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November 19, 2022

A new high school in NYC embraces a mix of in-person and virtual learning

Commencing freshman year this September at Brooklyn’s Edward R. Murrow Significant School, River Wedding day felt overwhelmed by its hulking campus with extra than 3,500 other learners.

The 15-year-outdated promptly sought assistance from their middle school assistance counselor. Inside of times, they transferred to a town-operate system identified as A University Without the need of Partitions, becoming a member of its inaugural class of 55 ninth graders.

“There was like nine people today in the course,” said River, who works by using they/them pronouns. “I was just like, ‘Whoof, I can breathe.’”

The new school takes advantage of a hybrid mastering model, the place college students alternate concerning finishing coursework at home and in standard school rooms. But as opposed to the hybrid method that educational institutions unexpectedly adopted during the peak of the pandemic — when students had more minimal interactions with instructors during distant instruction and much less prospects to perform with friends when in the classroom — the leaders driving School Without Walls hope to overhaul that technique.

Learners said the new faculty offers far more construction and person advice for remote instruction than they professional all through the pandemic. But the most considerable adjust is the school’s aim on assignments and fieldwork that are conducted away from students’ houses and lecture rooms — chances that the school’s leaders say would be more challenging to pull off inside a conventional schedule.

“We’re making use of hybrid understanding so that pupils have greater accessibility to means in New York Town and can engage in actual-environment mastering,” mentioned Veronica Coleman, the program’s principal. “For some college students, heading back again to a building for a total day just did not feel like it was for them any longer.”

For now, pupils shell out half of each and every working day at dwelling completing assignments and operating with their academics on the internet. The rest of the working day unfolds in particular person at an training department constructing in Downtown Brooklyn. As the method expands into 10th, 11th, and 12th grades over the subsequent three yrs, students are predicted to devote less time on standard coursework.

Veronica Coleman, principal of Faculty With out Walls, leads students to the subway soon after a vacation to Prospect Park.

Upperclassmen will total at the very least one particular “passion project” of their personal style. Some learners are presently considering about matters ranging from graffiti and avenue artwork to fashion layout that escapes regular gender norms. Those assignments will also include internships, higher education coursework, or other perform-based learning possibilities to foster a “better being familiar with of what it is that they could possibly want to do soon after superior faculty,” Coleman said.

The faculty was under progress right before Chancellor David Banking companies took business office, but it traces up with some of his early priorities, this sort of as giving pupils a opportunity to take a look at job passions well before graduation. Banks has also reported that he wishes to make choice applications that high college pupils obtain far more participating.

A very last-minute addition to large college admissions lineup

It stays to be noticed how common the hybrid software will become. Nevertheless the college supplied 100 seats this drop, it saw a small more than 50 {e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of people places loaded.

The school had limited time to entice students to utilize, Coleman mentioned, as the metropolis introduced that programs for the method experienced opened just just before the significant university admissions deadline. The system also in the beginning recruited pupils alongside a separate entirely digital system, also called “School Without Walls,” main to some confusion between roughly 15 pupils who afterwards withdrew. (The metropolis strategies to change the name of the completely virtual program.)

Numerous pupils who enrolled claimed they ended up experiencing the program so much and appreciated the program’s unconventional construction. Just one university student, for instance, reported the ability to function from property for 50 percent the working day enabled him to help care for his grandmother.

Derrick Newell said the school’s hybrid program authorized him to assist just take treatment of his grandmother.

An additional scholar, Lena Gestel, explained she was in the beginning skeptical of College Without the need of Partitions, but quickly identified the hybrid design allowed her to acquire dance classes that would have conflicted with the regular college working day.

“It’s way much better for my program,” reported 14-year-previous Gestel. Plus, she’s been ready to get a single-on-a single help from her instructors if she’s struggling to complete assignments.

One particular of the school’s major attracts, while, is the prospect to get out of the classic classroom and check out the metropolis, primarily just after quite a few students used long stretches of the pandemic confined to their households.

Students have by now taken numerous off-campus excursions which includes visits to parks in the vicinity of the school’s Downtown Brooklyn headquarters. They conducted “empathy interviews” to master how individuals are using the general public spaces and how they could be improved. Many thanks to a partnership with the park’s section, pupils will have the chance to instantly pitch their strategies to the agency, Coleman explained.

