“I’m just here for teachers’ rights,” she said.

Vasquez joined hundreds who marched as part of New York’s ongoing Freedom Rally, a constellation of organizations in opposition to the vaccine mandate, which requires the Department of Education’s roughly 3,000 remaining unvaccinated teachers to have received at least one dose of the vaccine to remain active employees of the city. 

“I love my job. This is so upsetting to me that I’ve dedicated so much of my life – you know, I’m a devoted teacher,” said Vasquez. “Now they’re saying I can’t work unless I get vaccinated.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio estimated that 8,000 of the DOE’s nearly 150,000 school-based employees are out of compliance as of this morning. Vasquez, who teaches at P.S. 372 and has over 20 years of classroom experience, believes she should be able to use her sick and personal days to remain on payroll, since she claims to only use either in extreme circumstances. As of Monday, she’s on unpaid leave. 

Early last month, an independent arbitrator ruled that New York City teachers with qualified medical or religious exemptions must either be offered non-classroom assignments, a severance package, or be placed on unpaid leave that continues to provide them healthcare coverage. 

“I feel like if we’re practicing all these safety protocols, then the teachers will be fine,” said Vasquez. “It’s the children that are getting Covid, so I feel like it should be up to me. I’d rather get it and develop my own antibodies than have what they call a vaccine.” 

Last Friday, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor declined to hear an attempt to block New York City’s vaccine mandate, giving the city the green light to require employees to have received one Covid-19 vaccination dose by 5 p.m.

By the end of the day Monday, 95% of full time employees had received at least one shot, including 96% of teachers and 99% of principals. Since the mayor’s mandate was announced in August, 43,000 injections have been administered, including 18,000 in the past 10 days. The United Federation of Teachers (U.F.T.) announced on Monday that a 1,000 teachers had been vaccinated over the weekend to remain on the district’s payroll. 

While the city claims to have thousands of substitute teachers and paraprofessionals waiting in the wings to supplant employees, many, including the U.F.T., are highly skeptical that the plan in place will adequately address their absence. U.F.T. estimates that two-thirds of public schools could face disruptions resulting from staff shortages. 

Garrett Ramirez is a paraprofessional with Energy Tech High School in Queens and a member of the steering committee for Teachers for Choice, an organization in opposition to New York City’s vaccine mandate. With 15 years of experience, Ramirez can understand why some of his peers are capitulating to the city’s mandate, though he would only consider getting vaccinated after clinical trials conclude near the end of 2022 or the beginning of 2023.  

“Unfortunately, some teachers are being coerced, some of them are caving in, in order to preserve their jobs and income for their families,” said Ramirez. 

With appearances from Founder Michael Kane on outlets such as Fox News and a petition with a running total of 52,000 signatories,Teachers for Choice is bolstering support and digging in their heels. A restraining order was filed yesterday morning in the ongoing Kane vs de Blasio in an effort to stop the vaccine mandate from being implemented. 

Kane vs de Blasio, originally filed in federal court on September 21, challenges the Department of Education’s mandate as ‘immoral and illegal.’ The lawsuit claims that the mandate violates fundamental constitutional rights by ‘discriminating on the basis of religion and medical status’ and ‘places unconstitutional conditions of employment.’ 

“They’ve (the D.O.E.) denied almost all the religious exemptions and all, almost all of the medical exemptions,” said Ramirez, who was denied a religious exemption himself. “Religious exemptions are supposed to be based upon personal religious convictions, not upon an established church. It actually violates the establishment clause in the first amendment to apply that criteria.”

Ramirez plans to apply for a medical exemption next, this time seekling to qualify as having natural immunity.  

“The science of natural immunity is kind of overwhelming,” said Ramirez, noting a peer-reviewed article from the British Medical Journal and research by Johns Hopkins surgical oncologist Dr. Marty Makary as evidence. “I have recovered from Covid-19, I’ve tested positive for antibodies twice. Antibodies are only the tip of the iceberg as far as natural immunity goes.”

While much is still unknown about the durability of either vaccine or natural immunity, a study released in August from CDC found that vaccination offers higher protection than previous Covid-19 infection, noting that the unvaccinated have 2.34 times the odds of reinfection as the vaccinated. Dr. Makary’s colleague, the infectious disease expert Dr. Anna Durbin, cited research from Johns Hopkins Center for Immunization Research that estimated those odds even higher, at 2.5 times as likely for reinfection. 

And while New York City remains an area at ‘high risk of transmission’ with an average of 1,662 cases per day over the last week, city data available for the year through the end of August shows remarkably strong protection for the vaccinated. Just 0.33% vaccinated individuals have contracted the virus and 96.9% of those hospitalized were unvaccinated at the time of their hospitalization.  

