Announcer: Listener-supported WNYC Studios.

[music]

Brigid Bergin: You're listening to All Of It. I'm Brigid Bergin, in for Alison Stewart, who will be back later next month. Thanks for spending part of your day with us. I'm grateful you're here. Today, we're talking about a new Broadway play that takes the audience behind the scenes of the making of the movie Jaws. It's written by and stars Ian Shaw, the son of Robert Shaw, the actor behind the movie's cantankerous Shark Hunter. Plus, etiquette tips for living with roommates, and a rousing debate on what actually counts as a martini.

Before we get started, I want to take a moment to announce that The Get Lit with All Of It Bookclub is back with a great slate of events this fall. Alison will be back to host the September event, and we can now announce that we will be spending the month reading The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. The story follows how a Jewish and Black community in Pennsylvania come together to protect a young deaf boy from institutionalization. James McBride will join Alison for an interview and a book signing on Wednesday, September 27th.

Mark your calendars, Wednesday, September 27th. Plus, they'll be joined by special musical guest Grammy-nominated jazz singer Carla Cook. To borrow your copy of the novel and grab your free tickets to the event, head to wnyc.org/getlit. Now, speaking of things returning in the fall, it's back-to-school season, so let's get things started.

[music]

After a long hot summer, maybe not long enough for some families, about a million public school kids will return to classrooms in New York City schools this time next week. September 7th marks the first day of the 2023-2024 school year. While we're entering the second year of full in-person classes, the COVID pandemic is still having an effect on schools in our area, from falling enrollment to chronic absenteeism and mental health challenges. To add to that back-to-school stress, school bus drivers are threatening to strike after contract negotiations broke down earlier this month.

For some migrant students, the start of school may mean entering a classroom with limited English language skills and needs for more support services. We decided to check in with Chalkbeat reporter Mike Elsen-Rooney about some of the looming issues facing the city's Department of Education, as well as changes parents might see this year. Mike, welcome to All Of It.

Mike Elsen-Rooney: Thanks so much for having me, good to be here, and can't believe summer's over.

Brigid Bergin: Oh my gosh, neither can I. Listeners, how about you? Do you have kids in public city schools? What are your biggest concerns or hopes going into the new year? What's been working, what hasn't? Call in and tell me how you're handling back-to-school this year or maybe you're a teacher, a principal, or another public school employee. We want to hear from you too. Let us know how you're feeling about going back to school. You can call or text us at 212-433-WNYC, that's 212-433-9692 or you can reach us on social media @allofitwnyc.

All right, Mike, let's start with a few of the things that are just swirling around in the ether one of which, of course, is this looming yellow bus strike. The DOE sent an email to families warning that this is a possibility. I know our family got one this week. What are the two sides involved in this possible action, what do you know about the timing and scope of this whole thing?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: The negotiations are happening between ATU 1181, which is the union that represents the largest number of school bus drivers and attendants, and the bus companies, the private companies that contract with the city to provide busing service. It's really a massive system. There are 150,000 students who rely on school buses every day. This strike is projected to affect about half of those students, so around 80,000 kids. A disproportionate number of the kids who rely on buses are students with disabilities, students living in shelters so some of the populations that are most vulnerable and really need to be in school.

Brigid Bergin: What is the DOE doing at this point to provide for families that do rely on bus service?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: They've laid out a couple of possible alternative scenarios. The options are providing Metro cards, and then in some cases, for families who are eligible, either reimbursing some kind of cab or ride-share fare or there is a prepaid option where the DOE would pay upfront. Needless to say, there are a lot of potential issues with those options. Riding the subway, it's tough ask for a lot of families. For rideshares, the big issues can be those don't come with built-in attendance and so require parents and caregivers often to be in the cars supervising students, especially those with disabilities who might need someone there with them.

Brigid Bergin: Mike, I know that this is the week that normally bus companies are figuring out those bus routes. You would often see those buses driving around neighborhoods just figuring out where the pickups and drop-offs are. That didn't happen this week because of this breakdown in negotiations. How could these delays affect kids and families, even if there isn't a strike, say they find some sort of resolution?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: As long as I've covered this, there's always been some kind of busing chaos to start the school year in a system as massive as this and as complex, and with all these different companies. You have a lot of families who are showing up and waiting long times for their buses, or buses are not showing up at all, and that's just in a normal year. The fact that some of the normal things that would be happening already at this time of the year are getting delayed makes it pretty likely that even if they do resolve this, it's going to be a messy start for transportation for a lot of kids.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, if you're joining us, my guest is Mike Elsen-Rooney, a reporter at the education website Chalkbeat. We are taking back-to-school, the good, the bad, the ugly. What you're excited for, what you're worried about. We want to hear from parents, teachers, anybody who is working in public schools, what are you thinking about as you head back for this 2023-2024 school year? The phones are open, and we want to hear from you. Mike, another topic that feels a little foreboding, I think, at this point, are those rising COVID cases.

