellor David Banks’ focus on responding to students’ needs and making families feel heard to stem the tide.

Roughly 120,000 students have fled the public school system over the last five years, according to the DOE.

Officials also pointed to national trends of decreased enrollment, attributing that to diminished birthrates, a lack of affordability, and relocations during the pandemic.

Adding that those problems can’t be solved in half of a year, they were optimistic about plans so far and in the works to lure families back to the public school system.

 

Board Of Education caught wasting school and PPE supplies

Toddlers finally freed from city's mask mandate

 

NY Post 

 Mask-wearing will finally be optional for toddlers in city schools soon, Mayor Adams announced Thursday — about two weeks before the end of classes.

The controversial face-covering mandate for youngsters ages 2 to 4 in public schools, daycare centers and other city-run settings will be lifted beginning Monday, according to a press release. The last day of class is set for June 27.

“I have always said that the science will guide us out of the pandemic, and because we have followed the data, which shows that cases are steadily falling, we‘ve beaten back the latest COVID-19 surge,” Adams said in a prepared statement.

The mayor had initially announced the impending end to the policy two months ago, before reneging amid increased spread of the virus.

In the announcement Thursday, Adams said City Hall continues to “strongly” recommend that “New Yorkers of all ages continue to wear masks indoors.”  The city will keep providing masks at DOE schools for those who want to wear them, according to the press release.

Daniela Jampel, an outspoken advocate for lifting the toddler mask mandate, told The Post she was “overjoyed” that little ones would get the same “freedom of choice” as other New Yorkers to not wear masks.

“Toddlers were masked for far too long in this city, and today’s announcement is a step in the direction of restoring normalcy to our youngest residents,” said Jampel, a mother of a 4-year-old and former former city Law Department staffer who in April crashed an Adams press conference in City Hall to demand he lift the rule. 

Asked why Adams had opted to lift the mandate now as the school year comes to a close, a mayoral rep referred The Post to a series of tweets in which the city’s top doctor declared that the Big Apple is “finally past the peak of this wave.”

“Cases have fallen since May 23, giving us confidence that we have passed the peak and we are heading into a safer environment,” wrote Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan.

  They wait til the end of the school year to do this. That's the real safety metric they are basing this on. Vaccine extortion worker mandates remain intact.

 

99 and a half won't do

NY Post

Mayor Eric Adams rolled out a record-busting $99.7 billion budget proposal on Tuesday fueled in part by an uptick in tax revenues, spending that he argued is essential for the Big Apple’s comeback from the coronavirus pandemic.

Adams unfurled his spending pitch to the City Council with great fanfare during a 50-minute speech at the historic Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, during which he highlighted his new anti-gun and homelessness initiatives, hiring hundreds of new corrections officers for embattled jail system and new funding to clean the Big Apple’s streets and parks.

“This budget puts people — especially those who have often been left behind — front and center. Success will be measured by how much we accomplish, not how much we spend,” he said. “Despite the massive shocks to our system in the past two years, our city enters fiscal year 2023 on strong financial footing.”

Hizzoner’s new spending plan would increase the Police Department’s annual budget from the $5.4 billion authorized by lawmakers to $5.6 billion and spending on the Department of Homeless Services would rise from $2.2 billion to $2.3 billion.

The massive Department of Education would see its allocation trimmed back from $31.6 billion to $31 billion, primarily due to enrollment declines and leaving hundreds of unfilled positions open.

41% of public school students did not comply

Chalkbeat

Just over half of New York City public school students are fully vaccinated, according to data the education department released Friday.

In total, 59% of the city’s public school students have received at least one vaccine dose and nearly 52% are considered fully vaccinated.

The information is required under City Council law, and includes a breakdown of school-level vaccination rates and the number of students who have consented to in-school COVID testing. Updates will be shared every two weeks. The figures don’t include charter schools.

