In fact, we later learned later that Carranza hadn’t just ignored our petition, but had specifically instructed school administrators to keep reported cases of the coronavirus secret. Where I teach, colleagues with presumed cases of COVID-19 (at this point, it was already pretty much impossible to get tested) were told by administrators that teachers were welcome to let their coworkers know about their medical condition, but that administrators wouldn’t be notifying anyone about possible workplace exposure to the virus.
I suppose this is where I should mention that I have a cardiovascular condition that puts me at increased risk of dying from COVID-19. I’m on daily medication and doing fine, but when Carranza and Mayor Bill de Blasio went into the weekend on March 13, insisting that the schools would remain open, I was freaked. So, when the Mayor changed his tune two days later and announced on Sunday, March 15 that city schools were closing, I was very relieved.
Then, I read the whole announcement. Actually, schools weren’t closing at all. Students were being kept home from school buildings that were, as 108,000 New Yorkers had already warned Carranza, high-risk viral incubation zones. While the city’s 1.1 million students stayed home, however, the city’s school workers were ordered to report back to work the week of March 16 for our “transition to remote learning.”
What do we learn about our elected and appointed leaders—all liberal Democrats, in this case—from their decision to send more than 100,000 workers from thousands of communities across the New York area into school buildings that they’ve deemed a threat to public health? What do they think of school workers if they say schools are closed while we’re in the buildings, breathing the air, inhaling the viruses? What are school workers to our supervisors if they think the building is empty while we’re in it? Our bosses tried, in effect, to kill us.
And why? At the high school where I teach, supervisors told us we were reporting to work in the midst of a pandemic to get “battle ready.” Mayor de Blasio told reporters that teachers were reporting to COVID-infected buildings because we were now operating on a “wartime footing.” In reality, the week of March 16 was a week of trainings on things like Google Classroom and teleconferencing technologies—technologies that are specifically designed so that workers don’t need to be in a designated physical space to use them.
Since the week of March 16, dozens of school workers from across the city have been officially counted among the casualties of COVID-19, and there are undoubtedly dozens more as yet uncounted. Beyond that, there’s no way to calculate the full number of family members, friends, fellow commuters, and others who were infected by students and school workers, all because Carranza and the managers who serve him ordered us to report for a week of school without students.