We're seeing it in the West and the Northeast. We know that in the past, the DOE has communicated a lot about what the protocol is, what the guidance are, what the rules are. Are we seeing a similar approach as we start this school year?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: I would say no. The most current guidance that's on the DOE's website is from Fall 2022. I asked yesterday about any updated guidance and haven't heard back, so I don't have much news to share. There were some changes and some long-running approaches that the DOE had had. They had this central situation room that was centrally tracking cases and sending out letters to families when there was a case in their school or in their class. The city closed that down last school year so many of the big-ticket things the city had been relying on for the past couple of years are no longer in place.

Brigid Bergin: It could be an interesting start to the school year on that front. The forecast for next week is also really hot. Schools could be opening on what I think could be like a 90-degree scorcher of a day. How do schools handle the heat?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: The issue of providing working air conditioning in every classroom in New York City is a really long-running one. It was a big commitment of former Mayor de Blasio who promised he would make it universal by the start of last school year. The city said that they accomplished that goal, but my colleague Alex Zimmerman did some great reporting last year, talking to a number of teachers who, for one reason or another, whether it was their AC was broken and never replaced or whether the unit was in there but the school didn't have the underlying electrical work that it needed to make that work. That it just wasn't a reality.

I think it's safe to say that we'll still see some classrooms this year with issues, but the city has made a lot of progress and invested a lot of money in equipping more schools with air conditioning, certainly than years ago.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. With that in mind, perhaps maybe don't send your kids to school wearing their brand-new long-sleeve fall clothes next week, given the fact that it's

Mike Elsen-Rooney: Those layers.

Brigid Bergin: -going to-- Layers is a good approach to most situations. We got a tweet that says, "Hi, Mike, with the latest COVID surge going on now, I'm curious if there's going to be anything in place to prevent more COVID outbreaks in schools, opening windows, checking HVACs, running the old air purifiers, will COVID tests be available to families?" I know you said that a lot of that infrastructure that we relied on in the past may not be there. Any sense of if any of those protocols will be in place at this point?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: We haven't really heard any formal guidance and so I don't want to make any statements that I can't back up.

Brigid Bergin: Any claims, yes. It sounds like there'll be some good questions for the Chancellor.

Mike Elsen-Rooney: Indeed.

Brigid Bergin: Does the Chancellor generally have a press conference with education reporters ahead of the first day of school where you might get some of that information?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: The Chancellor usually visits a school on the first day, and hopefully, there will be some opportunities for some questions there.

Brigid Bergin: Fingers crossed. Mike, let's talk about some guidance that the state recently issued about enrolling all children in schools despite their immigration status. Any sense of what some of the challenges schools may be facing when it comes to dealing with new populations of migrant kids who may have different needs?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: As we know, since last summer, really, there's been this continuous influx of asylum seekers. Obviously, the big first challenge for schools is just identifying those families and getting them placed in schools. I've been talking to some families in recent days about some delays in that process. There's so many new shelters that have cropped up in the past year, the past couple months, past weeks. The DOE staff who is supposed to be out in those shelters they're really stretched thin. They're handling a lot of students at once.

Some of these new shelter operators aren't really experienced with the really complex New York City education system. I spoke to a family that had submitted their enrollment forms a month ago. We're still waiting to hear where their kids were going to be. Then there's all the questions that come once they arrive at school. Are there bilingual teachers there if that's something that the family wants? How are they going to get there? Particularly if they're living in a shelter and they're relying on busing, as they're legally entitled to. A number of questions.

Brigid Bergin: Is there any data at this point in terms of the numbers of children that could be entering schools from this type of situation? Any sense of, are we talking about something that will more largely impact, say, an elementary school population or an upper-level school?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: Yes. The most recent overall figure is shared by the city yesterday was that since last summer, the DOE has enrolled a total of about 19,000 students living in shelter. That's a proxy they use because they don't actually ask for immigration status, but that's their best estimate. Then there's been about 500 more students enrolled since July. I haven't seen any breakdown of the age ranges.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. Then, all of this is coming at a time when there is still actually falling enrollment in the city's school system. Can you talk about where enrollment is now and how that compares to before the pandemic?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: The figure that the chancellor often cited last year was that the city had lost about 120,000 students over the previous five years. That was not inclusive of, of pre-K, which has been expanding in that time. The top line is that enrollment really cratered during the pandemic. A lot of families who left the city between the 2021/'22 school year and last school year. Then, last school year, we started to see this influx of students, which did somewhat offset that pattern. Although not enough to actually increase enrollment overall.

