Parents in the Big Apple are giving the school system a failing grade after last week’s snowstorm shut down classes and revealed serious flaws in the city’s remote learning plan.
About 60% of parents interviewed by the Post said their children had trouble logging into the system from home, and about 40% were unable to log in at all, effectively canceling their entire day of classes. replied that it was destroyed.
This comes at a time when the Department of Education has high hopes that remote learning will replace traditional snow days in the future, and has already seen children’s education disrupted by long-term coronavirus closures. Bad news for parents who have had to.
“During the pandemic, remote learning has been an absolute disaster,” one frustrated Manhattan parent told the Post. “I don’t understand why New York City continues to invest every penny.
“And it takes courage for the mayor to say that our children are falling behind and that parents should do more to catch them up,” she fumed. “Distance learning has caused them to fall behind.”
Some students stranded by the snow ended up receiving less than an hour of digital homeschool during Tuesday’s storm, far short of the usual six hours and 20 minutes of instruction.
Another parent, one of more than a dozen families interviewed, said the time students spent in the system was “frenetic, difficult to track, and frequently interrupted.”
Parents in Queens called it all a “broken system,” starting with a barrage of phone calls and emails.
Anonymous Queens parents were outraged by harassing emails and text messages they received regarding distance learning, only to face a “broken system” as a result.
“The first call was at 7 a.m.,” she said. “This is a bit excessive on top of the same notifications from 4pm to 9pm the previous day. And the system was not working.
“It caused unnecessary anxiety and anxiety. Without the DOE’s inefficient platform of challenges, my child would have been more successful completing the assignments asynchronously,” she added.
Principal David Banks has apologized to parents after a remote learning “test” failed, blaming it on technical issues and vowing to investigate the glitch.
However, that was not the only hurdle raised.
Inappropriate lesson plans for synchronous learning, shortened class times, sharp declines in attendance and lack of support for students with special needs also drew the ire of parents and educators in the five boroughs. .
Complaints also included concerns about the mental health of some students, including that spending too much time in front of screens could “trigger pandemic-related PTSD.” There were also concerns.
A mother of two in Manhattan said her fifth-grade daughter, who was diagnosed with ADHD, was in great pain.
“[She] “When I heard that school would be remote, I was distraught and cried,” she said. “My daughter loves learning and is at the top of her class on her report card, but it’s physically difficult for a child with ADHD to be socially isolated, staring at a screen, and having to sit in their seat. It’s painful.
“You should have actually given the kids a snow day. Let them be kids,” she said. “The PTSD from remote COVID-19 was overwhelming. There was no consideration for a neurodivergent child.”
A special needs teacher in Brooklyn whose students suffer from seizures and have been diagnosed with autism or ADHD said she has had to tweak distance learning to accommodate their needs.
“After Tuesday, we absolutely felt like we needed to catch up with our special needs students,” the teacher said. “Many of the lesson plans we provided have already been taught to facilitate the learning experience for our students, and of course we were on hand throughout the day.
“There is no standardized way of thinking about special needs students,” she said. “We’re not prepared for this. A lot of the comments from students when they go back to school are things like, ‘Oh, I’ve been playing video games all day,’ or ‘Oh, I’ve been outside in the snow.’ ‘I understand.’
As of 1 p.m. Wednesday, 91.2% of schools had completed scans of attendance records for Tuesday’s remote school day, and the attendance rate was 80.4%, according to a DOE media liaison. The newspaper requested an updated tally but was pointed to Wednesday’s figures.
Despite the high numbers, some teachers reported that their virtual classrooms were disrupted and those who were online were distracted and frustrated by technical issues in the morning.
“Tuesday was supposed to be a synchronous day, which meant teachers were expected to teach students from computer to computer,” said Adam Bergstein, an English teacher at Forest Hills High School in Queens. he told the Post.
“But most of the kids didn’t come to school. For example, in my case, the most I had was nine in a class,” Bergstein said, adding that the school had a roster of 34 students, and typically 30. It added that people would be in attendance.
“In terms of frustration, I would say a lot of students just gave up because they couldn’t log on in the morning,” he said. “Then they didn’t even really make an effort. Parents were frustrated because their kids were sitting in front of a blank computer.”
Nakita Wills, who has a third-grade child in Harlem, told the Post that online classes only last an hour and a half.
She was one of the lucky families who was able to log in during Tuesday’s system outage.
“I had no trouble logging in,” she said. “I am grateful to be self-employed and have previous experience with distance learning at this school, so I was equipped with headphones and ready to start on time,” she explained.
“However, bank presidents must ensure instructors and children have access to support the creation of effective lesson plans that can be delivered online at each grade level.”
Nathaniel Stair, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Education, said Tuesday that the problem with the distance learning system was technical and would not comment on other complaints from parents.
“As the Prime Minister said on Tuesday, after initial technical difficulties, students were able to log in and participate in distance learning,” he said. “Students, parents, and educators deserve the perfect experience, and in the end, students and educators were able to log into her day of learning.”
The DOE declined to explain what a “day of learning” meant and confirmed the state had not confirmed the time, leaving a large blind spot for future distance learning days.
According to the state, no minimum weekly or daily hours are required as long as the district meets the annual minimum total instructional hours and 180 instructional days.
The state has a total annual time requirement of 900 hours for kindergarten through 6th grade and 990 hours for 7th through 12th grade.
The revelation came as Mr Banks told parents to prepare for more distant days ahead.
“As I said, this was a test. I don’t think we passed this test,” he said. “We’re going to do a thorough analysis of what happened here because we don’t expect this to be our last remote day.
“We will try harder next time to make it even better, but for now it is the way it is,” the prime minister said. “But the system is back. Things are going very well at the moment.”
But parents interviewed by the Post don’t seem to like the situation.
“I’m not a fan of distance learning. Kids should be in school. I don’t think distance learning should be an option,” one of them said. “This day was not a learning day by any stretch of the imagination.”
Additional reporting by Jorge Fitz-Gibbon.