Ramirez is optimistic that Kane vs De Blasio will prove the vaccine mandates are unconstitutional. He is considering all his options, like transitioning to virtual teaching or moving out of the city. 

“At the end of the day, these mandates are really intimidation tactics,” said Ramirez. “It’s an act of psychological terrorism, frankly. I’m not going to succumb to it, and I don’t think that anyone should.”

The post Some city teachers protest vaccine mandate appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

“I want them to understand that this is a process that is laid before us via the Governor,” CNUSD Board Member John Zickefoose said prior to passing the resolution. “I don’t want parents of middle schoolers and high schoolers to think we don’t care about them.” 

Governor Newsom released a Blueprint for a Safer Economy on Aug. 28. The blueprint contains a tier system that identifies the risk level of each county based on the number of new cases and the percentage of positive tests in the area. CNUSD is located in Riverside County. As of September 10th, Riverside is in Tier 1 (Widespread Risk) and can’t start in-person schooling until it reaches Tier 2 (Substantial Risk).  School districts that haven’t reached Tier 2 are allowed to apply for a waiver to start limited in-person schooling for grades TK-6. CNUSD will start preparing the waiver application now that the Board has passed this resolution.

Maddie Root  shows off her remote schooling station. Photo courtesy of Allison Root.

“The only schools around us that have [applied for the waiver] are private schools, no public schools have applied yet,” Allison Root, the mother of , Maddie Root, a third grader in the district said. “No one has applied and everyone is wondering why.”

The application requires extensive proof of compliance with the state safety guidelines for schools. It also requires prior consultation with labor, parent, and community organizations. Although the teachers ‘union hasn’t started negotiations, this requirement has led to speculation among  parents that the teachers’ union is causing a delay in the process. 

“These unions fight and fight and fight and say they can’t open,” an unidentified parent said during the public comment portion of the school board meeting.  “I think this is truly an injustice. People are still going to the grocery store, people are still going to target, everyone seems to be doing that safely.” 

Meg E’amato, who has taught in the district for 22 years, expressed a number of concerns about reopening.  She is not against in-person schooling and understands that parents want their kids to return to campus, but she has serious reservations. She believes that some parents aren’t seeing the big picture.

“A lot of our members really want to get back on campus and I just want to make sure that everyone is safe and following the protocols that we have established,” Meg E’amato said after the school board meeting. “There’s so many things that go into these processes. But I think people like to try to pick one thing to put all their anger towards.”

Some staff members have already returned to campus. During this time, a number of staff members have contracted COVID, and according to E’amato, some teachers have witnessed and reported staff protocol breaches.

“I feel like the district is following the protocols, but maybe not all the sites are following the protocols,” E’amato said. 

The debate about when and how CNUSD should return to in-person schooling has been emotionally charged as teachers witness children struggling and falling behind and parents attempt to juggle the challenges of supervising remote learning. 

“I feel like I have to be there, she’s in third grade, typing takes forever,” Allison Root said of helping her daughter Maddie complete her homework assignments. “I know if I did have a job right now it would be way more stressful. It’s horrible that [COVID] happened and I did get laid off, but I can’t imagine having to work and also juggle this, with her, because I’d get no sleep at all. We need to go back to school.”

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Public support for the education policy known as the Common Core standards has been free falling in New York State since Governor Andrew Cuomo implemented it in 2012. For Cuomo, it has become an issue in the upcoming elections.

Cuomo, a Democrat, leads his Republican opponent by 21 points, according to the latest Siena poll. But the question is what mandate he will have after the election, said Lawrence Mead, New York University professor and expert on American politics.

Teacher unions, which hold a lot of power in the Democratic Party, now oppose the Common Core. New York State United Teachers withdrew their support at the beginning of the year and asked for “major course corrections to its failed implementation plan,” in an official statement. Depending on the electoral results, Cuomo could face pressure to act on the Common Core issue.

The opposition against the education standards, a set of academic goals from kindergarten through high school, began on the Republican side but has moved to be an issue in both major parties. According to Mead, Republicans think the federal government is overstepping and prescribing what teachers should teach. Democrats feel that the policy was developed through an undemocratic process that benefits big corporations and that it has been poorly implemented, with little preparation for the teachers or students, he added.

Common Core has become a buzzword over the past month. In 2013, 62 percent of people polled nationwide had never heard about it; in 2014, 80 percent of those polled said they had heard about it, and 47 percent indicated they had heard a great deal or a fair amount, according to a PDK/Gallup poll. Opposition has increased hand in hand with awareness: five out of 10 New York State residents answered that the implementation should be stopped in New York, according to the latest Siena Poll.

