coronavirus new york city

New York City Schools students to have in-person teacher and remote teacher

ByEyewitness News WABC logo

Friday, August 28, 2020

Returning NYC students will have 2 teachers

Blended learning students will have two different teachers, one for the days they are in person and one for days they are remote.

NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- Blended learning students will have two different teachers, one for the days they are in person and one for days they are remote.

Those teachers will work as a team, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, announcing a UFT curriculum agreement Thursday morning.

The teachers will have 30 minutes "planning time" at the start of each day "to work out their team approach for that day."

A "virtual content specialist" will then provide instructional resources for online learning.

When asked where the additional teachers would come from, the chief academic officer for the Department of Education, Linda Chen, responded that teachers that are not currently in the classroom from other parts of the DOE, enrichment centers, and substitute teachers would be called upon to fill the additional roles.

"We are dealing with a mathematical problem with variables that change day to day," Chen said.

Lorraine Grillo says 92% of classrooms passed inspection.

Meantime, 92% of classrooms inspected are ready to go for September according to School Construction Authority. There are still several hundred schools that will be inspected over the coming days. The classrooms not ready were found to have small issues that will be addressed before students arrive.

The United Federation of Teachers released the following statement:

"Under the pressure of the pandemic, we have created a strategy to combine remote and in-person learning, a flexible system where a team of educators will work with a given group of students. But even with this approach, many schools will still face a staffing shortage, which the system will have to address."