On a modern Wednesday, a journey targeted on environmental science despatched students to Prospect Park to study about the area ecosystem. All through an hour and a half hike, they discovered about local vegetation and also received some workout — their Downtown Brooklyn building does not have a gym for classic actual physical education lessons.

Pupils at Faculty Devoid of Walls dug up crayfish in Prospect Park through an environmental science lesson.

Guided by parks division and college employees, the pupils snapped on blue rubber gloves and plunged nets into a creek, unearthing leaves, mud, and crayfish. Later, they done water excellent tests for pH, temperature, nitrate, and dissolved oxygen. They tested hypotheses about no matter if the drinking water was healthful sufficient to maintain aquatic daily life.

“We’re just utilised to like structures and things,” said 14-yr-outdated Faris Moataz, introducing that he’s been pleased to invest time in character. “Just to like know that this is right here — it’s also cool.”

Get the job done at your own pace

The university was created in collaboration with NYC Outward Bound, a nonprofit that supports a network of general public colleges that typically contain intense initiatives, outside education, and an advisory program named “Crew” the place students bond with every other and a school advisor above many many years. University Without the need of Walls gained funding from the XQ Institute, a deep-pocketed firm that funds groups that are seeking to rethink the way substantial universities run. A group of scholar interns also supplied enter on the school’s design.

Moataz and other college students explained they appreciated the University Without having Walls’ unconventional tactic to academics. The system employs a “competency-based” technique of instruction where by educators make certain learners have mastered certain capabilities right before transferring on. Students obtain narrative evaluations somewhat than regular letter grades.

“This school, like, genuinely assists you so that you can truly have an understanding of what you are performing,” stated Moataz. “They’re not obligatory on the deadline. So like if you do [an assignment] a couple of times following, they’ll nonetheless take it.” He also likes staying ready to total assignments from property, in which he normally finds it less complicated to focus.

Other students have been far more nervous about the school’s remote finding out element, especially following their encounters with on the internet instruction throughout the pandemic.

River Wedding ceremony transferred to University With out Partitions immediately after feeling overcome by a considerably bigger Brookyln significant faculty.

River, the college student who transferred from Murrow, claimed it was a huge obstacle to take care of their time when they were being studying remotely in center college all through the pandemic.

“I was like, no lecturers, wholly all on me, my grades ended up likely down,” they mentioned, including that she skipped extensive stretches of school. “I did not know what to do.”

But when they arrived at College Without having Partitions, River mentioned the instructors supplied plenty of enable with distant coursework and weren’t “really controlling” or “very rigid,” which will help inspire them to stick with their assignments.

“You really do not come to feel like you have to get it accomplished instantly,” they explained. “And you never feel stressed, and then thrust it away.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC community schools. Get in touch with Alex at [email protected].

February 18, 2022

Home schooling nearly doubled in NYC since pandemic’s start

Mirroring trends across the nation, the number of children being home-schooled has dramatically increased in New York City.

This school year, roughly 14,800 children across the five boroughs have opted to learn outside of school walls, according to internal education department data obtained by Chalkbeat. That number jumped by nearly 7,000 — or 88{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} — since the pandemic hit with the biggest gain occurring this school year, as more than 4,000 new students registered to home-school.

The largest increases were in districts with higher shares of low-income students, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

The reasons families decide to educate their children at home vary. For some parents, the pandemic may have pushed them out of the workforce or into remote jobs where they found themselves with the time and desire to educate their children after getting a taste of it during remote learning.

Some may have been unhappy with what they saw when their children were in online classes last year, and families of color, in particular, may have been upset witnessing firsthand curriculum that wasn’t culturally responsive. For others, it was a trust issue: They felt their children were safer at home because of COVID fears or other school-related violence.

Bushwick mom Shalonda Curtis-Hackett started out this school year keeping her three children home as a form of protest, striking along with other families who wanted a remote learning option in New York City amid the ongoing public health crisis.

On top of COVID, Curtis-Hackett has long been skeptical of her children’s public-school education, concerned about anti-Blackness and bias she saw in the teaching and curriculum. She officially notified the city’s education department in November of her plans to home-school her children.

