Union President Michael Mulgrew, Mayor Eric Adams and other city officials took turns thanking and congratulating each other on the “historic” deal . 

“As I indicated over and over again and never let you forget, I’m probably one of the few modern-day mayors that was a member of a union,” said Adams.

The union’s bargaining committee, executive board and delegate assembly each voted in turn to send the contract to the full membership for approval. This process didn’t go smoothly, as the final agreement wasn’t ready for union representatives to read before their vote. Union leaders wanted a vote before summer vacation.

“You don’t buy a house based on a PowerPoint the realtor showed you, or a used car based on the PowerPoint your used car salesman showed you,” . “We need to know what’s in this contract before we vote on it.”

The New York City teachers contract is , and the memorandum of agreement just negotiated is another by itself. Familiarity with all of its provisions — never mind understanding of them — falls to the union’s staff and its most committed activists. Most rank-and-file members will skip to the bottom line to decide whether to approve the contract. The amount of the raises would not surprise them, for better or worse, because the city and its unions practice pattern bargaining.

That is a process by which a contract reached with one union becomes the model for all others. When District Council 37, which represents 150,000 municipal workers, agreed to a five-year deal in February with annual raises of 3%, the pattern meant the UFT would not get much more than that.

There had been griping among some teachers because the initial raise doesn’t match the 2023 inflation rate. So the city added a couple of sweeteners in the form of bonuses.

The first has received a lot of press attention. At the end of the 2023-24 school year, every teacher will receive a $400 retention bonus for staying on the job. This will go up each year until reaching $1,035 by the end of 2027, and increase thereafter by the percentage of salary-schedule raises negotiated into subsequent contracts.

While all additional money is welcome, many teachers will already be making six-figure salaries during the term of the contract, so a few hundred dollars isn’t going to send them into paroxysms of delight. But the second, less publicized, bonus will have a significant effect.

Every UFT member will receive $3,000 immediately upon ratifying the contract.

Why pay union members a $3,000 bonus to accept a 20% raise?

This defies any sort of fiscal logic. The city is spending $350 million to induce union members to ratify a $6.4 billion contract they are in no position to reject. And New York’s is one the strictest anti-strike laws in the nation.

Adams did include a $3,000 ratification bonus for members of District Council 37, which represents 150,000 municipal workers, but that made a little more sense as an inducement because the contract was setting the pattern. When DC 37 members ratified it, it ensured that 3% raises would be the ceiling for all other municipal unions.

Perhaps the teachers union insisted on a ratification bonus because DC 37 got one and it could get no more in salary schedule raises. But it also made political sense for Adams, who will have largely achieved labor peace extending beyond the end of his first term, which runs through 2026.

The reason for the union’s haste to vote is harder to determine. Balloting will take place at school sites June 27, but the new contract doesn’t go into effect until September, so it could have conceivably waited until then.

The UFT internal opposition caucus , along with activists and , are urging “no” votes on their blogs. The city’s tabloid press isn’t too enamored of the agreement either. The editorial board called it “costly,” while the cited an estimate by the Citizens Budget Commission that the city will have an $11 billion budget gap by the end of the contract. But resistance is futile. With no guarantee that sending negotiators back to the table would result in an appreciably improved deal, teachers will happily take their $3,000 and enjoy their summer.

Still, the contract does not address one highly contentious issue: retiree health care. No changes were made to current policy, but the move to place many union members into Medicare Advantage plans is still the subject of litigation. UFT headquarters may be the target of more labor unrest than the mayor’s office will in the coming years.

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

Mayor Eric Adams and the city’s second-largest union, the United Federation of Teachers, struck a tentative five-year agreement on Tuesday, one that significantly raises starting salaries for newly hired teachers and includes a major expansion of remote learning.

The deal, which must be approved by the union’s 120,000 members, guarantees raises of 17.58% to 20.42% by 2026, including compounded wage increases and bonuses.

In addition to broadening an existing pilot on remote learning, high schools and combined middle-high schools will be able to offer virtual learning programs after school and on weekends. Students and teachers will have to volunteer to participate in the remote programs, according to a summary of the agreement.

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The UFT and the Adams administration also agreed to a yearly, perpetual retention bonus, which will top out at $1,000 by 2026, and an additional one-time $3,000 ratification bonus.

The starting salary for new teachers would be $72,349, including the bonuses, by the end of the proposed agreement — up from the current $61,070 floor, according to the UFT. The top salary for paraprofessionals would be $56,761.

The deal is retroactive to September 2021, when the most recent contract expired. It provides for 3% raises for the first three years and 3.25% bonus in the final two years, a pattern similar to that in February.

Adams announced the agreement from the City Hall rotunda Tuesday afternoon alongside UFT President Michael Mulgrew, Schools Chancellor David Banks and Office of Labor Relations Commissioner Renee Campion.

“I’m proud to announce that the city of New York has reached a tentative five-plus year contract agreement with the United Federation of Teachers that provides substantial wage increases for the people who teach, support and safeguard our children and secures a fair deal for taxpayers as well,” Adams said.

Virtual Expansion

The after-hours virtual learning expansion in the nation’s largest school district that allows students to log in, from their own school buildings, to take online courses taught by public school teachers in other parts of the city.

The program outlined in Tuesday’s tentative agreement would begin in the 2023-2024 school year, with 25% of high schools eligible to be selected. All high schools will be eligible to participate by 2027-28, according to the UFT’s summary of the agreement.