Cuomo has been challenged about it multiple times during the campaign. In the Democratic Party primaries, Zephyr Teachout, professor at Fordham University, campaigned against Common Core implementation. Cuomo won the primary but still faces opposition on the Common Core, this time from his Republican opponent, Rob Astorino, who has launched a “Stop Common Core” effort to rally voters against the cause.

After many months of not taking any clear stance on the matter, the Cuomo campaign released an ad on Monday pledging to “stop using Common Core scores for at least five years, and then only if our children are ready.” The campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

The implementation of the standards

Katie Lapham, a first grade teacher at P.S. 214 in Brooklyn, says she understands the benefits of standards as a framework that gives teachers “freedom to teach and students … freedom to learn,” but she strongly opposes the Common Core standards as they are.

“Our schools need smaller class sizes, common sense curriculum, teacher-created curriculum and teacher-created authentic performance based assessments, project based, meaningful, inspiring work,” she said, adding that New York State has created fixed curricula, instead of only giving a general set of goals.
Lapham, member of the Movement of Rank and File Educators caucus within New York State United Teachers, worries that the curricula do not help her students, adding that the ReadyGEN ELA English Language Arts program is “dull and uninspiring.”

“The vocab is not appropriate for the lower grades,” Lapham said. “Spending five to seven days closely reading a picture book is boring; an ineffective way to promote literacy.” She has many English-language learners in her class and is worried that taking a test that reflects negatively on their learning will impact their confidence and increase the number of dropouts.

Garth Wolkoff, a teacher at the High School for Public Service in Brooklyn, said that a set of standards that helps the students “be more analytical thinkers rather than to memorize … can’t be bad.” He likes the idea of teachers teaching less subject matter, but more in depth, giving students more analytical skills, but he finds the standards oppressive at the elementary school level.

The standards are “asking very young students like Lucy to read and do more math,” Wolkoff said, referring to his 6-year-old daughter. “Playtime has been taken out of kindergarten, for example, and she is learning ‘Common Core’ math.”

Opting out

Parents and teachers are uniting to fight the Common Core tests. In April 2014, some teachers opted out of the test and many parents pulled their kids out of school the day of the test. Although there are no exact statistics yet, there were some 1,000 students who refused to take the math test in New York City, according to City Councilman Daniel Dromm. The Journal News reported that more than 3,000 students in the Lower Hudson Valley opted out, a fourfold increase compared with the previous year, according to the newspaper.

The MORE caucus within the teachers union is one of the most outspoken critics of the Common Core. The testing was “produced not by teachers, but by corporations,” MORE’s official statement reads. The movement argues that the standards “were written without meaningful teacher input, and educators do not have the freedom to use them as they see fit.”

Teachers and parents fear that the standards are too focused on “college and career readiness” to the detriment of “civic-mindedness, student health, and social and emotional growth,” according to the MORE statement.

Lapham said that, because of the emphasis on the tests, students “are not getting what they need both academically and emotionally.”

“If Cuomo is re-elected, expect more of the same,” Lapham added. “However, parents and teachers will continue to speak out. (The) grassroots movement is growing. Expect more and more opt-outs in the spring.”

Education standards are unlikely to be a decisive factor in the elections, but the Common Core will continue to be an issue in the political arena.

The post Critics of Education Policy Grow Louder at Elections Approach appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Aged Out and Undocumented from Pavement Pieces on Vimeo.

Alden Nesbitt no longer looks forward to his birthday. On his birthday two years ago, Nesbitt received a letter from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services telling him he had 90 days to leave the country. He had become undocumented.

The New York City Department of Education recruited international teachers from the Caribbean in 2001 during a teacher shortage. Hundreds of teachers brought their families over to the United States, including Nesbitt’s.

But due to a long and complex immigration process, some of their children turned 21 before these teachers could receive their Green Cards. Since they were over the age of 21, these children were no longer considered dependents of their families, making them ineligible to benefit from their parent’s immigration status, a process known as aging out.

Nesbitt, 23, chose to stay and advocate for families in his situation. Working with The Black Institute, a New York-based non-profit, Nesbitt co-founded The International Youth Association (TIYA) in 2011 alongside Mikhel Crichlow, 27, who became undocumented under the same circumstances.

“Meeting up with The Black Institute and starting The International Youth Association gave me a glimmer of hope that somehow I could still fight for what I feel was promised to me and my family,” said Nesbitt.

With current immigration legislation looming in Congress, Nesbitt and Crichlow continue their push for the rights of the children of recruited professionals and their right to documentation.

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