Port district parents protest for full-time in-person classes for elementary students

Rose Weldon
Port Washington resident Henry Duarte with his two children at the Aug. 24 protest for a five-day in-person schedule for Port's elementary students. A single father who works in the restaurant industry and coaches Port's youth wrestling team, Duarte is one of dozens of parents who say a hybrid learning model would be unfeasible. (Photo by Rose Weldon)

For Port Washington resident Henry Duarte, a father of two fourth-graders in the Port Washington school district, implementing virtual home schooling at the outset of the COVID-19 quarantine was “a disaster.”

“I can’t home-school, I’m not a teacher, and I don’t pay taxes to be a home-school teacher,” Duarte said in an interview. “The virtual home schooling during the quarantine was a disaster, and I can’t do it again.”

After the district announced that students at Guggenheim Elementary School, Manorhaven Elementary School, John J. Daly Elementary School, John Philip Sousa Elementary School and South Salem Elementary School would not have the option of a five-day in-person schedule for the coming school year, Duarte and other parents took action via petition and demonstration.

The lack of a full-time in-person option was announced at a meeting of the school board last Thursday, where it was announced that parents of students in kindergarten through fifth grade would have a choice of either fully virtual instruction or a hybrid of in-person and online schooling that would allow students to physically attend classes two days a week. An option to return full-time could then be available by Oct. 5, according to the district.

The decision makes the Port district one of a small number of school districts not to offer full time in-person classes for elementary students, with the Roslyn school district, Great Neck school district, Manhasset school district and the North Shore school district, among others, all allowing young students to physically return for five days a week.

District Superintendent Michael Hynes wrote in a letter posted to the district’s website on the morning after the school board meeting that while the state’s infection rate was decreasing and socio-emotional and educational perspectives called for five days in person, the Port Washington Teachers Association (PWTA) had expressed concerns regarding the faculty’s return.

“Over the past week, members of the Port Washington Teachers Association communicated to both the Board of Education and Central Administration that even with all the safeguards put in place to bring children, teachers, and building staff back safely to our elementary schools, they still did not feel safe in a five-day in-school model,” Hynes wrote. “We have made it clear to the PWTA as well as to the community that the health and safety of children and district staff has always been the first priority in the development of all district reopening plans. Nonetheless, the continued reluctance to accept a five-day, in-school plan for elementary students by the PWTA, and safety concerns expressed by some elementary parents/guardians, made it clear that to ensure a smooth reopening for all elementary students we had to make the change to a hybrid model.”

Efforts to reach the teachers union for comment were unavailing.

In response to the news, over 100 parents and students attended a protest outside the district’s administrative buildings at Schreiber High School on Monday, all demanding a five-day in-person option for elementary students.

Organizer Justin Renna began the proceedings by voicing the concerns of working parents and condemning the school board and Hynes for the decisions.

“Too many people in this town cannot properly handle a hybrid learning environment due to work obligations,” Renna said. “This decision will face many parents to make the tough choice of leaving a child home alone, or leaving their jobs … the Board of Education and Dr. Hynes made this decision because of their epic failure in planning to properly open up the school safely. I have emailed the BOE and Dr. Hynes a total of 13 times in the past few days. How many responses have I gotten? Zero. Governor [Andrew] Cuomo has told schools they need to work with parents to make sure schools are opened in a timely manner. This district didn’t do enough. They have lost the right to tell us to trust that they are doing everything they can to get our kids in school five days a week.”

Parent Adam Paltrowitz, also a teacher for over 20 years in the Plainview-Old Bethpage School district, called the hybrid plan “untenable” for teachers and criticized Hynes’ letter, which he said appears to place the blame on the teachers.

“The superintendent did this community a huge disservice by throwing our teachers under the bus and blaming them for his failure to implement a five-day schedule,” he said. “If we want to be successful here we must understand that the blame falls on the decision makers: our elected school board and the superintendent. Our leaders didn’t allocate the proper funds to make a real plan. If they needed more classroom and facilities, they had to plan to rent them. If they needed more teachers, they needed to hire them. This is what successful school districts do, they decide how to achieve the highest level of education for their students and find a way to make it happen. We pay a large school tax to make this happen, and we count on our school board and superintendent to fulfill their obligation.”

Paltrowitz then added that the superintendent and school board “should be held accountable for their decision,” leading to a short chant of “Vote them out!”