Students and teachers would not be required to participate in virtual learning. Rather, schools where students miss hours or days of school because of work would be able to offer virtual lessons outside of traditional school hours. Teachers would not take extra time in order to teach the after-hours virtual lessons: their time will be redistributed.

Adams said he was “proud” of the proposed remote learning experiment, saying it “will create new opportunities for our students, including those who want the ability to take classes at non-traditional times like evenings and weekends, as well as those whom traditional in-person schedules don’t work for.”

Mulgrew also noted the remote-learning pilot would also benefit students who fall behind on literacy.

In line with the contract covering DC37 municipal workers, some UFT members who do not work directly in schools would be eligible to work remotely up to two days a week under the deal, according to the teachers’ union.

Campion and Mulgrew said health care premiums and benefits, a key concern for many union members, remain unchanged.

“We’re not getting rid of our benefits,” Mulgrew said in response to questions from THE CITY. “I wish the rest of America would do what we’re doing here in New York City because health care is a crisis and it is destroying the pocketbooks of so many families.”

Mulgrew also announced the tentative agreement will cut in half — from 15 to eight years — the length of time it takes most teachers to reach a salary of $100,000.

The union president also highlighted the retention bonus as a win for members.

“And that goes on forever, in perpetuity,” Mulgrew said. “We’re saying to all of our titles and every member, whether you’re in the first year or your 25th year, New York City is saying that we appreciate you, and we recognize the challenges that you take on every day.”

Additional reporting by Katie Honan

THE CITY is an independent, nonprofit news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.

Offered the job by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, Carvalho in private, then presided over a televised school board meeting that featured three hours of supporters all but begging him to stay. In the end, Carvalho remained.

greeted the move in Miami, but it didn’t go over so well in New York, home to the nation’s largest school district: Eric Phillips, de Blasio’s press secretary, , “Who would ever hire this guy again?”

Four years later, Phillips has his answer: Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school system.

The drama of the hire was underscored by Pedro Noguera, dean of the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education, who likened the move to “LeBron coming to the Lakers.” But Los Angeles offers only the most recent example of an oversize personality with huge ambitions taking over a district’s top job. Right now, all three of the nation’s largest school systems are run by energetic reformers, a rarity even in big-city schools circles.

All of them greet Spring 2022 full of promise — and problems. Over the next few years, they’ll enjoy unprecedented funding as taxpayers throw billions of dollars at schools to scrub away deficits caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But all three districts are rapidly losing students. And unions, emboldened by 2021 victories around remote instruction and, in recent years, high-profile strikes, could be formidable obstacles to their priorities. In Chicago, new schools CEO has already faced down a citywide teacher walkout.

In addition to Carvalho and Martinez, who are both immigrants, New York City Mayor Eric Adams in December named , the founder of a small network of public boys’ schools, as the new school chancellor. Banks’s schools have stood out for, among other reasons, employing many male teachers of color.

All three “definitely seem reform minded, which I think is super exciting and a real breath of fresh air,” said , superintendent of the Catholic independent Partnership Schools network. 

“I think it really speaks to the moment we’re at as we’re coming out of COVID,” she said. The pandemic “provided an uncomfortable reminder” of the need for leaders who will put children’s needs first. 

Billions in new funding … until 2024

Martinez, Chicago’s new schools CEO, is of Chiefs for Change, a group that advocates for increased school choice, effective teacher preparation, and standards-aligned curricula. But it also rails against “onerous bureaucracy” in schools. That credo will certainly be challenged by the sheer scale of federal intervention: some in COVID-related relief since 2020.

In New York, state lawmakers in 2021 increased funding to New York City by nearly half a billion dollars. By next year, a lawsuit settled last year to equalize urban school funding could bring that to $1 billion, said president of Bank Street College and New York City’s former senior deputy chancellor. “So there is a significant infusion of new dollars into the school system that can be used to dig into systemic issues. And that’s very rare.”

As in districts large and small elsewhere, the three leaders are “all drinking from a firehose” of funding, said of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. But that also places extra responsibility on them: “No one can blame lack of funding as their excuse for not getting things done,” she said.

But unless Congress acts, all that extra funding will run out in 2024. None of the three new leaders agreed to be interviewed for this piece.

, who leads the AASA, the nation’s school superintendent’s association, said many leaders are using the cash to upgrade facilities. But spending it on generous raises or new instructional positions could actually put them at odds with unions, since those jobs won’t be sustainable.

“The financial cliff is only two years away,” he said.

A ‘friend of charters back at the helm’

A product of New York City’s public schools, Banks cut his teeth founding and the network of five unionized Eagle Academy public schools in New York City and Newark.

While the schools aren’t charters, Banks has said he supports charter schools. He told in December that families “are desperate for quality seats, quality schools … And if the traditional public schools were offering that, you wouldn’t see such a mass rush to the charter schools.”

Banks created the Eagle Academy schools to serve academically struggling boys of color in grades six through 12 who often face harsh discipline. As chancellor, he said, his first priorities are to expand early childhood education, improve career pathways for older students, and to combat students’ trauma.

, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s union, has known Banks for years. “I’ve been at his schools and I found them to be quite well-run,” he said. All the same, running the largest school district in the nation will force him to tame the city schools’ “mammoth bureaucracy.” 

The last two mayors have restructured the school system six times, Mulgrew said. “And every time, all they did was add another layer.”

In his , Banks on March 2 acknowledged that many families have “decided to vote with their feet, and to say, ‘We’re going to find other alternatives and other choices for our children.’” 

He promised an overhaul of the bureaucracy, including requiring district superintendents to reapply for their jobs. And he took direct aim at the way many schools teach reading, criticizing a method developed by a Columbia University Teachers College professor that “has not worked” with many children. He promised to shift to a method that emphasizes explicit phonics instruction, among other changes.

Banks has also said he’d like to transform city schools from the bottom up by handing to “principals who know what they’re doing,” according to the speech. He also wants to tweak how standardized tests are used, allowing students to show they’ve mastered content in other ways.

His ascendance stands in contrast to previous leaders who have looked suspiciously on the charter sector. New York actually caps the number of charter schools statewide at 460, with just 290 allowed for nearly 1 million students in New York City. While it’d take a state-level change to allow more, choice advocates said Banks can eloquently make the case.

“It feels to me like this is the moment where we can really see that there is a friend of charters back at the helm of New York City schools, which I think is really great to see, and I know is probably sending some shockwaves,” said Porter-Magee.

So far, at least, Banks hasn’t forcefully pushed to lift the cap, in December, “We want to scale excellence. So if that means opening a few more charter schools, that’s what we’re going to do … if we can get the state to approve it.” But he said he’s also encouraging the philanthropic community “to lean in on the traditional public school system, because at the end of the day, most of our children will continue to go to our traditional public schools.”

Enrollment downturns

Carvalho, who led Miami-Dade schools for 14 years, has been able to compete with charters by creating centralized data systems that allowed him to keep track of students’ academic progress better than most big-city leaders during the pandemic, Rees said. 

A Portuguese immigrant, Carvalho grew up in Miami and worked restaurant and construction jobs early on. He came up through the ranks in Miami-Dade, starting out as a high school science teacher and becoming a new breed of area leader: one who sticks around. Before he took the top job in 2008, Miami-Dade “was a revolving door for superintendents coming and going,” Domenech said.

Sticking around paid off. In 2012, the district won the coveted $1 million Broad Prize for Urban Education, which recognizes school districts that have shown academic improvement while narrowing the achievement gap. More recent findings from the district’s Office of Academics and Transformation paint a : While Black students’ graduation rates rose from 62.4 percent in 2011 to 85.6 percent in 2020, just 40 percent of Black students in 2019 were proficient in reading; 44 percent were proficient in math. 

With parents clamoring to remediate lost instructional time during the pandemic, Domenech said Carvalho brought in “a very creative” program that contracted with camps to provide summer school.

Carvalho’s long tenure — the average big-city leader sticks around — is “a testament to his savvy in terms of the politics, in dealing with the board, in dealing with the community, in dealing with employee groups,” Domenech said.

He’ll need that savvy in Los Angeles, which also has recently featured a revolving door of superintendents, a strong union and an outspoken, ever-shifting school board — it currently has three seats open in the next election. In Los Angeles, Carvalho will work at the pleasure of the school board. Meanwhile, Banks and Martinez will work for the mayors of their respective cities.

During his second week at LAUSD, Carvalho unveiled a that includes expanded preschool, year-round learning and a “Parent Academy” offering coursework to help parents understand their children’s education. He’d also lengthen the school year and offer teachers more professional development. He acknowledged that he’d have to negotiate with the city’s teachers union about those last two ideas.

Carvalho last month told ����Ӱ�� the district must expand school choice if it wants to keep from “bleeding out students” from a system that, while much bigger than Miami, has fewer than one-third as many school choice options.

Los Angeles students, he said, basically have two choices at the moment: magnet schools and charter schools. “Whoever decided to restrict choice on the basis of those parameters?” he asked. “Where are the programs in L.A. where we see long waiting lists of parents? Why aren’t we expanding more of those programs to where the demand is?”

He has the district consider an “explosion of offerings” for students, including dual-enrollment programs, International Baccalaureate programs, fine and performing arts magnet schools, and single-gender schools, among others. “I’m less concerned about the dynamic of dialogue that usually separates people into two camps: charter versus non-charter. I’m more interested in programmatic offerings that benefit kids — period.”

Carvalho suggested that the district analyze which programs motivate students to travel long distances from their neighborhoods and offer more of these. “I can fill an entire wall with a repertoire of options for parents. Why aren’t we offering all of that?”

Throughout the pandemic, all three cities have struggled to retain and, in some cases, even find their students. All have seen in .

of the California Charter Schools Association said a crashing birth rate across California is a cause for concern. And net migration has actually dipped “into the negatives” as home due to anti-immigration policies and economic uncertainty.

“This is not about ‘The affluent went to Tahoe during the pandemic to hunker down,’” she said. “This is real and it’s permanent and it’s creating challenges across the state.”

An ‘innovative and data-informed’ school integration experiment

Born in Mexico, Martinez emigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was 5. He is in a family of 12 children with deep ties to Chicago’s public school system — three of his sisters and some 28 nieces and nephews attend local public schools. 

Martinez was working in finance for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2003 when then-Chicago Public Schools Superintendent Arne Duncan hired him as chief financial officer. He remained there until 2009 — Duncan moved on to serve as U.S. Education Secretary under President Obama. Martinez made a name for himself leading the San Antonio Independent School District through a redesign, beginning in 2015, that ����Ӱ�� dubbed “one of America’s most innovative and data-informed school integration experiments.”

