NYC parents and educators fume over disaster remote schooling ‘test’ as DOE promises more to come
Big Apple parents are giving the school system a failing grade after the massive snowstorm that shut down classes last week exposed serious glitches in the city’s remote learning plan.
About 60% of parents who spoke to The Post said their kids had a hard time logging into the system from home — and some 40% said, while they could get in, they faced a slew of other issues.
That’s bad news for the Department of Education, which has high hopes that remote learning will replace traditional snow days in the future, and for parents who already had to see their children’s education hampered during the lengthy COVID shutdown.
“Remote learning was an absolute disaster during the pandemic,” one frustrated Manhattan parent told The Post. “I don’t understand why NYC is continuing to invest a penny toward it.
“And the gall of the mayor to say our kids fell behind and that parents should do better to help catch them up,” she fumed. “They fell behind because of remote learning.”
Some students who were forced to stay in because of snow ended up getting an hour or less of digital homeschooling during Tuesday’s storm, well below a typical school day which lasts six hours and 20 minutes.
The time students did spend online was “frenzied, hard to follow and frequently interrupted,” another parent said – one of more than a dozen families interviewed.
A parent in Queens called the whole thing “a broken system,” starting with the barrage of calls and emails.
“The first call was at 7 am,” she said. “This, in addition to the same notifications the day before between 4 and 9 pm, is a bit excessive. And the system wasn’t even working.
“It created unnecessary angst and anxiety. My child would have been more successful completing assignments asynchronously without the challenges of the DOE’s ineffective platforms,” she added.
School Chancellor David Banks apologized to parents following the failed remote learning “test” and vowed to investigate glitches that he blamed on technical issues.
However, those weren’t the only hurdles cited.
Inadequate lesson plans for synchronous learning, shorter hours in class, severe drops in attendance and a lack of support for special needs students also drew the ire of parents and educators in the five boroughs.
Among the gripes, parents and educators were also concerned for the mental health of some students, including worries that excessive screen time could be a “trigger for pandemic-related PTSD.”
A Manhattan mom of two said her fifth-grade daughter, who is diagnosed with ADHD, found the system downright painful.
“[She] was distraught and in tears when she heard that it would be remote school,” she said. “My daughter loves to learn and has the highest marks on her report cards, but an ADHD child to be socially isolated, staring at a screen and having to sit in her seat is physically painful.
“The kids should have been given an actual snow day. Let them be kids,” she said. “The PTSD from COVID remote was overwhelming. There was no consideration for the neurodivergent kid.”
A Brooklyn special needs teacher whose students include kids who suffer from seizures and are diagnosed with autism or ADHD said remote learning has to be tweaked to address their needs.
“After Tuesday, we absolutely felt like we had to play catch up with our special needs students,” the teacher said. “A lot of the lesson plans we provided were already previously taught to make the learning experience for the students easier and of course we were on standby the entire day.
“There just isn’t a standardized way to think about special needs students,” she said. “We’re not prepared for this. A lot of the comments from students when they came back to school were that, ‘Oh I played video games all day,’ or ‘Oh, I was out in the snow,’ and I get it.”
According to the DOE’s media liaison, as of 1 p.m. on Wednesday, 91.2% of schools completed scanning attendance records for Tuesday’s remote schooling day — the attendance rate was 80.4%. The Post requested an updated tally but was pointed to Wednesday’s figures.
Despite the high numbers, some teachers reported that their virtual classrooms were gutted, and those who were online, were distracted and frustrated from the morning’s technical difficulties.
“Tuesday was supposed to be a synchronous day of instruction meaning that teachers were expected to teach their classes to the students from computer to computer,” Adam Bergstein, an English teacher at Forest Hills High School in Queens, told the Post.
“However, most kids didn’t show up, for example, the most students I had were nine in one class,” Bergstein said adding that he has a roster of 34 students and normally 30 show up.
“As far as frustrations go, I can tell you that many students just gave up because they couldn’t log on in the morning,” he said. “They didn’t really even bother trying after that. The parents were frustrated because their children sat in front of a blank computer.”
Nakeeta Wills has a child in the third grade in Harlem and told the Post that the class was only required to be online for an hour and a half.
She was one of the lucky families who were able to log in during Tuesday’s system failure.
“We had no issues logging in,” she said. “I am grateful to be self-employed and also had experience with remote learning previously with this school so we were equipped with headphones and ready to begin on time,” she explained.
“Chancellor Banks should, however, be ensuring access for instructors and children and supporting the creation of impactful lesson plans to follow online at each grade level.”
Nathaniel Styer, press secretary for the city education department, said the issues with the remote learning system on Tuesday were technical and would not comment on other complaints from parents.
“As the chancellor spoke to on Tuesday, after initial technical issues, our students were able to log in and participate in remote learning,” he said. “Our students, parents, and educators deserve a flawless experience, but in the end, students and educators were able to log in for a day of learning.”
The DOE refused to explain what a “day of learning” meant and the state confirmed it does not check on hours — leaving a gaping blind spot for future remote learning days.
According to the state, a minimum number of hours within a single week or on a single day is not required as long as districts meet the annual aggregate minimum instructional hours and 180 days of session.
The state requires an annual aggregate hour requirement of 900 instructional hours for grades K-6 and 990 instructional hours for grades 7-12.
The revelations come as Banks told parents to prepare to see more remote days in the future.
“As I said, this was a test. I don’t think that we passed this test,” he said. “We’ll be doing a full analysis of what happened here because we don’t expect this to be the last remote day that we have.
“We’ll work harder to do better next time, but that’s where we are at this point in time,” the chancellor said. “But the system is back. Things are moving along very nicely at this point.”
But parents interviewed by The Post fumed at the prospect of more remote learning.
“I’m not a fan of remote learning. Kids should be in school. I don’t think remote learning should be an option,” one of them said. “This was not a day of learning by any stretch of the imagination.”
Additional reporting by Jorge Fitz-Gibbon.
