Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and City Councilman Mark Treyger skewered Mayor Bill de Blasio Thursday for ushering in “chaos” with the closure of city school buildings.
Arguing that City Hall and the Department of Education were unprepared for the consequences of the shuttering, both men said they’ve lost confidence in Hizzoner’s management of city schools.
“I don’t even know if furious is the right word to what we’re feeling and I know parents are feeling across this city,” Williams said during a press conference with Treyger. “With 16 hours’ notice they closed the schools. It’s unacceptable.”
Treyger warned that the ongoing upheaval would mean lasting damage for kids enrolled in the country’s largest school system.
“Our kids are now experiencing over half a year of disrupted instruction,” Treyger said. “These are long-term generational impacts that will carry with our students over the rest of their lives.”
Both men were critical of the city’s blended model that had kids alternating between home and classroom learning, arguing that other approaches would have been better suited for the challenges imposed by the coronavirus.
Treyger has long floated a phased-in plan that would allow special-needs and younger students in school buildings five days a week while high school kids would largely learn on a remote basis.
Williams has also backed that approach, arguing it would also allow the DOE to hone its distance learning without kids toggling back and forth between home and school.
“That phased-in approach would’ve allowed us to use the resources that we have, even the teachers that are available, in a much better way instead of trying to split what we had in this hybrid system that wasn’t going to work,” Williams said Thursday.
Both men also continued to criticize the DOE for failing to equip all city kids with devices given the system’s near-total reliance on remote learning.
De Blasio counterpunched when asked about their comments at his daily briefing.
“I think they just don’t have their facts right,” he said. “I appreciate that there are professional critics in this society but I really think there has to be recognition of the work that people did to close the digital divide, to do something that has never been done before.”
De Blasio said DOE staffers put in “immense” effort in trying to provide adequate technology under unprecedented duress.
“I think it deserves respect and the people who have done the work have put their heart and soul into making sure kids got what they needed,” he said.