Using family income data, he mapped poverty levels for each city block. Then he integrated schools not by race but by income and, among other factors, by parents’ education levels. Three years later, San Antonio’s 90 schools and 47,000 students were among the fastest-improving in Texas.

In Chicago, he faces something entirely different: a 330,000-student system that’s as families leave the city. Recent enrollment data show that while 43,500 new students enrolled for the first time this year, 54,000 left between the last school year and this one.

On the job in Chicago for seven months, Martinez has already his first major crisis: the city’s teachers in early January voted to not show up for work until COVID-19 safety demands were met. 

Martinez proposed a host of measures, including building-level testing to determine when to close schools. But the union, with memories of an that ended with millions in extra spending, insisted on more strict measures, including negative PCR tests for all staff, students, and volunteers in order to keep schools open. 

The strike lasted just under a week after the district agreed to increase testing options, allow remote learning on a case-by-case basis, and secure more KN95 masks. Despite the agreement, union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates Mayor Lori Lightfoot as “unfit to lead our city. She’s on a one-woman kamikaze mission to destroy our public schools.”

‘This is the moment that unions should be at their strongest’

, a school consultant and occasional columnist for ����Ӱ��, said the political climate in all three cities reflects a desire by voters more broadly and parents specifically, to pull back from “super-progressive” policies, such as the Defund the Police movement, to more centrist strategies that simply ensure a solid education for all. Parents “just want a school system they can count on, that’s reliable, that is just serving their kids.”

, president of the education advocacy group 50CAN, said Adams, the New York mayor, campaigned on not just a return to moderation but normalcy: “The schools are open, the subways are safe. The restaurants work. People are back in their offices. That’s almost nostalgia now, and people crave that. And I think these candidates got that. And their education choices reflect that too.”

At the same time, unions are on the ascent. With their to in-person instruction amid COVID-19 spikes and a handful of recent in recent years, they’ve seen their and influence grow after years of declining membership. 

“This is the moment that unions should be at their strongest,” said , a resident senior fellow at the R Street Institute, a libertarian Washington, D.C., think tank. “This is a health crisis, and unions are designed to make sure that they’re protecting the health and safety of their members.”

But over the past few years, he said, unions in many places have “overplayed their hands” by demanding that instruction stay remote. The arrival of these new leaders may signal something different altogether: The new leaders are by no means union supporters, even if voters in each of their solidly blue cities are.

Rees, of the charter schools group, noted that Banks hired Dan Weisberg as first deputy chancellor. Since 2015, Weisberg has served as , a national nonprofit (formerly called The New Teacher Project) that has trained thousands of teachers outside of traditional teachers colleges. Since its founding in 1997, it has had a complicated relationship with unions. 

In 2018, after the U.S. Supreme Court dealt unions a blow by making a portion of members’ dues optional, Weisberg wrote that he disagreed with the decision, calling it “a matter of basic fairness that teachers who reap the benefits of collective bargaining should also share in the costs.”

But Weisberg also called the decision “a blessing in disguise” for unions, which he said “are now forced to finally confront an existential threat that’s been brewing for years: They’re losing touch with more and more of their members.”

Rees said Weisberg’s hiring “gives us confidence that there’s a new sheriff in town and that things are going to be a little bit different, or at least that the reform community and the charter school community will have a seat at the table.”

To mark 24 months since schools shut down because of COVID-19, ����Ӱ�� spoke with parents, educators, researchers and students across the U.S. We are running some of these interviews in their entirety to give complete accounts of where we’ve been and where some think we’re going. 

Michael Mulgrew is president of the United Federation of Teachers, which became aware of COVID-19 before many parents and educators had even heard of it. The union repeatedly clashed with former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over safety precautions and reopening schedules, but union leaders also took charge of some mitigation measures, such as testing school ventilation systems. In January, he spoke with ����Ӱ�� about how a lack of planning for remote learning led to a “mad scramble” to provide services, the union’s efforts to offer comfort during the darkest, earliest days of the pandemic, and what he’s learned since.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

����Ӱ��: Feb. 14 will be 700 days since most schools began closing. That number even took us by surprise. What’s your initial reaction to it?

Michael Mulgrew: It feels like 7,000 days.

What was the moment you realized everything changed? What were you doing before and after?

We had started tracking this during the Christmas holidays. We had some teachers who were in China then. We had them quarantine when they came back, and then we really started tracking it and talking to our own infectious disease doctors as it kept building. It then became like a fast track, like every day was like five days, and the pressure kept building. I didn’t realize I was so involved with so many fast decisions and changing information. I didn’t realize it until March 16th, the day after the New York City Public Schools closed. I was in my car driving around the city and I was shocked that the streets were empty. That’s when I realized it wasn’t science fiction. 

What decisions do you remember having to make in the first weeks after schools closed?

The hardest thing was, how do we set up? How do we get the equipment that teachers need? How do we get them trained? We hadn’t done anything. There was a small pilot of what you would call a virtual learning program involving, literally, like 15 teachers. That was it for the entire city.

It was a mad scramble to get everyone trained quickly on how to get their classrooms up, then going through how do we teach parents how to help their kids. It was non-stop. It was hundreds of decisions every day trying to figure things out, moving people from place to place. Even though everything was closed, we were still moving stuff like laptops and iPads, trying to get them to our members’ houses so they had something to work off. 

What has been the darkest part of the pandemic for you?