Now, she’s deep in the process of “unschooling” her children, following their interests instead of a prescribed curriculum. She’s plugging into a growing movement of Black home-schoolers on Instagram, sharing tips and resources with other parents.

“Our kids are harmed in public school,” Curtis-Hackett said. “Because we’re unschooling, we play a lot of games. I let them play video games. We put together a puzzle globe, and we spin and pick a place to research.”

Yes, her fifth grader is playing a lot of Minecraft, Curtis-Hackett said, but she’s also reading more. Her second grader is playing a lot of board games, and he’s learning math in the process. Both of those children and her ninth grader have recently started learning instruments — one is doing piano, another is studying guitar, and the other is playing the flute.

Home-schooling is hard for many families to pull off, and it still remains relatively rare, accounting for roughly 1.5{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of students, city education department officials said. But the increase may explain part of the enrollment decline among the city’s traditional public schools.

Students in grades K-5 moved into home schooling at the highest rates, jumping 119{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} on average since the 2019-2020 school year, a Chalkbeat analysis of the data since the 2019-20 school year found. Middle school saw a 74{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} increase in home-schoolers, while high school home-schoolers increased by 64{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf}.

There is also evidence that low-income families may have opted to homeschool at higher rates. The number of home-schooled students in the six highest poverty districts increased about 119{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf}, on average, while home-schooling students in the six lowest poverty districts increased about 79{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} over the past two years.

“The past two years have been challenging for school communities across the nation, and families made the best decisions suited to their unique needs and circumstances,” education department spokesperson Sarah Casasnovas said. “As New York City recovers from the impacts of the pandemic, families are returning to classrooms. Chancellor Banks is committed to engaging with families and working to restore trust in New York City schools.”

COVID-era home schooling

Home schooling has grown in popularity across the country during the pandemic. The number of Florida students enrolled in home education jumped by 35{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} in the year after the pandemic started. In Virginia, there was a 56{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} jump in home schooling, though the numbers fell somewhat this school year. And in Michigan, researchers found students left public schools for home-schooling arrangements at significantly higher rates when the pandemic hit.

There are no official national counts of families who home-school. A Census survey found that home school rates roughly doubled in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, with an even more dramatic jump among Black families, though some analysts believe those figures are overstated.

The 88{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} increase in home schooling in New York City is consistent with large increases in other parts of the country, said Andrew Bacher-Hicks, an assistant professor at Boston University who has studied home-schooling trends during the pandemic. He noted that public school districts that offered in-person learning in the fall of 2020, such as New York City, tended to see larger increases in families choosing to home-school. Schools that did not offer in-person schooling tended to see more parents leave for private schools.

“The leave to home schooling might be related to health concerns,” Bacher-Hicks said. (New York City did not offer a virtual option this school year, which coincided with a larger increase in home schooling.) But “no matter what modality was offered, some subset of households and parents and families are going to be unhappy with the public offering.”

Bacher-Hicks added that Black and low-income families tended to opt for home schooling at higher rates. New York City education department officials declined repeated requests to share demographic data of home-schooled students and did not return a public records request for that information.

Historically, home schooling has generally been considered a “white phenomenon,” said James Dwyer, a professor at William and Mary Law School and co-author of “Homeschooling: The History and Philosophy of a Controversial Practice.”

In the 1960s, home schooling was driven by left-wing concerns “about the authoritarian nature of public schooling” and skepticism toward the state. In the 1970s and 1980s, growth in home schooling was driven by evangelical Christians who were wary of secularization, desegregation, and liberal values in public education, Dwyer said.

The pandemic may have prompted a more diverse group of parents to try home schooling, Dwyer said, a claim backed up by the census figures and anecdotal reporting.

Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman, co-editor of the book “Homeschooling Black Children in the U.S,” said the pandemic gave some parents a clearer sense of what their children are taught or how they’re treated — and some Black families didn’t like what they were seeing.

“You have this whole experience culturally — whether it’s the lack of cultural competency within the school or cultural relevance — to also some of the punitive responses to their children,” said Ali-Coleman. “It definitely led parents to realize and be more empowered that [homeschooling] is something they could do when things went virtual.”

