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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. New York City's public schools are open today. Certainly you know that if you're a parent of a public-school child, and it's thanks to low COVID positivity rates this weekend, at least low enough to keep the 7-day average under the 3% benchmark. To talk about that benchmark, and the pressure to raise it, from the governor and some parents and news this morning after a de Blasio Carranza School Chancellor press conference. I'm joined by WNYC Education Reporter, Jessica Gould. Hi, Jess.

Jessica Gould: Hi, Brian.

Brian: The chancellor joined the mayor for this morning's daily brief. What's the headline?

Jessica: School is not just open today, it's open tomorrow. [chuckles] That's what we know so far about how much school will be open this week, the average 7-day positivity rate was 2.7%. We're back up, not as high as we were on Friday when the mayor said the closures could be imminent, but it is a day-to-day question right now.

Brian: We may hear more from Governor Cuomo later today, but he has said that he will not intervene in local school closure policies, as long as they don't allow for more than 9% positivity rate before closing. How did the mayor come to land on 3% during the summer when the policy was set, remind us of that? Is Cuomo lurking with all these comments on the brink of overruling the mayor special?

Jessica: I'll start with the 3%, and then we can talk about Governor Cuomo lurking. The mayor, as he told you on Friday, he said again today, it was a standard that he set with medical experts in his administration. I actually asked City Hall to say which ones and why, and they just referred me back to his statement with you on Friday. Nonetheless, he said it was with medical experts that they decided this wasn’t the safest threshold. I asked the union whether they pushed the mayor, the teachers union, to accept that 3% and stick with it, and they said that no, it was what the mayor brought up. They ran it by their medical experts, they concurred and they agreed with it.

I think there's more to find out about where that came from, what the scientific basis of it is, and why it differs from other jurisdictions and the World Health Organization. I also think that it makes sense that the mayor wanted a strict standard, given how much criticism he received in the spring for waiting to close schools, that there could have been a lot of spread and a lot of death avoided if it had happened earlier. Governor Cuomo is definitely lurking. He, this weekend, said that he would advocate for a school-based infection rate being the closure threshold, instead of a city-wide rate, looking at the schools themselves.

I asked directly today during his press conference, whether the governor could overrule him. The mayor said, basically, yes, but that his team is in conversation with the governor's team, and that so far, they're on the same page, they are talking about what it would take to come back after closure, and whether there would be something like the zone closures that they did before where, if you did a testing in a school to find that students could come back, that they were not positive for COVID, then you could reopen.

Brian: Listeners, if you are a New York City public-school parent, do you want to weigh in on this? Do you want to tell us if the likelihood of the schools going all remote again might have changed your plan to keep your kid fully remote, or join the partly in-school hybrid learning for your kid? Yesterday was the deadline for that, we'll get into that too with our education reporter Jessica Gould, or are you making plans to go to work Wednesday or not go to work Wednesday depending on what happens?

This is such a day-to-day thing right now. Call us at 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. You can tell us how you think the city and the state are handling the question of schools being open or schools being closed. 646-435-7280, or any question you have for Education Reporter Jessica Gould, you can also tweet a question or a comment @BrianLehrer. This is day-to-day, they might announce tomorrow that the schools will be closed on Wednesday?

Jessica: Right, and already when I tweeted that schools are open tomorrow, Tuesday, a lot of parents tweeted back at me, this is making me crazy to have to wait day to day to know whether schools are going to be open. You mentioned before the opt-in period, which ended yesterday to opt back into blended learning to come in person some number of days a week, I have been hearing from parents that the uncertainty about whether schools will stay open or not, is pushing them more towards remote.

In addition to the rising case numbers and the concerns about the holidays, and infection spreading, for that reason there's just also the need to plan. As much as some parents, many parents who have their kids in in-person learning, love it and want schools to stay open, this looming uncertainty is playing a role in whether they opt back in or not.

Brian: Yesterday, as I said, was the deadline for parents to be able to opt back into hybrid learning, if they had started their kids on remote. Meaning of course, having their children attend school at least part time, that's a hybrid model. They still do remote learning some days. Do we have any indication of what the results were? The mayor had been lobbying so hard for more parents to put their kids back in the classroom?

Jessica: Yes. I'm told that we'll get the results, the totals tomorrow, or later this week, but anecdotally, I was talking to some administrators last night. One of them was telling me that they have gotten some kids up back in, but they've also gotten more kids opt out. The number of kids opting out is higher than the number of kids opting back in, partially because of this uncertainty, as well as all the other factors we've talked about. Families who want to see their relatives over the holidays, and are concerned about the risk. This timing has just not helped at all.

