Fifteen schools in the DOE have confirmed COVID cases as of Thursday evening, despite staff-only school openings starting just two days earlier.

This thread is about my testing experience as a Brooklyn public school teacher. @MarkTreyger718 @MOREcaucusUFT @safeschoolsny

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COVID testing for its 75,000 teachers and its 1.1 million students is not mandatory. This means we only know about the cases of those teachers who chose to—and who had the ability to—get tested.

In order for staff to get tested during school hours (8:20-3:10 for me) we have to use our sick time. The closest testing center with expedited results for DOE staff (meaning within 48-72 hours) is a 20-minute walk from my school. It opens at 9 and closes at 3:30.

DOE staff don’t get priority screening—we wait in line with everyone else. Here I am, ~25th in line, eating up the time I’m granted to take care of my children and (less frequently) myself, despite getting here at 9. I had planned on getting tested once or twice a week.

My two elementary-school-aged children are both doing hybrid instruction by necessity, so we have multiple vectors in our family. Frequent testing is essential for protecting us and the communities we’re a part of, but it is clear that doing so will be incredibly difficult.

This is just one more piece of evidence showing how flawed and unsafe the current DOE plan is. If we don’t have the political will to mandate testing, we have to at least make it convenient for staff so that we can better protect and serve our students and their families.