Enrollment's down, we often used to talk about the DOE enrolling over a million students, and that's no longer the case. That's a big challenge because school budgets are largely tied to enrollment.

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. Mike, we got a text from a listener. It says, "I'm a teacher in a DOE GED setting, and online classes worked much better for many in that population than in-person, especially for attendance. I'd like the DOE to pay more attention to this population and the various support systems these students need." Mike, have you heard anything about making that online platform available for students seeking their GED as another option?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: I'm not sure for that specific population. That's a really interesting point that the caller raises. Generally, I think you have seen some efforts from this DOE to not throw out some of the valuable aspects of remote learning just because schools return in person. The city actually opened to hybrid schools where kids can full-time be learning or at least part-time be learning remotely. Then the most recent development was that in the new contract with the teacher's union, there's an expansion of efforts at primarily small high schools to be able to offer more classes online.

For example, if your school is too small to offer AP art literature, maybe there's a teacher in another school in the city who can offer that online to some of your students. Part of the thinking there, I think, is to reach students who may have commitments, work, family responsibilities that would make full-time in-person attendance harder and give them a little more flexibility.

Brigid Bergin: If you're just joining us, my guest is Mike Elsen-Rooney a reporter for the education website, Chalkbeat. We're talking about back-to-school, which is coming real, real fast as in a week from today. We want to know your questions, concerns, maybe what you're looking forward to, maybe what you're worried about as we get ready to go back to school. This call-out is for parents, it's for kids. If you're listening, it's for people who work in schools. The phone number is 212-433-9692, or you can text at that number or you can reach us on social media @allofitwnyc.

Mike, I want to go back to this funding question a little bit. The tie between enrollment funding and what we were just talking about which is this new population of migrant students. Does that help buoy the enrollment numbers in any way or help towards making sure we lock in some of that funding?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: I think in certain cases if you're in a really tiny school where, because of your really low enrollment, you're just not getting enough money to offer a wide range of things, then an influx of new students could certainly be helpful. I think the overall big question that the city's facing with enrollment is that before the pandemic, if your enrollment dropped, your funding would drop, in step with that. The city has offset that somewhat by using this one-time federal COVID relief money to shore up schools' budgets.

That money expires at the end of the school year, so there's going to be a big question of schools that lost a lot of enrollment, didn't gain it back, could see some big drop-offs this year or next school year.

Brigid Bergin: When we talk about what could be the impact of that cliff of COVID funding, are we getting into school closures? School consolidations? What do you think are some of the options that are being considered when they turn that tap off?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: They have definitely stayed away from school closures so far. I think have used a limited number of school mergers. I certainly think that's an issue the city is going to have to confront more urgently starting next school year. All of that is really contentious, as you know. In the Bloomberg era where there are a lot of school closures, that was a huge political, educational issue. Even mergers can be really complicated. They have a lot of benefits, but when you're bringing two distinct communities together, that comes with a lot of its own complexities.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to the phones. Patty in Manhattan. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Patty: Hi. Thank you. It's interesting that you just started talking about COVID again because what I called to say is I'm a New York City parent. I have a daughter that just graduated, a son who's in high school, and the most important thing for me is to keep the schools open. I feel it was a disaster the way the schools were closed here in New York City. I'm listening to the conversation and it's almost like everybody's hoping the schools will close again, hoping we'll go back to masks.

All the parents I know the kids I know, not everybody, because I do have these WhatsApp groups with the people in our school, and there's always a small majority of people talking about how they're so concerned about-- We're all concerned. I don't want to say that I'm not, but often they'll talk about things like, "My husband is immunocompromised and my daughter shouldn't go to school." All I can think the whole time is, a million kids shouldn't go to school because your husband is immunocompromised."

I'm not diminishing immunocompromised. I'm just saying the goal has to be to keep the schools open and not to be sitting here thinking about, "How are we going to get them closed again?"

Brigid Bergin: Patty, thanks for your call. I think, Mike, what I'm hearing in that, and I'm sure you have heard this concern, talking to parents in the course of your reporting. This is the aftereffect that some are feeling of that school shutdown and that anxiety that many feel about the impact that it can have on students, the impact it had on their education, the lasting impacts that maybe we are still seeing. I don't think at this point anyone's talking with any glee about the idea of closing schools.