Brian: Let's take a phone call. Juliana in the control room, can you help me with this? I'm having a little bit of a computer issue here. Could you put Line 3 up? That would be Mary, a parent of a public-school child in Manhattan. Let's see if we can get Mary on the air. Mary you’re there? Oh, it looks like I got Bob on the upper-- Oh, you got Mary? I see. I apologize for the glitch, folks. Let's try one more time. I think we're having a little computer issue in our system. Mary, are you there, Mary in Manhattan?

Mary: Hi, can you hear me?

Brian: Hi there. Yes, we can hear you. I apologize.

Mary: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to reiterate what your reporter Jessica Gould is saying that this is absolutely driving so many parents completely crazy, just pushing us over the edge to live day by day like this and have our children's lives just hanging in the balance over a number that was so completely arbitrary. It feels so completely outdated. When I read in the news today, and have heard de Blasio say this in the past few days, that he is doing this so as to not break his word with parents. It's so incredibly galling to me because we're desperately begging the mayor to please break his word, the word that was decided without parent input, as far as I can see.

What's frustrating, I'll just say quickly, is that there is no parents union, there's no way for parents’s voices collectively to be heard on this. Parents, from what I see and feel and experience, are absolutely exhausted. I've been writing notes and letters to Cuomo, to de Blasio, it's hard to get out and protest. It's hard to get your voice heard. I've been a big supporter of de Blasio and always supported his push to open the public schools. These couple of days my daughter's in person in her elementary school are saving her life. It's just a lifesaver for her.

The massive contrast compared to her remote days, which are her vast, vast majority of days already. It's saving us, we're desperate about it. It's just too frustrating to hear the mayor, who I do support and I do support his vision and his motivation for opening the schools, of course, to say that this is also about not breaking a word to parents, parents who I feel weren't consulted, to begin with.

Brian: Mary, thank you so much. To Mary's point, Jessica when she says there's no parents union, when the mayor says he doesn't want to go back on his word, is it really his word to the teachers union? Because there obviously is a teachers union. No matter what individual teachers may think about it, I think the union position is, they're going to do everything to get their members out of the classroom as much as possible to minimize the COVID risk to them. Am I overstating that?

Jessica: I think that it's true that they want to minimize the risk to them as much as possible, whether they want to get them out of the classroom and that teachers want to get out of the classroom, I've actually heard a mix from teachers, some who are in favor of shutting down at 3%, and some who feel like this is oxygen for them too to be teaching their students and it's so much harder to do from home. Whether the union pushed the mayor to this 3% and is holding him there, I've been trying to find out exactly that.

So far, the mayor and the union are sticking to the line that it was the mayor's decision made with his own health experts that they then agreed to and submitted to the state, which then became binding because it was submitted to the state in the plan, the state can overrule. However, if anybody who's listening has insider information on whether, in fact, the union did push this more than I'm being told, please let me know.

Brian: All right, teachers, who wants to do a little- what's the word, whistleblowing? 646-435-728. 646-435-7280. We'll continue with our Education Reporter Jessica Gould right after this.

Brian Lehrer on WNYC, with our Education Reporter Jessica Gould. As it's a day-to-day proposition now as to whether New York City's public schools are going to be open on the following day based on whether the coronavirus test positivity rate goes up to a 3% average for the week. I know not everybody gets your head around what those numbers actually mean, but that's the threshold that they're sticking to. Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza reaffirmed it this morning, they're going to stick to that threshold.

They were getting so close on Friday as some of you will recall if you heard the mayor here for his weekly "Ask the Mayor" segment, that he told parents on this show ready to keep their kids home. Today, if the weekend positivity rate pushed it over 3% that did not happen, but the mayor said the schools are open today. They will be open tomorrow. We don't know about Wednesday. We're going to wait till tomorrow morning to see tomorrow's positivity rate and what that does to the weekly average, and so it is genuinely a day-to-day proposition. Hoda on the Upper West Side, you're on WNYC with our Jessica Gould. Hi, Hoda.

Hoda: Hi, Brian, thank you. Again, this is my second time calling in specifically on this topic. The first time I had called it was back in the summertime when we were thinking about school closures. I was talking about the devastating impact it has on our children's development, learning outcome, and the children with special needs, single parents, working mothers, advancement of women's careers, the impact that it's had to so many different parts of our lives, creating additional crises and extreme, extreme amount of hardship. I echo a lot of the same sentiments that some of the parents have spoken about and including your guests who’s spoken about.

I can tell you firsthand, for us this has been an extraordinarily trying period in my life and in my family's life. We've had to pay and self-fund remote learning centers for our children, because on the days that they're not in school, we both-- I have work, I have a job that I need for my livelihood and sustaining my family. I've had to pay exorbitant amount of money making sure that my children have adequate teachers in place, and I've had to fund personally a remote learning center.