The data show that there are wide disparities by school and neighborhood. Schools in Brooklyn’s District 23, which includes Ocean Hill, Brownsville and parts of East New York, had the lowest rates of vaccination, with just 38% of students receiving at least one dose. Districts 16, which includes a significant chunk of Bedford-Stuyvesant, and 18, which includes Flatbush and Canarsie, both had vaccination rates of 43%. On Staten Island, the rate is 47%.

“In the coming months, we are working with our partner health care agencies on an outreach campaign to encourage vaccination in the communities with the lowest rates,” education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said in a statement.

Manhattan’s District 2 has the highest vaccination rate, with 80% of students receiving at least one dose. That district spans much of Lower Manhattan, some of Chinatown, and the Upper East Side. Not far behind: District 3 in Manhattan, which includes the Upper West Side and part of Harlem, at 77%. Next is District 26 in Bayside, Queens, where 74% of students have at least one dose.

At nearly 250 of the city’s schools, fewer than a third of students have received at least one dose. Out of the city’s nearly 1,600 district schools, the share of students who have been vaccinated with at least one dose ranges from from just 12% to 94%.

Board of Ed vaccination retribution

NY Post 

They are unvaccinated and shunned.

New York City educators granted medical or religious exemptions from the required COVID-19 vaccination were mandated to report to school buildings Monday where some said they were treated like pariahs.

The teachers and other staffers who showed up at a building on Ocean Avenue in Flatbush were met with hostility from vaccinated DOE workers already at the site. The unjabbed were directed to one stairwell — forbidden to walk down the first-floor corridor where the vaccinated staff work, and forbidden from using their restroom.

Upstairs, those with exemptions made do with only a single toilet that flushed irregularly, or tiny children’s toilets, staffers told The Post. The kiddie commodes were replaced Wednesday night after they complained.

“The whole thing just reeks of discrimination and segregation. I never in my life have ever experienced something like this,” said a teacher who normally works on Staten Island and has a medical exemption for the vaccine.

The teacher, who had been working from her New Jersey home since October, says commuting to the Brooklyn site takes up to three hours one way.

A Staten Island administrator reporting to the building said the DOE also reassigned her from the regular duties she had performed from home since September to work remotely doing what she called busy work.

“I’m miserable because I’m not with children and I’m not with my teachers. I’m sitting here in a room not helping a soul. I feel like we’re being punished,” said the educator who has a medical exemption.

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.

COVID al fresco still going on at NYC schools

  

NY Post

Talk about cold cuts.

Kids in some city schools are still eating lunch outdoors each day due to social distancing rules despite plunging temperatures and steamed parents.

“It’s getting a little ridiculous at this point,” said a mom at MS 104 in Manhattan, where kids again pulled apart their string cheese in 39-degree weather Wednesday. “They’ve eaten outdoors every day this week. It’s cold.”

A mom at a Park Slope elementary school said her child has also been dining al freezo for the entire year and began complaining about the conditions this week.

“We’ve heard no plans to bring them inside anytime soon,” she said. “In fact, they are still asking for parents to give the school their Fresh Direct bags to create seating pads. It doesn’t sound like they’re going in.”

The Department of Education allowed principals to devise their own lunch arrangements this year while complying with social distancing rules.

While some have managed to keep kids under a roof while eating, others have headed for the great outdoors.

“It’s already hard enough for a little kid to eat outside while sitting on concrete with a mask on,” said the mother of a Brooklyn fourth-grader who ate outside this week. “What does the weather have to be to go inside? How low does it have to go?”

Donnie Richards brings civics to students

Queens Post 

 The Queens borough president has launched a new initiative to educate high schoolers about city government and the importance of civic engagement.

The borough president’s office is sending in staff into Queens high schools to teach students about the role city officials and elected leaders play in local government, as well as how city government can address quality-of-life issues.

