A federal appeals court reversed a decision made over the weekend regarding the vaccine mandate for Department of Education staff: now employees have until Friday, October 5 @ 1pm to get their first dose of the vaccine, otherwise they will be removed from payroll and the DOE will figure out what to do over a weekend. I received an email from my union president about this half an hour ago and wonder exactly what will happen next Monday. 

The mayor has said there will be enough substitute teachers out there to take care of the students who need them. I am somewhat skeptical of the quality of those folks but recognize that this may be the only way to get the stragglers vaccinated. I do support it and the science seems more than justified to me to make it a mandate. We'll see what happens.

Last week I received two email updates from the UFT sharing various agreements they have crafted with the DOE. Some I think are good and useful (when used correctly) and others I'm not sure sure about.

The first was an official list of escalating consequences for students who do not wear masks. During my first week of school I was very happy that the advisory-type class I had (called Crew) did not have any mask refusers. There were some students who kept forgetting that it fell off their nose, but were very careful to put it back when asked. The consequences they could have received make a fair amount of sense (talk to student, sending a student to talk to a counselor, etc.). The first one on the list: document the incident with OORS (Online Occurrence Reporting System) seems a bit harsh to me as the first thing to do. I would assume we should talk more to the student and family before officially reporting something like this. But, I guess the UFT feels they wanted it that badly. 

The next item I'm not sure how to react to: we can do instructional lunch at schools across the DOE in order to shorten the schedule and have fewer students in a cafeteria eating food together simultaneously. I suppose it is good but I'm not sure how well it will work. Last year at the high school I work at we had instructional lunch and basically used it as a period to show documentaries (sometimes) and try to talk about the news. Much of the time, though, it was just quiet eating. I can't imagine much 'instruction' will take place while students are eating.

Then, any unvaccinated staff member is ordered to get tested between September 13 and 27 when the vaccine mandate goes into effect. I'm not sure if this is still in effect as the vaccinate mandate seems to be on pause for now (this was in a different update sent this week from the UFT). But there is a court date set for September 22 so we will see what happens then.

Finally, there are all kinds of ways for staff to not work for the DOE this year if they want to avoid the vaccine mandate. From taking an unpaid leave to actually leaving the DOE and getting severance pay, this is a pretty extreme part of the negotiations but I suppose necessary for those who feel the need. I wonder how many people will actually leave because of teaching conditions this year.

I am not going to lie, it feels REALLY weird to be in such a large class with masks as if things are sort of back to normal. I haven't taught my academic classes yet (we'll see how that goes next week) but I don't think it'll be much different. Perhaps more anxiety-inducing as I'll be with more kids throughout the day. We'll see.

A lot of news sources shared what happened in the UFT-NYC arbitration surrounding exemptions to the staff vaccine mandate (CNN, New York Post, SI Live). Essentially, the arbitrator ruled that the City overstepped its authority and there have to be medical and religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate. While the UFT has been saying this entire time that vaccines are the way to go, they have successfully pushed back and allowed people to keep their jobs and/or health insurance if they decided to take unpaid leave.

I am very curious to see how many people take advantage of this policy as I believe the science is pretty sound (and has great evidence of over 175 million people in the US have received the vaccine with a tiny percentage having negative effects). If it's a low number and still allows for herd immunity, I think it will be fine. If not, then we will have some problems. 

In the meantime, a few teachers are suing the DOE over the vaccine mandate. I doubt it will go very far considering what the Biden administration is doing federally.

The UFT Town Hall Meeting was very informative and went into a bit more depth than various emails have had in the past. Here are my notes below:

Te first thing President Mulgrew mentioned was that the UFT is going to use its disaster relief fund to help members in need. There will be something up on the website tomorrow for people in need to submit for assistance. 

Then he had three major categories of items to share:

Safety
- Building response teams will be relied on again, much like last year. The UFT trained 1100 BRT leaders from their buildings with more trainings available for other schools.
- 3 feet of social distancing this year, not 6. Some overcrowded schools are being dealt by making plans with UFT people - could be longer school day to spread out or extra rental space or something. This is still being worked on.
- The City is essentially following the CDC guidance.
- Cafeterias - 3 foot distancing as well. Based on evaluations of schools, there should be a breeze in cafeterias to maximize air exchanges from the ventilation system. If not, let them know.
- The UFT trained 100 people with commercial grade CO2 monitors to check out air exchanges. If there is an issue, call UFT and they will get it checked. 
- Testing: no testing for teachers as of September 27. If adults are in the building want to be testing, the test/trace team said they can be tested. Every other week, schools will have 10% of their student population tested (who consent). We know 60% of MS/HS are vaccinated. Mulgrew said for elementary kids he wants weekly testing. MS/HS he said every other week is okay. 
- If there is a positive case in the class with kids under 12, class goes under quarantine. Teacher works from home unless the principal asks to come in for a reason outside of just remote teaching from a room.
- If there is a positive case in class with vaccinated kids, vaccinated kids with no symptoms can keep going to school. They'll get a test 3-5 days after the case is found. Anyone showing symptoms must do 10-day quarantine (Vaccinated or unvaccinated). Unvaccinated kids who are not showing symptoms need to quarantine but can get a test 3 days in and if negative they can return.

