The continued lack of full-time schooling in New York City schools is a crisis that has driven former high achievers to the brink of suicide, according to a Manhattan Supreme Court suit demanding an immediate return to in-person instruction.
More than two dozen parent plaintiffs raised nearly $30,000 to fund a preliminary injunction against the Department of Education, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and schools Chancellor Meisha Ross-Porter in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Arguing that the continued disruption of schooling is severely damaging city kids, the suit wants a judge to force the immediate return of full-time in-person learning.
The suit includes wrenching personal accounts from parents who said their children have grown disinterested, isolated, and even suicidal.
One mom who was among the plaintiffs said the extended shuttering of schools has plunged her child into a depressive spiral.
The Beacon High School sophomore was “a former straight A student” who “has regressed significantly with remote learning and without the in-person instruction of her teachers,” the suit states.
“As a result, she has been diagnosed with depression and has tried to take her life twice.”
De Blasio acknowledged the specter of student suicides in February after three DOE students took their own lives in the span of three weeks.
“Many kids are feeling really isolated in the absence of the regular rhythms of their life,” he said at the time. “Particularly the absence of school for some of them.”
Parent activist Natalya Murakhver said the suit was necessitated after other options — including protests — failed to garner action.
“Parents have lost faith in our Mayor to fully and functionally reopen schools and will now look to the court to ensure our children’s constitutional right to a public school education is fulfilled,” Murakhver said in a statement.
Other plaintiffs in the case also reported extreme despondency in their kids due to extended remote learning and severance from school communities.
Plaintiff Jennifer Perez submitted that her high school child is “suffering from severe depression and is significantly behind academically as a result of remote learning.”
Other families bemoaned acute learning loss and a growing disinterest in schoolwork.
Boerum Hill School mom Laura Wallace said her child “claims she hasn’t learned a thing this year,” the papers state.
The action, submitted by attorney James Mermigis, wants a judge to compel the city to “immediately offer full, five day per week in-person instruction with teachers in the classroom to the students for the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year, and permanently thereafter.”
The suit argues that a growing consensus of experts deem schools to be safe and that teachers should return to their prior posts.
“Throughout the pandemic, New York City public school families have not had a seat at the table,” Murakhver said. “Instead, they have been sidelined by unions and other special interests, forced to watch as their children were capriciously shut out of schools, even when schools were widely accepted as the safest place to be.”
“We have more students in classrooms than any other city in America, and all of our schools are open for in-person learning, the majority offering in-person learning five days a week,” the DOE said in a statement. “New York City set the reopening gold standard for districts across the country, and we will review this suit.”