NYC Schools Get Guidance On In-Person, Remote Teaching

NEW YORK CITY — Mayor Bill de Blasio promised new guidance will give city educators “clarity” on how to juggle in-person and remote teaching for students.

It then took him and school officials the better part of an hour Thursday to explain the plan.

The announced agreement between the city and United Federation of Teachers union comes about two weeks before students are slated to return to classrooms amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

All students, whether in a blended learning or fully remote plan, will get live instruction every day, de Blasio said.

“Under any choice a parent makes for their kid, the kids are going to get support every day, they’re going to get education every day,” he said. “But what was important was to determine a good working model for professionals to work together to maximize what we can do for the kids.”

This is where the plan gets tricky.

Blended learning students who are in-school and at-home will have separate teachers working as a team for those times, de Blasio said. Those in-person and remote teachers will have 30 minutes at the start of the day to plan and collaborate, he said.

Fully remote students will have live instruction every day, he said.

Linda Chen, the city’s chief academic officer, promised the plan will provide clarity to principals and educators as they craft plans.

“While today’s announcement may not answer every question you may have, it does endeavor to address some essential questions you’ve been asking to move forward,” she said.

But it took reporter questions over the course of a hour to coax more details out about the plan. Department of Education officials later sent a copy to Patch.

Chen, in response to questions, said students will have set times during which they’ll be online with all of their classmates with a teacher, in smaller groups or one-to-one with teachers.

Parents will know in advance what time to log on, she said.

Students will have the following amounts of live instruction, depending on their grade:

• Kindergarten through second grade — 65 to 95 minutes
• Third through fifth grade — 90 to 110 minutes
• Sixth through eighth grade — 80 to 100 minutes
• Ninth through 12th grade — 100 to 120 minutes

Chen acknowledged a “mathematical problem” in providing both in-person and remote teachers.

“Absolutely, the math would indicate to you that is going to be a variable we need to solve for,” she said. “The agreement helps principals have the tools they need to figure out more precisely what those staffing needs will be, and more precisely how the DOE can support them in those efforts.”

De Blasio said any plan will be “imperfect by definition” given the struggles in the pandemic.

Imperfections may not assuage growing doubts about the city’s push to return to classrooms.

Safety and logistical concerns prompted the UFT to levy a still-simmering strike threatand elected officials to call for de Blasio to delay or scrap the reopening altogether.

Read the whole guidance below: