NYC Teachers' Union President: Schools Unusual Flu Activity Skyrocketing

[colormyquilt]

"Number of schools reporting unusual flu activity skyrocketed from 120 on Tuesday to 295 by Wednesday...based on school reports...flu is increasing in NYC...
Teachers' Union President Weingarten...we're not talking about students who are absent because frantic parents are keeping them home...these are the documented cases of fevers and flu symptoms..."

at link:

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2009/05/22/2009-05-22_on_swine_flu_schools_policy_teachers_union_president_randi_weingarten_rips-mayor.html

[GermTheory]

Re: NYC Teachers' Union President: Schools Unusual Flu Activity Skyrocketing

Unfortunately, the article is no longer available.

[Laidback Al]

Re: NYC Teachers' Union President: Schools Unusual Flu Activity Skyrocketing

I believe this is the article . . .

On swine flu schools policy, teachers union President Randi Weingarten rips Mayor Bloomberg

Teachers union President Randi Weingarten did something Thursday that Mayor Bloomberg and Health Commissioner Tom Frieden should have done weeks ago. Weingarten gave our city the first real sign of how rapidly swine flu seems to be spreading in our public schools.
The number of schools reporting unusual flu activity skyrocketed from 120 on Tuesday to 295 by Wednesday, Weingarten said.
That's based on daily reports that school nurses, many of them UFT members, and educators in those schools have been providing to her union's headquarters.
At 45 of those schools, nurses have detected more than 1.5% of pupils with fever. They have sent even more home with flu symptoms. At the worst-hit schools, such as Public School 96 in South Ozone Park, Queens, more than 10% of the student body has come down with fever, Weingarten said.
She urged the Bloomberg administration to close all schools where fever is detected in more than 1.5% of students.
"Flu is increasing in New York City," Weingarten said, and the only way to "ease the panic" is by "providing accurate information" and a clear standard for why a school is closed.
Late Thursday, the Health Department shut down six more schools, bringing the total to 30.
Amazingly, only two of those closed schools, PS 143 and PS242 in Queens, even appear on Weingarten's list of those with the highest fever counts.
We're not talking here about students who are absent because frantic parents are keeping them home. These are the documented cases of fever and flu symptoms.
Sure, this new swine flu appears to be a "mild" affliction, but it hits young people so suddenly and spreads so rapidly that it has unnerved veteran educators.
"I've never seen anything like this in my 26 years in the board of education," said Lynne Cohen, a teacher at Intermediate School 227, where Weingarten made her announcement. "I don't care what the city says, this is nothing like the normal flu in winter."
"The real issue," Mayor Bloomberg repeated Thursday, "is how many people are showing up in school with fever, and that tends to be very low."
When they hear that, parents and educators, especially those in the epicenter of Queens, shake their heads in disbelief.
The simple fact is that principals, teachers and parents in many schools are overwhelmed by the number of sick kids.
At Cohen's school, 417 students were absent Thursday, more than a third of the enrollment. About 5% of the school's 1,400 students have documented cases of fever and 20 of 98 teachers were out sick.
"So many children and staff are out that we're having to combine classes and its hard to get much teaching done," said teacher Tom O'Brien.
Last Friday, Tony Yaskulski, an eighth-grade science teacher, took 43 students from IS 227 who are studying astronomy on a big trip the school makes every spring to Montreal's famous Space Camp.
By the time they and their parent chaperones arrived at the camp in the school's charter bus, more than a dozen of the children had come down with the flu.
"They all had fever, and some of them were throwing up," Yaskulski said. He was forced to keep the sick pupils in isolation for the rest of the weekend, while he fended off requests from the camp's operators that the whole group leave early. And what did the Canadians do as soon as Yaskulski's students left for New York?
"They closed the entire camp down for two days to clean and disinfect it," he said.
"We're not trying to minimize or discount what's happening," said Dr. Adam Karpati of the Health Department. "What we're balancing is an intervention that itself has a fairly high price."
Bloomberg once boasted his school reforms would give principals more power to run their schools - but he ignores them when they tell him things are getting out of control.
At least Randi Weingarten had the guts to say: Bloomberg, stop treating us like children.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...xzz0GUf2fDUb&B

link: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/...ips_mayor.html

[Tea]

Re: NYC Teachers' Union President: Schools Unusual Flu Activity Skyrocketing

edit:

You beat me to it Al.