We were one of the last school systems to close, even though we’re in New York City, which at that point was ground zero. We had to fight to close the school system. It was a big, ugly fight, especially that last week. We set up a virtual executive board to meet every Monday night, so we could all keep our communications up, and I had to read the names of our members who passed away. I had to make the phone calls to those families. We lost a lot of members, and I always think that if we could have closed earlier, how many more would we not have lost.

What do you feel hopeful about now?

The people. I saw people who were absolutely afraid still figure out a way to get up and get moving. There was no book on how you do remote learning. There will be now.

I watched teachers start mailing supplies to each one of their children’s houses and figuring out different ways to get the children engaged. I did town halls with parents. I started in the middle of April [2020], and the parents were crying with me, telling me, “I always knew that my child’s teacher cared about my kids, but I never realized they really loved them.” The teachers were saying the same things: “I’ve gotten to know my students’ entire family and they’re beautiful people.”

That’s the stuff that gives me hope, because when people had to connect, they started connecting in those ways. They really helped each other get through what was probably the darkest time of this pandemic

What’s one thing you think no one has understood about you or about unions since the beginning of school closures? 

The whole time it was about protecting the school and that means us and the children. We had to fight to close our schools, and then we had to fight to open our schools. We never said no. We always said we wanted to open the schools, but at that point, we had learned that we’re not gonna listen to doctors unless they’re independent. Thankfully, we were able to get access to that, and our doctors designed a plan for us to open schools safely.

We all know pandemic information changes all the time. We should have opened on time last year, but the mayor didn’t understand that it was real for us. We were going to do it the right way, because we weren’t going to subject ourselves or our students and their families to any more danger for going to school. The last thing we wanted was people sick because they went to school or putting their lives or their families’ or their school communities’ lives in jeopardy. Basically, 35 percent of the parents felt comfortable with their child going to school. This is over a year ago. Thankfully it’s much much higher than that now.

Every school in New York City ended up with a group of four or five teachers who actually set their school up, put up the signs, did all the training of the other teachers on how to do certain things — how to wear their masks, how to fit them properly, how to direct the children, what to do when they’re eating and how you do your spacing, and getting kids in and out and on and off the bus. There were over 3,000 volunteers who did that and trained their schools to do it. Nobody talks about that stuff. There was no pay involved. It’s not in our contract. It was just: If we want to be safe and we want our schools open, we have to do this. And they went and did it.

Ventilation. Oh my God. We actually were able to fix ventilation. I’ll never forget last winter. The buildings were built after the last pandemic. They have these really big windows. They actually were built that way so you could open them to keep ventilation in case there was another pandemic. That literally became part of the code for schools after the pandemic of 1918. For a period of time, the teachers kept opening up the windows the whole way and it’s like 7 degrees out. So we had to produce this video for all the teachers about, “No, you don’t have to do that. You only have to open like half the windows about 3 inches each and you’ll be fine.” This year, one of the first cold days in January, I was in a school, and one of the teachers had the windows open a large way. And I’m looking at the windows and she touched my arm, and she goes, “I know I don’t have to open it that much, but my team teacher for 20 years died of COVID a year ago.” I said, “You keep that window open anyway you want.”

Describe a moment when you felt you were getting conflicting guidance or instructions. What did you end up doing and why?

The opening of this year was probably the most frustrating because once again everyone thinks we’re getting through the pandemic. We go from 6 feet to 3 feet [social distancing]. We opened the schools last year. We had no vaccines. We went back into work; we did what we needed to do. Now, the vaccines are available. Everybody wants schools back open. We agree. And then all of a sudden, the New York City Department of Health starts issuing new guidance. Three feet is no longer 3 feet. Three feet basically becomes . And then, you fight, you fight, you fight.

Even in the beginning, I’ll never forget having meetings where the city doctors are telling us, “It’s gonna be nothing but a cold …and the schools could remain open. The kids are gonna be fine. They’re not gonna get it and we’ll create herd immunity and we’ll be safer faster than everybody else.” Literally, that’s the conversation we were having with the mayor and his doctors. And our doctors are saying to us the absolute opposite. They said, “Listen, children might not be getting it at this point in time, but this is a serious virus, and people are gonna die.”

That was probably the big conflict, that first one.

Do we understand what works in virtual learning better than we did two years ago? Why or why not?

We never said it was going to be the be-all-and-end-all. It was always a way for us to keep in contact, to keep our students engaged. Through that March and the end of that school year, it really was more of a lifeline between teachers and students and their families. Remember, nobody was leaving their house or apartment. There was no such thing as a school day at that point. Teachers would be teaching at 6:00 in the morning. Teachers would be teaching at 8:00 at night. Teaching was all over the place. They did whatever they needed to do to reach the parents, especially the younger children when the parent could be there.

The following year is where you learn a little bit more about it. For 65 percent of those students, the parents said their child is going to work remotely. We never should have had each teacher [figuring out remote learning] on their own. We thought it should have been a more centralized process, deploying the best practices we know. But the department still felt — because I gotta be honest, they just didn’t want to manage it — it’s better off to just let every teacher in school do their own thing.

We’ve learned a lot. One of the things we found out is the majority of students really do regress in a remote setting, which we completely expected. There was a small percentage of students who actually thrived in remote. So to me as a teacher, that says there’s something there we have to look at, because if these students who were not doing well when they were going to school — and there’s all sorts of different reasons for that — all of a sudden did really well in a remote setting, we have to look at this going into the future.

But this is not an online college course. That’s what everyone always thought: “We’ll put the camera in the middle of the classroom.” It does not work in K-12 education.

