September 28, 2020
Tomorrow’s the big day when NYC public schools are set to reopen. But yesterday the Principals Union voted ‘no confidence’ for Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza and called upon the State to take charge.
Their resolution:
WHEREAS, the Council of School Supervisors & Administrators (CSA), Local 1, American Federation of School Administrators, AFL-CIO is the labor union which represents over 6,400 Principals, Assistant Principals, Supervisors, Education Administrators, and Directors in New York City’s 1,800 public schools and central offices and 200 Directors and Assistant Directors in city-funded Early Childhood Education Centers;
WHEREAS, CSA members want school buildings and early childhood education centers safely reopened for in-person learning due to their profound, unique understanding of the role that public schools play in the lives of our communities;
WHEREAS, CSA members have been tirelessly planning to reopen school buildings and the offices that support them since the 2019-2020 school year ended in June;
WHEREAS, CSA members are tasked by New York City and its Department of Education (DOE) with ensuring the safety, health, and well-being of those they serve during a global pandemic, and they stand ready and willing to take on that responsibility;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have entered into grossly irresponsible staffing agreements that fail to prioritize the needs of school children and their families;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have created, by virtue of these agreements, staffing shortages of roughly 12,000 teachers, according to the estimate of DOE officials, and yet no announcements regarding additional staffing were made until the week after students were originally scheduled to return to buildings;
WHEREAS, CSA and individual school leaders continually warned Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza about the staffing crisis, both publicly and privately, since the DOE first announced the hybrid model at the start of July;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza would not make the responsible, prudent decision to delay in-person learning without the relentless advocacy of CSA and its members from nearly 30 districts who wrote public letters to call for a delay due to safety concerns;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza promised to provide 4,500 additional teachers to elementary and K-8 schools, and as of Friday, September 25th, over 200 elementary school principals reported that they still needed over 1,200 teachers for Tuesday, September 29th;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza still refuse to state publicly how many additional teachers are needed by Thursday, October 1st, to safely reopen middle and high school buildings, and have thus far failed to announce a clear, comprehensive plan to provide those additional teachers;
WHEREAS, CSA members have reported that district superintendents verbally pressured them to falsely report that their staffing needs are already met after they requested additional staff due to safety concerns;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have demonstrated a lack of transparency about whether the additional teachers the DOE has hired are legitimately qualified or preparedto provide the quality of education that New York City students deserve;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have provided school leaders with late, inadequate, and inconsistent guidance throughout the pandemic, often creating situations where school leaders learn of policy through the press or their teaching staff, and often creating situations where school leaders must make decisions in the absence of guidance and then reverse those decisions and alter plans when guidance is finally released;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza exacerbated the staffing problems and programming difficulties by announcing yet another last-minute staffing change at the close of business on Friday, September 25th, after many schools have already been in session for over a week, and when allother schools will welcome students back into buildings next week;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza, by virtue of the September 25thagreement on remote teaching, have solidified that schools will not have adequate staff in the building to safely supervise children during arrival, dismissal, and when coverages are needed throughout the school day, and have further created staffing difficulties on the critical Building Response Team (BRT);
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza pledged to New York City parents that students would receive live instruction on days where they were learning remotely, and then reversed course the day before remote learning began to help solve the staffing crisis they created;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have failed to provide schools with all the electronic devices that are essential to remote learning, leaving far too many students without;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have invested far too little in remote learning professional development despite the fact that most students will be learning remotely on most days;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have failed to be transparent with data on remote learning since March, requiring New York City Council to subpoena the DOE;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza mismanaged summer school, preventing students from receiving the additional academic support they required;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza failed to submit their critical safety plan to New York State on time;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have not provided custodial engineers with the resources and manpower necessary to disinfect and deep clean schools as frequently and diligently as indicated in the DOE safety plan;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza tasked instructional leaders to conduct safety walkthroughs who were unqualified and untrained to conduct them, and only announced the creation of a ventilation task force after grave concerns were raised by CSA and others;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza failed to meet their own deadline for providing much-demanded ventilation reports to each school community;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza announced guidance on outdoor learning far too late for school leaders to craft and implement a meaningful plan for their school;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have established a Situation Room to supposedly remedy the problems caused by DOE’s inability to provide timely and consistent direction regarding positive cases of COVID-19, yet the Situation Room has only worsened problems due to its inordinate wait times, erroneous guidance, and contradictory directives;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have failed to equip superintendents and executive superintendents with information necessary to consistently provide school leaders with the support and information they require;
WHEREAS, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza are presiding over an exodus of their own high-ranking officials as the school year is due to begin;
NOW THEREFORE, on this 27thDay of September 2020, be it resolved that the CSA Executive Board declares a vote of no confidence for Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza due to their failure to lead New York City through the safe and successful reopening of schools. CSA calls on Mayor de Blasio to cede mayoral control of the Department of Education for the remainder of this health crisis and for Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza to seek the immediate intervention of the New York State Education Department.