The initiative, dubbed “Civics in the Classroom,” is being offered to one high school per week. The program kicked off this morning at Bayside High School.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards joined the school’s principal, Tracy Martinez, and hosted a discussion in front of hundreds of students about the importance of voting and getting involved in one’s community.

Richards said that while the younger generation is leading many political movements, there are many young people who are not engaged with or educated about their local government.

“The youngest among us are courageously leading nationwide movements around systemic discrimination, gun violence, voting rights, climate change and more, giving us all so much hope for the future of our society,” he said in a statement. “But there are still far too many young people who are unaware of their power or unsure of their place in our city,”

This was Curtis Sliwa's idea.

Far Rockaway school is the third "gold standard" school to shut down because of COVID infections

Chalkbeat 

Village Academy in the Far Rockaway section of Queens will close Thursday after health department officials determined COVID-19 is spreading in the school, according to the education department.

It is the second New York City public school closed this week, and the third closure this school year.

As of Wednesday, city data show there had been nine partial classroom closures at the middle school, which shares a building with other schools. The school reported 14 cases among students over the past week and two among staff, according to state data.

Students will transition to remote learning for the next 10 days and can return to in-person learning on Nov. 22. Any student without a device can pick one up tomorrow at the school.

The co-located schools will remain open.

“We do not hesitate to take action to keep school communities safe and our multi-layered approach to safety has kept our positivity rate extremely low,” Department of Education spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon said in an email. “All staff at DOE are vaccinated and all students at Village Academy have access to a device to ensure live, continuous learning.”

The closure was announced on the same day that P.S. 166 was shuttered. The school, which sits on the border of Long Island City and Astoria in Queens, saw 22 students and three staff members test positive since Nov. 3.

The fact that there have been so few closures this year, “speaks volumes to all the precautions that were taken to create a safe environment,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Chokshi screwed up

 

NY Daily News

A city effort to vaccinate newly eligible kids ages 5 to 11 against coronavirus kicked off Monday morning at school clinics — but ran into some early hiccups.

Anxious parents spent hours waiting outside some schools in the hopes of securing a vaccine dose for their elementary-age kids, only to be told the clinic didn’t have enough supply.

Parents at Public School 8 in Brooklyn Heights began lining up at 6 am for the city-run school vaccine distribution, with the line swelling to more than 100 people, one parent said. But city workers running the clinic said they could only give out 50 shots because they needed to conserve doses for other schools they were visiting Monday, according to parents at the school.

“I just don’t understand why they would have taken this approach,” said Michele Walsh, the parent of a first-grader and a fifth-grader, who was turned away after waiting for more than an hour.

Walsh said she refrained from looking for other appointments for her kids because she was counting on getting them vaccinated at the school.

She added that PS 8 administrators even gave city officials a heads-up in advance that there was going to be a huge demand for the shots Monday morning.

Walsh was even more frustrated that her kids had to miss the start of school while waiting outside in vain for a COVID-19 vaccine. “If they had just given us numbers and told us how many they had, the kids could’ve been in school instead of waiting outside,” she said.

A parent at PS 40 in Manhattan reported a similar supply problem, and said the shipment of shots still hadn’t shown up by 10:45 am — nearly four hours after the distribution was supposed to start.

100,000

THE CITY

Nearly 1 in 10 New York City public school students were homeless last school year, a staggering rate that has barely budged for several years.

About 101,000 students lived in unstable, or temporary, housing in the 2020-2021 school year, according to an analysis of state data released Monday by Advocates for Children. That’s a larger number of children than the entire school district of Denver.

Homeless students face a host of barriers to education in any given year, especially in terms of attendance. In a year when the COVID pandemic continued to disrupt in-person schooling and place extraordinary challenges on families and students across the five boroughs, homeless students faced even more hardships.

Accessing classwork and instruction — which was difficult for many children last school year — was sometimes impossible for homeless students and their families. Family shelters did not have Wi-Fi and are only getting it now, following a lawsuit from Legal Aid. Even students equipped with city-issued internet-enabled iPads struggled to log on for classes because shelters had spotty connections to the cell service that those devices depend on.