District-level data obtained by Chalkbeat showed that the numbers of home-schooled students increased across the board since the 2019-2020 school year, but more than doubled in nine of the city’s 32 districts as well as District 75, which serves students with disabilities who need intensive support.

The top three districts with the largest percentage increase were all in Brooklyn: Bushwick’s District 32, District 13 (spanning Bedford-Stuyvesant, Prospect Heights, Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights), and District 21, which includes Coney Island and Brighton Beach.

Curtis-Hackett, the Bushwick mom, said there were several reasons she decided to home-school her children this year. Some had been brewing for a while.

Curtis-Hackett struggled last year with her children’s elementary school. She wanted the school to teach more explicitly about the tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement and Black history, more broadly, as well as to include LGBTQ-affirming resources.

During online schooling, when she overheard her daughter’s then-fourth grade teacher talking about Susan B. Anthony, Curtis-Hackett piped up asking why Black women weren’t included. The teacher said, ‘If you know so much, why don’t you teach?’ Curtis-Hackett recounted. So Curist-Hackett, who is Black, made a cameo, telling the class about Sojourner Truth, a former slave, abolitionist, and women’s rights activist.

“My kids are getting the same education I got, just with fancier books and technology. You might change ‘slavery’ to ‘enslaved.’ But there’s still a whole entire unit that says ‘European exploration’ written on the front page of the book,” said Curis-Hackett, a doula and makeup artist.“To me that’s violence, I couldn’t take that chance for my children to not be recognized and seen in school.”

Whether most families who began home-schooling during the pandemic stick with it is an open question. Dwyer, the William and Mary professor, noted that home schooling can be resource-intensive for families, and some are likely to send their children back to traditional schools for extracurricular activities and other social opportunities that can be harder to replicate in a home-school environment.

“The reasons people have always had for sending their children to school every day still exist,” Dwyer said. “I expect most children will be returning to schools.”

Looking for home-school help

Seventeen-year-old Jonica Jenkins this week returned to finish her senior year at Frederick Douglass Academy II after spending these past several months as a home-school student, learning from her family’s Harlem apartment.

Jenkins developed a daily routine: After waking between 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. she would eat breakfast and then log onto an online learning platform where she took such courses as government and art history, wrapping up around noon or 1 p.m. Then she spent her afternoons watching YouTube videos and playing Roblox, Tycoons or other video games.

She had decided not to return to school this fall, not just because of coronavirus concerns, but also because of other safety issues.

“COVID was one of the reasons. But I had a lot of bad experiences in school. I dealt with a lot of bullying,” Jenkins said. “It’s not even having to deal with the bullying itself. When I see other kids acting out and fighting in school, it messes with my mood — it gives me anxiety. I’m tired of having to deal with that.”

Jenkins’ mother Johndca Spencer had wanted to home-school her three children years prior to the pandemic, but was too busy running a home cleaning business. When that business fell apart after the pandemic shut down many parts of New York City, Spencer reevaluated.

The main reason for the return to a traditional school: Spencer didn’t know how colleges would accept her daughter’s home-school diploma, and she worried it wouldn’t carry as much weight as a Regents diploma from a brick-and-mortar school.

Spencer wasn’t sure how to find out the answers to her questions.

“How can you prove you graduated — just because your mom said you’re done?” Spencer said. “Basically I was on my own with that. The red tape surrounding that for this state was too much to navigate, especially when you’re not getting any assistance … There’s not enough resources and not enough help, and I just didn’t know how to access it.”

Without finding a community of families with high school seniors, Spencer felt ill-equipped to navigate her daughter’s graduation.

She was incensed that New York, unlike most other states, has no virtual public school option. The home-school office advised her daughter to get her high school equivalency diploma by taking the General Educational Development, or GED, test, and suggested the family could reach out to individual colleges to see what they might accept, Spencer said.

Fortunately, Jenkins’ school will accept the credits from the online platform she had been using this year so far, the mom said. And she’s looking forward to seeing her daughter don a cap and gown.

“She needs to be celebrated. She’s so smart and has worked so hard,” Spencer said. “I could do an awards ceremony with just her, but she deserves to walk across a stage and for other people to clap for her.”

Back to online learning

Harlem mom Inaya Shujaat became a reluctant home-schooler last summer when it became clear the city’s schools weren’t going to provide a remote option.

Shujaat was nervous about sending her children back into classrooms that she believed were not safe, though city officials have insisted that all classrooms have proper ventilation and transmission in school buildings is rare.

When a remote option didn’t materialize, Shujaat opted to enroll her two children, who are in the fifth and sixth grades, in The Muslim Academy, a virtual school that includes a mix of religious and secular studies at a cost of about $600 a month for the pair. (The children are considered home-schooled.)

Inaya Shujaat with her two children, Zubeda and Asad.

“I never considered home-schooling them myself,” she said. “They provide the curriculum and all the parent has to do is provide support for the child.”

The curriculum is largely pre-recorded except for two classes: a creative art class and a course that focuses on the Quran, Arabic, and Islamic studies, Shujaat said. A recent art class involved her son constructing a three-dimensional fire using paper. Shujaat said her children have been able to participate with minimal support from her.

Shujaat said she’s generally happy with the program, though she noted her children receive little qualitative feedback from their teachers.

Still, she said the program is sufficient for now, as the family considers next steps. Shujaat’s husband, who is a physician, is considering jobs outside of New York City.

“It’s definitely a stopgap or a big frickin’ band-aid,” Shujaat said. “We’re playing it by ear.”

Cam Rodriguez contributed.

November 26, 2021

They believed home was safer than school. Now some NYC parents are accused of educational neglect.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization covering public education. Sign up for their newsletters here: ckbe.at/newsletters.

Originally published Nov 19, 2021, 6:00am EST

There was no warning, just a knock on the door of Melissa Keaton’s Flatbush, Brooklyn, apartment.
She opened it to find a caseworker with the Administration for Children’s Services, or ACS, the New York City agency tasked with investigating suspected child neglect and abuse.

Still shaken by the sudden death of her father to COVID-19, Keaton hadn’t sent her 9-year-old daughter to school since classes started mid-September. It was now the end of October, and the caseworker explained to Keaton, a former PTA president at her daughter’s school, that someone had reported the family for educational neglect.

When New York City opened its schools this fall for in-person learning, with no option for virtual instruction, families across the five boroughs opted to keep their children home. They worried about the health of their children and vulnerable loved ones, and remained unconvinced it was safe to return to full buildings.

The city’s Department of Education promised at the beginning of the school year to be patient with families who remained scared of returning to in-person learning in what was once the U.S. epicenter of the health crisis.

“The only time ACS will intervene is if there is a clear intent to keep a child from being educated, period,” schools Chancellor Meisha Porter said at a press conference shortly before the new school year began. “We want to work with our families because we recognize what families have been through.”

Now, more than two months into the school year, some parents say they have been reported for neglect. The impact of child welfare investigations on already traumatized families can be severe: charges may stay on records for decades, future job prospects can be affected, and, most alarmingly, parents could be separated from children.

Education department staff made 207 reports of educational neglect through Oct. 31, according to ACS data. The numbers tripled in the last two weeks of October, compared to the total reported during the first month of school.

Still, the overall number of reports dropped from last year, when there were 346 cases in the same time period. But some parents and advocates say this year’s numbers are cause for concern since some of the parents getting wrapped up in the child welfare system are making efforts to educate their children as they hold out for a remote option.

Options for wary families, who are disproportionately families of color, are limited. Parents can apply for medically necessary instruction, which offers few teaching hours at home or virtually — but only for children who meet certain medical conditions. They can home-school, but that removes the student from their public school and puts the onus on families to educate their children at home, without help. In New York, homeschooling also involves completing and filing a plan and quarterly reports.

Experts have stressed that children learn best in school. The American Academy of Pediatrics has warned about the dire consequences of keeping students home.

“Remote learning — which exacerbated existing educational inequities — was detrimental to the educational attainment of students of all ages and worsened the growing mental health crisis among children and adolescents,” the academy wrote.

City leaders have worked to reassure families that steps are being taken to make buildings safe. Staff must be vaccinated, masks are required for everyone, and officials said they’ve upgraded ventilation across the city’s 1,600 schools. Weekly on-campus COVID testing for unvaccinated students (the only group who is swabbed) has revealed a positivity rate of .39{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} over a seven-day average, according to city data through Nov. 17.

