October 2nd
A few hours before I sent yesterday’s email, Frank Bruni posted a column I hadn’t yet seen calling on the Commission on Presidential Debates to cancel the debates. This was good because it made me feel smart. Trump had already publicly mocked the idea of accepting changes to the Commission’s debate rules, since he believes that he “easily won” the first debate. But now it seems that the debates will likely cancel themselves owing to this morning’s news.
The last wave of school openings broke yesterday, with young people returning to middle and high schools. It is undeniably exciting to see children enthusiastically heading to school and greeting their teachers and friends. One friend described day 1 at her high school as “an operational triumph” and felt that the community-building on their closed-to-traffic street was a happy sight. At this writing, 521,000 NYC students are signed on for some in-person instruction. As of yesterday, a high school in Elmhurst has been shuttered for two weeks. There are 10 Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods where positive test rates are between 2% and 3%. Cases in those communities continue to rise and Heather and I have already placed a sad bet on how long schools will remain open. The city’s 7-day rolling average is now over 1.5%. The testing plan for teachers and students has been deemed inadequate to prevent outbreaks by NYU researchers. I am rooting for Heather to be correct (she thinks schools will close to in-person instruction before 10/13), since it is better for public health.
The staffing shortages have not been adequately addressed. Council member Mark Treyger remarked that “Thousands of high school students [are] not receiving in-person instruction…. What they will be receiving is what I call supervised remote instruction.” A friend whose daughter attends The Clinton School said that she “has some of these online classes with up to 100 students. And there are no office hours for some teachers so it’s very difficult to ask any questions…[she] plans to go to the school once just to see a few kids and then opt out.”
It’s Friday. There’s no shortage of issues to address, but I need to take a little time off. I’ll be back on Monday. Here is your treat for slogging through this week: Urban Omnibus has published Stanley Greenberg’s beautiful photo essay of Prospect Park’s growing colony of ‘corona shelters’, which is accompanied by Elizabeth Royte’s thoughtful discussion of the impulse and impact of dragging fallen branches to build these structures.
Have a good weekend!
with love,
L