Now, advocates are looking ahead to Mayor-elect Eric Adams in hopes that he’ll take aggressive steps to curb student homelessness and address their dire educational outcomes.

Just 29% of homeless students passed their grades 3-8 reading exams, while just 27% passed math — both about 20 percentage points lower than their peers living in stable housing, according to 2019 data. Sixty-one percent of homeless students graduated on time in the school year before the pandemic, compared to 84% of their peers with stable housing.

“We are hopeful that given the incredibly poor outcomes we’re seeing, particularly for students in shelter, that Mayor-elect Adams’ administration will recognize the crisis for what it is,” said Jennifer Pringle, director of Project Learning In Temporary Housing at Advocates for Children.

More than 3,800 students had no shelter and lived in cars, parks or abandoned buildings, while another 200 students lived in hotels or motels, according to the Advocates for Children report.

Another 28,000 lived in city shelters, while about 65,000 students lived “doubled-up” with friends or family. (Information was not available for roughly 3,900 students, the organization said.)

Though the rate was similar to prior years, the overall number of homeless students — 94% of them Black or Hispanic — appeared to have fallen by 9.5% year-over-year. That decrease could be due in part to a drop in student enrollment across the system, which lost more than 3% of its students last school year. Additionally, schools may have faced more challenges in identifying where students lived because the majority of children chose to learn remotely — an issue that advocates also flagged last year.

Homeless students were far less likely to show up for remote or in-person school last year. Between January and June 2021, attendance rates for students living in shelters were roughly 10 to 14 percentage points less than students in stable housing, according to city data analyzed by Advocates for Children.

The struggles have continued this year. The first couple weeks of this school year, the attendance rate was about 73% for those in temporary housing, rising to 78% more recently, compared to the citywide rate hovering around the “high 80s and low 90s,” according to what education department officials have shared with Advocates for Children.

Eric Adams plans to demask students

NY Daily News 

Mayor-elect Eric Adams said Sunday he would like to see mask mandates at schools lifted by the end of the academic year, now that children are eligible for COVID vaccines.

“Not being able to see the smiles of our children, I believe that has a major impact,” New York City’s incoming mayor said on CNN.

He sounded a different tone than outgoing Mayor de Blasio, who said on Thursday that he wanted to keep the school mask mandate in place, at least in the short term, “out of an abundance of caution.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved the Pfizer vaccine on Tuesday for children ages 5 to 11.

“If we can find a safe way to do it, I look forward to getting rid of the mask, but it must be done with the science,” Adams said. “Part of the development of socialization of a child is that smile.”

President Biden abdicates his immigration crisis fiasco onto New York City and Long Island schools

 

NY Post 

America’s crisis at the border is now a crisis in New York public schools.

The Biden Administration is flooding New York City and Long Island communities with thousands of unaccompanied immigrant minors captured crossing the Mexico-US border, often arriving here, as The Post recently reported, via clandestine flights in the middle of the night.

Data from the US Department of Health of and Human Services confirms that the New York area is a hotspot for shipping children rounded up illegally crossing the border without guardians.

Four counties alone, Suffolk, Queens, Nassau and Brooklyn, took in nearly 5,000 unaccompanied children in just 11 months, from Oct. 1, 2020 to Aug. 31, 2021, according to HHS.

With public education in the area costing about $28,000 per child, per year, that’s a $139 million hit on New York taxpayers to educate children arriving unexpectedly just in those four counties.

The arrival of these children, mostly teenage boys, in local schools is creating a classroom crisis that is strapping educational resources, costing taxpayers millions in un-budgeted dollars, and aiding gang-recruiting efforts, argue parents, teachers and immigration experts.

“We’re at maxed capacity for kids with special needs, but they’ll keep sending them,” lamented one high school teacher in Queens, among the communities hardest hit by the illegal-immigrant student dump.