“Our priority is the safety of our students, and the first two months of this school year showed that our schools are the safest place for them to be during this pandemic,” said education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer.

For Keaton, whose father died alone at a hospital soon after developing a cough in April 2020, that isn’t enough. After attending virtual town halls and talking to school and district leaders, she remained unconvinced that it was safe to send her daughter back to a school building.

“Families who are grieving and traumatized should not have to go through this,” she said.

‘Caught in the crosshairs’

It’s unclear how many families are refusing to send their children to school buildings this year. But attendance has lagged in some places, and last month the chancellor recorded a round of robocalls to families urging them to send their children to class.

Tajh Sutton is a mom in Brooklyn who, through the advocacy group PRESS, Parents for Responsive Equitable Safe Schools, has been providing resources and support to families boycotting classrooms because of health concerns.

The group has been advocating for a remote option as well as legislation that would require parents to be informed of their rights if they’re ever reported to ACS. Group members have also asked for an attendance code to track families who are staying home because of safety concerns.

After receiving roughly 20 calls from parents who recently received visits from ACS caseworkers, PRESS members created toolkits to help families understand their rights when it comes to child welfare and is partnering with the advocacy group JMacForFamilies and others on a Nov. 26 workshop on the topic.

The education department last week sent new guidance to principals with specific suggestions for how to engage with families who aren’t sending their children to school because of health concerns.

The guidance calls for offering families a virtual tour of the school to see the safety measures in place, making adjustments to respond to parents’ concerns, and offering application information for the city’s medically necessary instruction program. It also notes that schools should not report families for educational neglect if there is a pending application for medically necessary instruction or homeschooling.

“A report of suspected educational neglect is not a remedy for excessive absences, and is an option of last resort,” the guidance says.

Styer, the education department spokesman, said that educators “exhaust all options to support families in making sure every student attends school safely every day,” but also that, “our staff take their responsibility as mandated reporters for child welfare very seriously.”

“One of the striking things to me about placing teachers in the role of mandated reporters is just the extreme damage and lack of trust that creates in the relationship between parents and teachers,” said Anna Arons, an acting assistant professor at New York University.”

Despite the detailed guidance, many schools appear to be responding in their own ways, according to Amy Leipziger, a senior staff attorney who deals with education issues for Queens Legal Services. The move to call ACS on families, who are “trying to do the best they can,” ends up feeling very “retaliatory” by their schools, she said.

Now you’ve got parents — and more importantly, you’ve got kids — getting caught in the crosshairs,” she said.

A spokesperson for ACS, Nicholas Aguilar, said that the agency’s top priority is the safety and well-being of the city’s children. “Our work is focused on ensuring families have the services and supports that they need for their children to thrive, including educational services,” he said.

Educators are considered “mandated reporters,” which means they’re obligated to report suspected abuse or neglect. Prior to COVID, educators made about a quarter of ACS reports, said Anna Arons, an acting assistant professor at the New York University law school who has studied the city’s child welfare agency.

Arons pointed out research nationwide shows reports from educators are the least likely to be substantiated.

In terms of who is being reported, Black and Latino children tend to be overrepresented. While about 60{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of the city’s children are Black and Latino, they are 90{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of those involved in investigations or placed in foster care, Arons said.

In response to the harshness of how long ACS charges stay on one’s record, a new state rule will take effect in January reducing the number of years to eight. Until then, any ACS charges could remain on someone’s record until the child turns 28.

‘Concerned for our children’s safety’

After spending last year fully remote, Viviana Echavarria’s two teenagers were excited to return to Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy and even went back-to-school shopping. But then the Bronx mom and her husband decided to keep their two high schoolers home until their 11-year-old could get vaccinated.

Still, Echavarria was stunned when her husband called late last month while she was at work, as a director of operations for a nursing home, letting her know that an ACS caseworker was at their door. He hasn’t returned to work yet to stay home with their three school-aged children and 6-month-old baby.
The caseworker was investigating allegations of educational neglect and checked the children for bruises on their bodies. Because the family includes an infant, the caseworker said she would be visiting weekly, Echavarria said.