How has this crisis changed your union? 

It’s made us stronger. We communicate better than we ever did before. We’re using technology in ways that it probably would have taken us a decade to get to. We started doing these virtual town hall things. There was no such thing in any union before. It was always, “You’re a union, you have to come in person.” There were 17,000 and 23,000 and 28,000, then over 30,000 people — there would just be massive town halls with the members. It really was comforting to all of us. That was comforting to me as their president.

We don’t have all the answers, and let’s just all be there for each other and we’re doing the best we can. That’s when we we decided — it was probably in the middle of May after we first shut down — we’re going to do three things: We want to open our schools again, we’ll never listen to any doctors on anyone’s payroll again, and we’ll fight like hell to make sure that we’re doing what the independent doctors tell us to do. 

Did you ever feel like quitting or think of quitting?

Of course I did, and I think most people in this profession thought of quitting throughout this thing. There were some really, really tough times. The only way out of this is to go through it, and I don’t think any of us expected it to go on this long.

In the beginning, we lost close to 100 members, and then over the next year, we did go over 100. That was really difficult, because everyone thinks, “What else could I have done?” Thankfully, we were able to really use the power of our union to try to get the families support. Remember, we also represent over 3,000 private sector nurses who work in hospitals. We set up a food delivery service for them because no one was doing anything for them at that point. At downtown NYU Langone [hospital] and Staten Island University Hospital South — you would go there and they would get their food and you would see what they were going through. They’re like, “We gotta be in [the hospital]. We gotta do what we have to do for these patients.” I saw the same thing happening with the teachers when I’m on Zooms with them and on town halls. [They would say], “This is tough. No one prepared us for this, but could you help me get [something for my students]? This will help. There’s a child I can’t reach because he lives with his grandmother.” That’s what fueled me.

What would you tell yourself 700 days ago, if you could go back in time, given what we know now? 

Trust the members at all times, the members and the parents. Just keep standing up and fight, fight, fight as hard as hell on everything you know once you get the information. You need to just keep your head down and keep swinging. Like in any crisis, there’ve been some really good people who have stepped up in all sorts of ways. Have faith in people who dedicate their lives to either health care or education. Anytime there’s a problem or I’m in a foxhole, I want to be with those people. 

That’s how long it’s been since more than half the nation’s schools crossed into the pandemic era.

On March 16, 2020, districts in 27 states, encompassing almost 80,000 schools, closed their doors for the first long educational lockdown. Within nine days, the nation’s remaining districts followed suit.

Since then, schools have reopened, closed and reopened again. The effects have been immediate — students lost parents; teachers mourned fallen colleagues — and hopelessly abstract, as educators weighed “pandemic learning loss,” the sometimes crude measure of COVID’s impact on students’ academic performance.

To mark what will soon stretch into a third spring of educational disruption, ����Ӱ�� spoke with educators, parents, students and researchers about what Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, called “a seismic interruption to education unlike anything we’ve ever seen.” They talked movingly, often unsparingly, about their missteps and occasional triumphs, their moments of despair and fragile optimism for the future. [You can scan through our expanding archive of testimonials right here.]

As spring approaches, there are additional reasons to be hopeful. More children are being vaccinated. Mask mandates are lifting. But even if the pandemic recedes and a “new normal” emerges, there are clear signs that the issues surfaced during this period will linger. COVID heightened inequities long baked into the American educational system. The social contract between parents and schools has frayed. Teachers are burning out.

“There are kind of two camps,” said Beth Lehr, an assistant principal of Sahuarita High School, south of Tucson, Arizona. “There’s the one camp of ‘This too shall pass,’ and then there’s the other camp of ‘Yeah, it’s going to pass, but I don’t know if I want to wait for it to.’”

But none of this was on anyone’s mind on March 16, 2020.

The World Health Organization had a pandemic only five days earlier. Two days after that, then-President Donald Trump called a . And in the Northshore School District, a system of 22,000 students northeast of Seattle, schools had already been closed for over a week. In late February, one of its schools shut for deep cleaning after an employee traveled out of the country with a family member who had become ill. The district’s closure offered a glimpse into what many thought would be a short-term disruption.

‘I realized it wasn’t science fiction’

Susan Enfield, superintendent of Highline Public Schools in Washington: A very good friend of mine who works in the called me, end of February, and said, “I think we’re going to close … and I think the rest of you won’t be far behind.” I said, “No way, there’s no way they’re going to close schools.” I mean, I really was incredulous.

Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education: I was having brunch with my sister in Kirkland, Washington, when the news broke that there were multiple cases and deaths at the Life Care Center nursing home just a few miles away. My husband sent me a text telling me to get out of Kirkland right away, and everything felt ominous.

Marguerite Roza, Seattle-based director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University: My daughter and I were driving to go pick up some fish for dinner. In the car, they announced the governor’s order — it was with a bigger lockdown kind of order — and we walked into the fish market place, and the guy behind the counter goes, “Have you heard anything yet?” We were like, “Yep.” And he goes, “What did he say?” We said, “Lockdown.” And he [grunts], “Uhhhh.” Already, the streets were pretty empty, and the first person we talked to was the guy packaging up our salmon.