Fifteen counties nationwide have received more than 1,000 unaccompanied children caught at the border over the past year, reported HHS. The top five counties on the list are all in Texas, California and south Florida.

But four of those 15 counties are right here in New York: Suffolk (1,528), Queens (1,314), Nassau (1,064) and Brooklyn (1,046). The Bronx nearly made the list, with 461 unaccompanied students. New York is the only state in America with four counties receiving more than 1,000 unaccompanied minors, despite its 1,700-mile distance from the southern border.

 

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.

The Blaz abolishes schools gifted and talented program

 

 NY Post

Mayor Bill de Blasio is phasing out New York City’s Gifted and Talented program, he announced Friday — bowing to critics who assert that the coveted model is racist.

Current students in the accelerated learning program can stay in their separate schools and classrooms to completion. But new cohorts will be completely eliminated by fall 2022, ending testing for kids as young as four.

The model — which admits roughly 2,500 kids per year — is being replaced by Brilliant NYC, a program offering students aged 8 and up chances for accelerated learning while staying in their regular classrooms with other pupils.

The Department of Education said teachers would identify kids best suited for the new initiative.

De Blasio announced the major overhaul despite being in the final months of his term in office. 

The candidates to replace him, Democrat Eric Adams and Republican Curtis Sliwa, have both made clear they did not want to completely eliminate the program, which critics have attacked in part because of the higher number of white and Asian students that gain entry through the exam.

“Brilliant NYC will deliver accelerated instruction for tens of thousands of children, as opposed to a select few,” de Blasio said. “Every New York City child deserves to reach their full potential, and this new, equitable model gives them that chance.”

But critics quickly ripped Hizzoner for making the decision so late in his administration after earlier calls for him to leave it to his successor.

 “This is utterly irresponsible and reprehensible,” state Sen. John Liu (D-Queens) told The Post. “This is the worst act I’ve seen under this mayor. And there have been many of them.”

Liu had previously ripped City Hall for failing to engage parents on the polarizing issue — and intensified his critique after Friday’s rollout.

“The problem here is that the Gifted and Talented program has been part of city schools for a long time,” he said. “The premise is that kids learn at different rates. Changing that policy should involve a full public discussion involving all stakeholders. Instead, he chose the easy way out — fiat in the waning days of his administration when they can’t implement anything

 

de Blasio's D.O.E. will use fed funding to contract non-profits for schools recovery

NY Post

The city Department of Education has allocated $350 million in federal funding to combat educational damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, The Post has learned.

According to a budgeting memo issued last week, the money will support a range of initiatives from literacy programs to new arts offerings.

Every school in the nation’s largest public system will receive a minimum of $75,000 and a maximum of $600,000 to aid in “academic recovery” after the pandemic upended consecutive school years.

Each recipient must dedicate at least 20 percent of its award to pay for arts-related programs, according to the memo.

While the money cannot be used to hire new full-time teachers, the document states that schools can use it to finance additional class sessions and nonprofit partnerships aimed at helping kids get back on track.

“This funding is available for expenses incurred September 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022,” the memo reads. “Schools are encouraged to schedule funds and implement eligible programming as soon as possible.”

The money will also be used to pay teachers to systematically assess the academic standing of their students and address learning gaps.

Try not to breathe kids

 

  

Gothamist

Thousands of New York City classrooms have been cleared as having adequate ventilation for safe, in-person instruction even though they do not meet the COVID-19 standards set by federal experts or recommended by building industry experts, WNYC/Gothamist has found.

A simple, green checkmark indicates whether “operational ventilation” is available in one of the 58,600 classrooms surveyed by the city’s Department of Education (DOE). As of August 29th, officials have awarded this seal of approval to 97% of these classrooms.