Before the school year started, Echavarria had contacted the school to let them know her children would be home and asked for support. The principal told her that the only option was to sign up to home-school her children. The principal, in a Sept. 8 email, wrote that the education department was not providing curriculum, materials, or support.

The full-time working mom of four didn’t feel equipped to home-school and asked the city’s home-school office for help, but got no response. Though she’s been taking her children to the library on occasion, they’ve had no formal schooling yet this year.

“They’re putting you in a position where you have to choose between your kids’ health and their education,” Echavarria said. “If they think they’re helping the children, they’re making it worse. Now they’re adding fear.”

Her two older children’s geometry teachers had reached out to find out why they were missing class, and ended up giving them access to assignments in Google classroom. But when the children asked the other teachers if they could do the same, the principal clamped down, Echavarria said.

In a Sept. 24 email the principal said: “The children must come to school. We have programs and are expecting them.”

The principal declined to comment, referring questions to the education department, which didn’t address specific cases.

After getting her 11-year-old son vaccinated this week, Echavarria now plans to send all three children back to school on Thursday, hoping that will put an end to the ACS investigation. The agency, however, would not tell her whether that would close the case, she said.

“We feel like we can’t wait for the second dose. We feel like we don’t have a choice,” she said. “It still leaves us: Where do we go from here? We’re sending them to school, but we’re still being investigated.”

Home schooling wasn’t an option for Keaton either. She felt she could manage online learning after having done so for more than a year. She wasn’t prepared, however, to be her daughter’s teacher. Like Echavarria, Keaton also sent emails to school leaders asking them to provide virtual work for her daughter to complete.

“I was told no, there wasn’t any work. That was only for students who are quarantining, and there is no remote option,” she said.

With the help of the nonprofit organization Brooklyn Defenders, Keaton is now navigating the application for medically necessary home-based instruction while the ACS case looms. She has found support through a local group called Parents Supporting Parents NY. She has worried about whether the investigation will affect her ability to work in schools, as she has in the past, and wondered how long it would take to get her daughter back if they were ever separated.

“It’s rough to fathom the thought that I could end up in front of a judge who could remove my child because I want to maintain her safety and our health,” Keaton said. “I can provide a safe environment for her at home. There is no exposure.”

‘It’s policing’

Another member of PRESS, Paullette Healy has been keeping both of her children home because of health concerns while providing resources and support to families who are also boycotting schools because of health concerns. Healy knew that getting a visit from ACS was a real threat — she had been working on the toolkits for parents in that situation.

Still, the Brooklyn mom was shocked when she received a knock on her door from an ACS caseworker while in the middle of an online training session last week for her role on her local Community Education Council, which is essentially a school board for her district.

She was shaken by the visit, especially since both of her children’s schools unofficially supported her choice by allowing them access to work on Google classroom.

Healy refused to let the caseworker inside, nor did she provide the requested pictures of her children’s asthma medications, her husband’s medications, and their smoke alarms.

Healy had applied on Sept. 1 for medically necessary instruction for her children, citing asthma and anxiety as reasons to keep them home. She never heard back, and just last week learned from one of her children’s schools that school officials could not find her application.

Some parents and legal advocates told Chalkbeat that applications for medically necessary instruction are taking about four weeks to process. Roughly 500 children are enrolled in medically necessary instruction, with about 750 having submitted applications this year so far, according to education department data as of Nov. 9.

Healy worries she’ll likely have to spend the next year working to get the ACS investigation off her record for background checks.

Even though Healy understands how to navigate the system, the visit has her family on edge.

“It’s harassment. It’s surveillance. It’s policing… It’s so stressful,” said Healy. “My child has been having trouble sleeping since the ACS visit: nightmares about being taken away from her home.

Arons, the NYU researcher, said that during the shutdown and its aftermath in New York City, sharp drops in the number of reports made, cases heard, and families separated has not led to increased risk to children as measured in a variety of ways, from youth fatalities to emergency room usage. Her findings are detailed in a forth-coming paper.

She hopes the fallout from these neglect complaints can be an open conversation about the role of agencies like ACS moving forward.

“I think there’s much more appetite and willingness to engage around the idea of do we need this level of surveillance? And do we need teachers to be in this role,” she said.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2021/11/19/22790130/nyc-parents-acs-educational-neglect-covid-concerns-remote-schooling

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