The question which I think is relevant, important, and worth asking is what protocols the Department of Education is offering to students and offering to families and offering to the public, which is something that you have told us very clearly, we haven't heard yet for this school year. On that note, let's talk about the issue of absenteeism. That's been a chronic issue, probably semi-in part from the pandemic. What are the numbers looking like and what are some of the causes there?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: That's been an issue that's come up across the country and in New York City. Before the pandemic, the number of students who we categorize as chronically absent, which means missing 10% or more of the school year, generally hovered around 25%. In the past year or two, it's climbed up closer to 40%. That's a huge pattern that's happening in schools, and I think we're still trying to figure out what's going on exactly. Certainly, in the height of the omicron surge when you had hundreds of thousands of kids out of school every day that's going to contribute to chronic absenteeism rates.

Families being more cautious about keeping kids home, that's going to contribute. We also have seen surging mental health challenges among teenagers. We've heard concerns about students who did lose some of the routine of attending school every day, and that can be really hard to regain specifically if there are mental health challenges interacting with that.

Brigid Bergin: Let's talk about some of the more proactive measures the Department of Education is taking the start of this year. One of the big new initiatives this year is the rollout of a new elementary school literacy curriculum. What's this program? What is it seeking to accomplish? Why do we need a new literacy program?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: For a long time principals had a lot of latitude to choose their own curriculum for reading, and a number of schools hundreds potentially were using a very popular curriculum from Teachers College that hewed a little more towards an approach called balanced literacy that has increasingly become criticized for not being really in line with the research on how kids learn to read. Specifically on its lack of emphasis on phonics which is really learning the building blocks of words, how letters connect to sounds.

What the city did was it chose three options for curriculums that district superintendents can choose, and the city chose curriculums that I thought were more aligned to the science of reading. About half the city's districts are starting that this year, and now that the rest will start next year. It's really a sea change in how a lot of elementary schools are going to be teaching kids to read.

Brigid Bergin: I want to read a text that we just received, Mike. This comes from a listener who says, "Hello, I'm a principal and wish to remain anonymous. The mayor, chancellor, and DOE leadership at Central are more concerned about optics, PR, and marketing than the students. Oftentimes, they say publicly that they're about the babies, but these are lies that romanticize the notion and are not based on facts. When the mayor decides to invest more in policing than in educating young minds, there's the answer."

That's some pretty blunt criticism from an anonymous principal who is listening to the show. Are you hearing similar complaints as you are reporting on this new administration? This is the second full school year of the Department of Education under Mayor Adams's administration. A lot of changes from those folks who may have had their kids in school under the De Blasio Administration.

Mike Elsen-Rooney: It sounds like that person brought up some of the issue around funding, [chuckles] and what schools are receiving relative to police, that was certainly a huge source of contention last year when the administration started slashing school budgets that were previously being held up by this federal money. That was really a pretty devastating blow for a lot of schools. Specifically on this issue of police and how they interact with schools, I do think you've seen some reversals of some of the De Blasio era pushes towards changing the way the school safety force has operated.

There was a move to transfer control of that to the DOE. That's since been reversed. This administration's been pretty clear that they support having an NYPD-run robust school safety force.

Brigid Bergin: We'll go to one more caller who I think may have been responding in some way to our previous caller. Dana in Brooklyn. Thanks for calling WNYC.

Dana: Hi. Thanks so much, longtime listener. I'm both a teacher at a private school in Brooklyn and a New York City parent of two children that went through the COVID years during school. My question is this, in order to keep both staff healthy and in school and children healthy and in school, why oh why has the DOH and the DOE for that matter, not required the COVID vaccine as it does the flu vaccine?

Brigid Bergin: Dana, thanks so much for calling All Of It. Thanks for listening. Mike, anything that you have reported that could help answer Dana's question?

Mike Elsen-Rooney: The issue of requiring COVID vaccinations for students was certainly extremely fraught, and I think there's some potentially thorny legal questions there too. The city did require for a time teachers and staff to be vaccinated, and I think largely you saw that was accepted. There were some teachers who quit in protest, but not a huge number. You haven't honestly seen a ton of that student requirement across the country. I think there was some talk in LA of that, but I'm not sure where it landed.

At this point, even the staff mandate has been lifted. It seems very unlikely to me that there would be any movement towards a student mandate.

Brigid Bergin: Mike, I'd like to say have a great weekend to you, but I think you're going to be pretty busy starting now until all of next week, so good luck. Thank you for your reporting. I've been speaking with Mike Elsen-Rooney, a reporter for the education news website. Chalkbeat. We'll leave it there for now. Thanks for joining me on All Of It.

Mike Elsen-Rooney: Thank you so much for having me.

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.