Instructional plan (digital work agreement)
- We will be doing an academic and social-emotional diagnostic. 
- Starting on Sept 27, K-10 will have a literacy and numeracy done for every student in NYC. 
- K-2 diagnostics are on paper (20 min), the rest electronically. Takes approximately an hour to complete. AIS team will coordinate. We decide as a school on how to get it done.
- Social-emotional: give time for acclimation back to being in a building before doing anything kind of diagnostic. Not going to be until November. In the meantime, every school will have access to social workers. The assessment will be 5 minutes where the adult closest to the child answer questions about the kid and the student is not present.
- Agreement sent last night. Having a digital classroom and teaching remotely is not part of the terms and conditions of our employment. That will be a major piece in the next contract. For now, we didn't want a precedent to be set. Anyone who will be supplying remote services will get 4 hours of per session (no time sheets, though) for setting up the platform. Must load the first day remote instruction (asynchronous) as part of the four hours. If there are kids who are quarantined at home, make yourself available for 1 hour for help. The other hour you upload new work for students to do. 2 hours per class that is partially quarantined. So if you teach multiple classes, you'd get 2 hours per class. Remote instruction agreement link.

Vaccine order from Department of Health
- Mulgrew talked a lot about caring for each other as members. This is likely because of the controversy surrounding vaccinations. 
- He said when they went into negotiations with the city about how to deal with this, the official position of city is if a person has a religious exemption or medical exemption or medical accommodation, then people should use CAR and then be removed from payroll
- UFT filed for impasse to to go to mediation. And he is also going to challenge this in court.

Questions:
- How is the union prepared to deal with the possibility of staff deaths? Mulgrew talked about vaccinations as the best way to avoid it. Didn't really answer the question directly. 
- If you have already gotten covid and had antibodies, why being forced to get vaccine? She said the vaccine doesn't do better with antibodies than the disease (even if some studies show this is true, it is not a good idea). Mulgrew said the DOH can mandate it. Hope MLC can vote to challenge the mandate without better bargaining. 
- Are schools responsible for providing PPE? Yes. Every classroom will have air filters. All same safeties are still in place. If someone gets sick while at school they will be quarantined without coming from CAR.
- Why are we mandated to get vaccine when new state governor hasn't done it for all employees? NYC Department of Health has more authority to mandate vaccines than the state department of health does. State are only ones that can mandate vaccines for kids. 
- What happens if parents refused to sign the consent form for testing of their children? What happens to students who refuse to wear masks in school? Because there is no remote option city can't stop students from going to school for not wearing a mask. Mayor said zero tolerance as it relates to mask wearing issues. Mulgrew thinks there should be some kind of remote suspension (but this is not insubordination for it to go slowly). Sounds like parents are concerned about not enough testing just like UFT is. 
- What about isolation rooms in schools? Still there, but with different name. 
- If you already have plans when you are supposed to do the digital learning stuff for quarantined students, what do you do? Mulgrew said the idea was to be vague about it so that staff can do it when they can, without proscribing when. 
- Why aren't all students mandated to test? City does not have legal authority to do it. 
- Parents don't want to send kids to a school building but there is no remote option. What do they do? Same thing with medically fragile staff. Mulgrew said maybe those kids would stay home for home instruction, but then a staff member would have to go to each of their houses. The medically fragile staff is the reason why UFT is going to test the mandate in a court.
- What are the requirements for digital classroom stuff? Set up your classroom and get the 4 hours of per session money. If your class goes remote, then follow what was said before.
- If students have to remain 3 feet apart, do teachers have to stay 6 feet apart? Still fighting about this one. What about spring break pay? On July 1 UFT filed for arbitration. Still being scheduled. 
- With a school that has junky ventilation and small rooms, what are we going to do? Now that there is a new governor (he said she is very competent and bright) he thinks we will get a better result by bringing someone from the department of health.