By: Denis Cyropoulos
In a stunning story, which was barely covered in the press, faculty members in a Bronx school were told they could be terminated for warning students to stay away, The Post has learned.
This occurred on the Sunday de Blasio finally decided to close the public schools.
“Staff can get fired for telling kids not to come to school,” a supervisor advised, according to a report of a March 15 teleconference with worried teachers at the Grace Dodge campus in Crotona, which houses three schools.
“Very few students will be in tomorrow. It’s not worth risking your job to lower the number,” the supervisor said.
This raises the question if City Hall and the board of education failed to protect staff and students by holding back information, leading up to the schools finally closing.
The Post Reported another instance: One after another, sick Brooklyn Technical High School teachers called union chapter leader Nate Bonheimer last week, to tell him they’d tested positive for COVID-19.
The city failed to follow a March 9 directive by the state Education Department that “requires an initial 24-hour closure, in order to begin an investigation to determine the contacts that the individual may have had within the school environment.”
Bonheimer said. “They did not alert the people who needed to know the most to protect themselves, their families and everyone else they came into contact with.”
In other words, NYC schools essentially ignored state orders. The New York Post reports uncovered shocking emails: the information freeze started March 10, when Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, in an email told administrators not to alert city health officials about COVID-19 cases among students or staff.
“At the moment, there is no reason for any school to call [the Health Department] to report potential or confirmed cases,” Carranza wrote, repeating the statement later in the same email, this is very revealing.
Teachers and union officials are outraged at what happened, and they place the blame on City Hall and Carranza. One DOE worker was quoted as saying “The blood is on their hands”
The latest development in the Bronx, cements what exactly happened.
NY Post reported: The Bronx report reveals that the DOE delayed closing schools when teachers reported their COVID-19 test results, saying they had to wait until the Health Department ordered it. The policy is, if there is no case on DOH record, then it doesn’t exist,” the report says. “If there’s no record, then it is Business as Usual. Therefore, we are open tomorrow.”
It is important to keep all of this in mind the next time de Blasio comes on TV and blames the Trump administration for the coronavirus outbreak. Richard Carranza has always been controversial with his desire to end schools for advanced students and putting racial balance before education. Asian New Yorkers have protested his admittance policies to the top NY schools. The radical Richard Carranza has put social justice ideology above all, and apparently seemed more concerned with his agenda than even the safety of the students and faculty themselves.