Tony Sanders, superintendent, School District U-46, near Chicago: I was asked to serve on a statewide panel of superintendents … to provide guidance to school district leaders across the state. Our first meeting, held on Sunday, March 15, was attended by prominent legislators, state health officials, the deputy governor for education and state superintendent of schools. Hearing the projections of worst-case scenarios should we not “flatten the curve” was surreal. At the conclusion of that meeting, where we worked to socially distance, but had no idea yet about the need to wear a mask, I made the four-hour journey home in complete silence and disbelief.

Michael Mulgrew, president, United Federation of Teachers, New York City: We started tracking this during the Christmas holiday. We had some teachers who were in China. We had them quarantine when they came back. I didn’t realize [things had changed] until March 16, the day after the New York City public schools closed. I was in my car driving around the city and I was shocked that the streets were empty. That’s when I realized it wasn’t science fiction. 

Bridgette Adu-Wadier: freshman, Northwestern University, graduate of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandra, Virginia: By the end of March, Gov. Ralph Northam basically announced that all the schools would be closed due to the pandemic for the rest of the school year. I watched the livestream, and I was texting my friends. One of them was actually really upset and crying about it, just because it was such a stressful situation to be in — like, things are never going to be the same again.

‘We were completely unprepared’

Parents, superintendents and others — many in a state of shock — had little time to plan as events unfolded at frightening speed.

Toni Rochelle Baker: family liaison for Oakland REACH, a parent advocacy organization, Walnut Creek, California: They gave us curfews in our city and then they told us to stock up for food. I don’t live my life like that. I’m a single mother. I go grocery shopping when I can. We get what we need, and now you’re telling me to stock up on food? That was scary. I didn’t have a deep freezer. I didn’t have extra money just laying around [to] go spend $300 on food. I didn’t have Wi-Fi at the time because I didn’t really need it. I have my phone, and now I need Wi-Fi for three people.

Maria Amado, family child care provider, Hartford, Connecticut, who opened her program for school-age children during remote learning: [Translated from Spanish] Educators, including myself, sewed masks for the children, and we looked for resources to support each other. Some gave fabric to make the masks, others the elastic. It may not have been in big ways, but they all contributed. And now I remember this and think, “Where did I find the time to make the masks?” It was the adrenaline to survive, knowing this would protect me and I had to do it.

Tony Sanders: We needed to place emergency orders for Chromebooks and other devices. We had to completely transform our approach to food service so that by March 17 we were feeding our students and community at food pickup locations throughout the district. There were decisions that had to be made that I would never have thought of. We had to determine how we would ensure employees would continue to be paid. During the first days of the pandemic, I recall sitting alone in my office. The view from my window was a large parking lot with one vehicle.

Sherrice Dorsey-Smith, deputy director of programs, planning and grants, San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Their Families: I had to figure out how we were going to open what we called emergency child and youth centers. These were spaces for essential workers to leave their children for the day while they were at work. Child care centers were closed, schools were closed, but some people needed or were required to continue working. They needed a safe place for their children during the day. I had to figure out how to get breakfast, lunch and snacks to all the sites. I remember working through the weekend nonstop, literally 48 hours.

Michael Mulgrew: It was a mad scramble to get everyone trained quickly how to get their classrooms up. How do we teach parents how to help their kids? It was non-stop. It was hundreds of decisions every day. Even though everything was closed, we were still moving stuff literally, like laptops and iPads and different things, trying to get them to our members’ houses so they had something to work off. [Former] Mayor [Bill de Blasio] had resolved never to close the schools, so he would not allow the Department of Ed to put any contingency plans in place. On the Friday before the schools closed, at 3 p.m., the mayor would be banging on the table saying he was going to keep the schools open. And that Sunday afternoon he closed the schools. So we were completely unprepared.

School, interrupted

As the deadline for lifting lockdown kept slipping away, some took longer to grasp the new reality: Life wouldn’t be returning to normal anytime soon.

Mariela Garcia: freshman at the University of Houston, graduate of Eastwood Academy High School in Houston: It was during spring break when we ended up having two weeks instead of one. And two weeks turned into three. This went on for a couple of weeks before we noticed that we weren’t going to go back to school. Stores started closing down, schools started closing, many things started closing because everyone was scared. That’s when I noticed that this was becoming very serious.

Dale Chu, senior visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute: I realized everything had changed … on May 10, 2020. How do I remember the date? My at-the-time 5-year-old daughter — after nearly two months on Zoom — drew a picture of her class for me. Seeing Kellan’s classmates through her eyes on a Zoom grid really hit things home for me.

Ricardo Miguel Martinez, president, Latino Parents for Public Schools, Atlanta: I had people worried about getting kicked out, evicted, lights being turned off, not having groceries. These are people who weren’t making excuses. The people who are fighting masks and stuff, they have a choice to either follow the data or not follow the data. God bless them in their fight. But these people didn’t have a choice. They got thrown into the chicken factories and died. They got thrown into manufacturing and died so that we could have chicken at the grocery store.

Mourning the lost

Some felt the pandemic’s effects up close: sick parents, dead teachers. This month, the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. , with an estimated 2,200 of them educators. Many of the effects have been harder to measure, but are certain to leave lasting damage. Recent four out of five secondary school principals experienced “frequent job-related stress” last year, and educator surveys show over students’ mental health, including anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

Susan Enfield: We lost two middle school students to suicide early in the pandemic. We lost staff members.

Michael Mulgrew: I had to read the names of our members who passed away. I had to make the phone calls to those families. We lost a lot of members, and I always think that if we could have closed earlier, how many more would we not have lost.