“If they can’t provide our children with proper daily in-person instruction, we should decide two weeks before our taxes are due to pay 40 percent of what they expect, and state to them that we did our best but had to allocate those funds to our children’s supplemental education elsewhere,” he said.

Lisa Kraidin, the parent of a fourth-grader, said that the online schooling efforts were a “failure” due to younger students being unable to pay attention to Zoom classes.

“The disastrous attempt at remote learning at the elementary level was acknowledged by the administration when, instead of sending home the usual end-of-year performance summary, they opted to send home an attendance record,” Kraidin said. “Dr. Hynes and the Board of Education promised parents that they would do better in the fall. Dr. Hynes told us that the administration had learned lessons during the spring and would work hard all summer on the reopening plan.”

Kraidin said that the administration had “pulled the rug out from under us” by not including a five-day option, and said that with her son only attending for two of five days, she and her husband would be “conscripted” as supplemental teachers.

“My husband and I are not teachers,” Kraidin said. “We both have demanding jobs that require our attention … how are we, like other working parents, expected to sit with our child all day, three days a week, so that they can focus their attention on learning while also performing our jobs?”

Matt Wurst, the parent of an incoming first-grader and fourth-grader and the creator of a petition for the five-day in-person option that received over 1,100 signatures, also spoke.

“This is not how any of us wanted to spend the last few days of our summer,” Wurst said. “If the administration doesn’t act, they are going to fail our children.”

Dr. Leigh Trani, a pediatrician who is married to Wurst, said that in March, Hynes had replied to her emails over concerns about spread of coronavirus in schools, but that she had not heard from him recently.

“Today, we are living in a different world,” Trani said. “For the upcoming year, the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly recommends that all policy considerations begin with the goal of having students physically present in school. Here in New York, we did not just flatten the curve, we crushed it.”

Trani added that the goal would be risk mitigation rather than risk elimination.

“Hybrid learning is only recommended when social distancing is not attainable in the classroom,” Trani said. “It makes sense that New York City is looking at hybrid plans primarily because they have far less space and much bigger classes. We were told that we have the space to offer five-day in-person learning, so I am not sure why we are switching to a hybrid plan. This goes against consensus medical expertise and leadership, seeing that we should prioritize in-person learning, especially for our elementary-age kids.”

Dr. Lauren Block, a primary care physician and associate professor at Northwell Health’s Zucker School of Medicine as well as a parent of three in the Port district, closed the demonstration with an announcement that 25 Port parents who worked in health care had written a letter to the administration advising on how to reopen.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics has said that schools should reopen when it is viable, and it is viable now,” Block said.

When asked for comment, Hynes sent a statement to Blank Slate Media reiterating his letter published to the school’s website, stating that the district had a plan to implement, but decided against it after receiving “considerable pushback” from the PWTA.

“After an internal assessment of our individual building capacities was performed, it was determined that all of our elementary students could return, while remaining in compliance with all health and safety-related guidelines, by using many of our non-instructional spaces as classrooms and lowering class sizes,” Hynes said. “With that determination, working with our principals and central administration, we developed a five-day in-person instructional plan within these constraints which included a phased-in reopening at our elementary schools to ensure the safety of students and staff. We then shared this plan with the Port Washington Teacher Association leadership and elementary teachers. Due to the considerable pushback we received directly from the PWTA leadership and some teachers, we had no choice but to pivot to a hybrid model for our elementary schools reopening. However, we are committed to bringing our elementary students back in school 5 days a week. Towards that end, we have reconvened our instructional task force and elementary building protocols task force to work with PWTA Leadership, our elementary principals and teachers to develop plans that will allow us to return to a five-day program. We have set October 5 as the hard deadline to reach this solution.”

With the school year starting in less than two weeks, unless the mandate is changed, Duarte, a single parent who is currently furloughed from his job in the restaurant industry, says his only option would be to leave Port.

“I can’t split myself up again as I did during the virtual,” Duarte said. “I’ve been in this town for 30 years, I’ve been coaching sports for 30 years, and if we have to go back to two days and a hybrid, I’ll be forced to move out of my hometown.”

Duarte says that his future is now “blank.”

“It was hard enough as a single parent during a normal school year, but during these times, with two days of them going to school, I can’t work,” Duarte said. “I have a blank future right now.”

Share this Article