But the DOE classifies at least 4,000 of these approved classrooms as relying exclusively on functioning windows—a lower standard than what would be expected to prevent airborne transmission of the coronavirus indoors. If these window-only rooms lost their “operational” status, it would triple the number of classrooms currently ineligible for in-person learning this fall.

“Windows are not a reliable way for you to get outside air,” said Dr. Marwa Zaatari, a mechanical engineer and member of the Epidemic Task Force of the American Society of Heating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), which is cited in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations for schools and other buildings. “Is it better than zero? Yes. But, as a ventilation engineer, can I predict how much [fresh] air you're getting at each hour of the day? The answer is no.”

 

 

 The Classic

Given that aerosolized particles with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can remain suspended in the air for long stretches of time, ventilation and air purification represent key preventative strategies. In its guide to opening schools, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends schools consider adding portable air purifier units with high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters to “enhance air cleaning wherever possible.” The CDC’s FAQ on ventilation notes, “Portable HEPA filtration units that combine a HEPA filter with a powered fan system are a preferred option for auxiliary air cleaning.” 

An investigation by The Classic has found that, though it has told the public that two “HEPA Purifiers” will be in each classroom this fall, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) will be providing devices (Intellipure compact air purifiers) that do not match that description. The DOE has repeatedly referred to the Intellipure units as “HEPA purifiers” on its website, in a “DOE Homecoming Health and Safety Guide,” and in statements to The Classic. Multiple experts have told The Classic that to be a “HEPA Purifier” the units should have within them an actual HEPA filter, but they do not.

When asked by The Classic to comment on the accuracy of the DOE’s decision to describe the Intellipure units as “HEPA purifiers,” DOE spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said, “We never said that the units had HEPA filters. We said that they met the standard for HEPA filtration. That they are HEPA purifiers.”

On Twitter, Mr. Styer claimed that HEPA refers to a rating that could be applied to “different types of machines” that filter particles at the level of HEPA filters. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the designation HEPA is specifically applied to “a type of pleated mechanical air filter” tested to a standard level of efficiency. Citing the CDC, Mr. Styer said that because Intellipure’s process as a whole can filter at HEPA filter levels, it is a HEPA purifier. The Classic contacted the CDC, however, and a representative said the two technologies are distinct. 

“The distinction between an air cleaner using a true high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter and one that does not should be clear,” said Dr. Steve Martin, an engineer and expert on ventilation at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, a branch of the CDC, in an email to The Classic. 

Dr. Martin said that while “it is certainly possible for other air cleaners to use a combination of filtration technologies that can perform at ‘HEPA-equivalent’ levels (and maybe even higher),” the Intellipure air purifiers are not true HEPA devices. “The distinction should be clear between true HEPA air cleaners and others,” he said. 

The difference between a true HEPA filter and a HEPA-equivalent device can be significant, according to Dr. Martin. “The biggest concern with air cleaners claiming ‘HEPA-equivalent’ performance is how they perform over time. As a true HEPA filter loads with particles over time, the overall filtration efficiency will only increase.  The same can not necessarily be said for other technologies,” he said. 

Other experts spoke to The Classic about whether it was accurate for the DOE to describe the Intellipure units as HEPA purifiers to the public.

“HEPA refers to having a specific type of filter… so a product should have one of those filters in it to be a HEPA purifier,” said Dr. Delphine Farmer, an atmospheric chemist with a research focus in air pollution from Colorado State University, in an email to The Classic. 

According to an email from Dr. Donna Green, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia and a founding member of the Climate Change Research Centre, “[Intellipure] uses a different process, which may meet or exceed the filtration standards of a HEPA, but that only makes it HEPA like, not true HEPA.”

The HEPA filter level of efficiency is set by the United States Department of Energy, but manufacturers do not receive certification for their filters from the government. Dr. Martin said, “HEPA filters are tested and certified by their manufacturers according to consensus standards.” The consensus testing standards he referenced come from the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology, a nonprofit membership organization.