I was very concerned with your mayor on Friday when he said, "The schools are different because the childcare centers that we can keep open compared to the schools that we have to keep open are different because they're much, much small in size." Guess what? Where are the schools? We're dealing with the fraction of the number of students in the classrooms, and the numbers speak for themselves. I don't buy what the mayor is saying about "this isn't pressure from the teachers union or medical advisers." He and his team have seen firsthand that this has been an evolving pandemic, and we've come to become much more educated.

We now understand the impact that this has on the schools, on the teachers, the low transmission rate, and why we continue to stick to that. Because of, again, an arbitrary number and commitments that we made early on that don't make sense now are clearly political driven. I don't buy anything that he's saying, and I'm going to reiterate this again. We are destroying our children. Make no mistake of who this has serious impact and consequence to. I had--

Brian: Hoda, let me really ask you to just--

Hoda: Yes, I'm sorry.

Brian: Keep going for time. Let me ask you-

Hoda: Sure, sure. Of course.

Brian: -a question that may or may not help you personally. It sounds you're very involved and you're probably already aware of whatever the answer is to this question. If you have financial concerns about having stay home with your kid and not being able to work, they will keep open-

Hoda: I signed up for it. I haven't [unintelligible 00:16:18].

Brian: -the programs for the children of essential workers. Do you know if you qualify?

Hoda: I don't qualify, I have signed up for it, I have repeatedly put myself down, and I have not been given a spot, and that's why I've had to fund it. I was one of the first people to sign up for it, and we didn't qualify because we're not considered. What happens now to somebody like me who's been so financially and emotionally impacted by this and has nowhere to go other than really-- I can't begin to tell you the impact that this has had on our family and that we have the mayor who's basically running the city like the Wild West. It’s unbelievable to me. Unbelievable to me.

Brian: Hoda, let me just clarity from you on one thing because this might help a lot of other people. Is it that your job, whatever you do for a living, you don't have to say what it is if you don't want, did not qualify on a list of essential worker professions.

Hoda: Correct.

Brian: Yes. Okay. Thank you for that. Jessica, and Hoda, good luck. We’ll hear you. Jessica, maybe that's worth clarifying.

Jessica: Yes, I agree.

Brian: Who gets qualified for those essential worker open schools?

Jessica: Good question. I remember Hoda’s call from this summer, so Hoda, we should be in touch. Learning bridges, my understanding is that preference is given to teachers and essential workers. If it's true that you can't get a slot after those slots have been given to the people who get priority, I did know that and that's information I'd like to pursue. Because, today the mayor said we haven't had the uptake, the participation in the learning bridges that we expected. It sounds to me like there are slots available. I don't know how the geography of the slots fit with the geography of the desire, but I definitely want to follow up with Hoda to hear about her experience and why she wasn't able to get a slot.

Brian: Hoda, if you're interested in doing this, I see you're still there. We can take your contact information off the air, and you can help Jessica report this story, which might help you and might help others as well. That’s up to you, but a producer is going to pick up, off the air of course, and if you want to share your contact information, you can do that. We're going to run out of time pretty quickly. Just I want to bring up one other thing. There's still no news about the middle school and high school admissions process, which is usually underway by noun.

We’ve been getting calls from parents wanting to know what they’re supposed to do and their kids are supposed to do if they're looking to get into any middle or high school that require some kind of admission procedure.

Jessica: There's a suit being filed today by Teens Take Charge, an activist group who- I think members have called you numerous times when you've been on with as the mayor, talking about their opposition to screens, selective admissions in high schools. They are arguing in a federal complaint that it's discriminatory based on the disparate impact of who gets in with fewer slots going to Black and Latinex students. Right now, the mayor has said, keeps saying that any day now he's going to tell us what the plan is for these selective admission screens for this year based on the fact that-- There weren't State tests this year, the grading policy has changed so that you can omit a grade from your GPA, and attendance is no longer supposed to be factored in for these screens for competitive high schools. We don't know how you can still make those decisions if those factors have been taken away. The last we heard is that, any day now, we'll hear the answer.

Brian: There was no indication. I asked the mayor this too, and he did not give an indication that he would use this as an excuse to end screens in middle and high school admission which that student's group and some others would like to see him do. He’s not going to use this as an excuse. There's going to be some specialized high school and screen middle school and other specialized school screening still. We have 10 seconds.

Jessica: That's what I heard him say to you too.

Brian: TBD, but that's where it stands as of now. It's certainly TBD on the date, so assuming that those things do go forward. WNYC, Education Reporter, Jessica Gould. You can also read print editions of her stories at gothamist.com. Thanks, Jess.

Jessica: Thank you.

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