When it comes to remote learning, there’s one thing parents in Buffalo can agree on:
“They’re just tired,” said Rachel Fix Dominguez.
Other than that, opinions were all over the board Thursday after parents of children in Buffalo Public Schools learned that all 32,000 students in the district will continue remote learning until at least Feb. 1 – and longer, for most.
Students in Buffalo haven't attended class in schools since they were shut down in March, when the pandemic first began. In the suburbs, almost every school has offered in-person instruction since September. But Fix Dominguez, co-chair of the Buffalo Parent-Teacher Organization, said the “vast majority” of their parents are supportive of the district’s decision.
“They don’t want their kids back, they don’t think it’s safe,” Fix Dominguez said.
“However,” she said, “they’re very stressed out. They are feeling the need for some kind of additional supports.”
In-person instruction would resume Feb. 1 – the first day of the second semester – for several thousand of the district’s highest-need students, according to details announced by Superintendent Kriner Cash on Thursday at a news conference. A full complement of students in grades pre-K through 12 wouldn’t be phased in until mid-March.
“There’s at least a date,” said Wendy Mistretta, president of the District Parent Coordinating Council, another Buffalo parent group, who has been critical of the district’s plans for reopening.
“I think that will finally move us forward,” she said, “because many families were just waiting and it was getting more and more frustrating, especially for those who do not agree with the superintendent’s point of view that we are doing well with remote instruction.”
Mistretta believes about a third of parents want to go back amid the pandemic, a third don’t want to go back and a third would go back under certain circumstances.
“The ones who want to go back really want to go back, and the ones who don’t want go back really don’t want to go back,” she said.
“The environment is almost becoming hostile for people, depending on which side they fall, which is what I’m hearing and what I’m seeing play out in a lot of places – and that’s really unnecessary,” Mistretta added.
"The right thing to do is give parents the option,” said Samuel L. Radford III, a longtime activist and frequent critic of the district.
“That’s what’s going on in other districts,” he added. “In other school districts, some kids are remote, some kids are hybrid. It’s only Buffalo where parents who want to send their kids don’t have the option right now.”
The district said it will give parents that option once it reopens, and Radford agreed that the majority do not want to send their kids back to school right now.
But Radford questioned why, on one hand, the district said it’s not yet safe to return to schools while, on the other hand, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and health officials are indicating that the Covid-19 spread is much lower in schools than the wider community.
“It gives the impression our kids are at higher risk than anyone else and, if that’s true, what the superintendent is saying is responsible,” Radford said.
“But if it’s not true, I think a conversation needs to take place between his health director, and the people that’s providing him science, and the people who are providing the governor and the county health commissioner’s science.”
The city’s Black community was hit hard by the virus during the spring and there is support for the superintendent to be “extremely cautious” about reopening, said Neal Dobbins, who heads Most Valuable Parents, another Buffalo parent group.
“The people that I’m talking to are afraid to death,” Dobbins said. “Everybody is just watching the news and when you turn on the news it scares the hell out of you.”
Dobbins said his group represents about 1,000 members and the consensus is basically the same.
“They want to get these children back in school. Everybody understands the learning gap is getting wider and wider,” he said. “But what are you going to do?
“If you’re shook every time you go to the grocery store, how can you send your children up into a school with other children? I just can’t see it right now.”