Shawnie Bennett, a COVID-19 investigator, Oakland, California: I lost my brother [from COVID] in May of 2020. He was only 32. As a family, when we would gather to try and go see him or just sit outside the hospital window. We were afraid to touch each other, so it was hard to comfort each other. [My son] came home [from college] for Christmas, and he saw me so weak and broken. He had always seen a very strong Black woman as a mother. I was gone, emotionally wrecked, mentally, physically, and it broke him down to the point that he did not want to return to school. He’s in Atlanta now, got an apartment and he’s just trying to figure life out. He was very close to my brother. That loss, on top of what he physically saw me go through, was detrimental for him.

David Brown, principal, Hillcrest Heights Elementary, Prince George’s County, Maryland: Family vacations, going out to eat, visiting family — I think all of those things disappearing created a milieu where it was tough to manage. And when you’re in charge of leading a large group of individuals, how do you help and support them? How do you keep your teachers upbeat? Because the mental health of every adult who receives a paycheck from our county impacts the mental health and the wellness of children who are just simply here to learn. I remember there was discussion that we’ll be able to eat and enjoy ourselves come the 4th of July, and then that didn’t happen. You’re holding out hope that it’s going away, but it’s not, and [you’re] trying to remain that positive, invigorating leader that the principal has to be.

Bridgette Adu-Wadier: Graduation was a really tough time. I don’t remember enjoying it, honestly. Just collectively, it was like a year or so of the pandemic, and then also, my family was impacted a lot financially, which was stressful. I was basically helping my two younger brothers through virtual school for the whole year. I had a lot more family responsibilities, and it took a toll on me mentally. I had trouble balancing things, especially with Zoom class sessions while my brothers needed help or were playing loudly in the other room. I relied on music and audiobooks as a form of escape.

Ashiley Lee, tech and operations coordinator, Para Los Niños, a Los Angeles charter school, where last year she taught seventh-grade history: I remember being in a class full of blank screens, because we no longer required cameras on, and then after that, putting my grades in for the semester and realizing just how low they were. I was trying to brainstorm with my team: What is something, anything, we can do to encourage our students to at least get the one assignment we post a week in by the end of the semester? My kids, it was so funny, we started a joke where I would call on a student to answer a question and they wouldn’t be there — kind of a ghost in the call. And the kids would comment in the chat, “Ghostbuster! Ms. Lee caught him.”

Marguerite Roza: The hardest part was when it looked like there was no reopening school. This was November of 2020. The governor had established these metrics by which you could open schools, and as far out as the modelers had modeled, it was never going to reopen. My then-high school daughter [a cross-country runner] was getting more and more discouraged. You could just see it was really not healthy for her, just to be home all alone every day. And you, as a parent, start to feel desperate. I used to listen to press conferences constantly. You could see that there wasn’t going to be any movement. I was very worried about her. The sports season had come and gone. School was online. I think that was probably the darkest time, which coincides in Seattle with it being really dark, [at] like 3:45. 

Mariela Garcia: Hundreds and thousands of people were dying because of COVID, and I was scared. I remember I had no interactions with the outside world for — I kid you not — at least three months straight. My family just did not want to leave our home. At the time, we had to adjust to online school. I had no Wi-Fi or laptop at the time, so it was hard to be in class and even submit assignments from my phone. It was definitely a very hard time, especially when family members started to get COVID.

Toni Baker: I had two kids at the table with computers doing virtual learning and I had no idea what that meant. They told us to sign on to some Zoom that I’ve never heard of before. I’m in love with my kids, but my kids were on my last nerves during the pandemic. Those four walls just weren’t enough.

Couch sitting, watching ‘Friends’

The monotony of being stuck at home sparked new coping strategies: Cooking, at-home workouts, walking the dog — and of course . Some took long couch breaks. Others became entrepreneurs. Mariela Garcia started baking and ran a business from a local farmer’s market.

Mariela Garcia: My family actually bought the DVD set of “Friends” and we just watched “Friends” over and over and over. We’ve already seen each episode at least 10 times. We just keep it playing throughout the whole day because we don’t have any Wi-Fi or anything at home. I would not have started my business if it wasn’t for being in quarantine. I had so much more free time. I hate being that person, but the first time I ever tried my empanadas, they came out great, and I have not changed anything. 

Susan Enfield: A group of female superintendents from around the country — we refer to ourselves as “sister supes” — had a standing Sunday afternoon Zoom where we would just check in and get together. In the early months, that proved to be incredibly helpful, just remembering that we weren’t alone. Going for walks with my husband and also, frankly, allowing myself to feel pain and to grieve. I think as leaders we do need to inspire hope and let people know it’s going to be OK and be strong, but we also have to balance that strength and courage with vulnerability. There were weekends where I didn’t get off the couch. I’ve been pretty honest about that in conversations with others. I said to someone once, “If one more person says, ‘You got this,’ I’m gonna smack ‘em.” A year and a half ago, I didn’t “got this,” and people were just lying. I’m sorry, they were just lying. I don’t think we do ourselves or our colleagues or anyone any service by faking it.

Beth Lehr, assistant principal, Sahuarita High School, Sahuarita, Arizona: I do not check my email at all on the weekends.

Toni Baker: I had a support system. They gave us vouchers for food. They gave my kids free computers. They gave us Wi-Fi. They had these teachers — I don’t even know where they found these beautiful teachers with these loving hearts for these kids. There was a teacher who had a grandma’s touch and a mom’s heart, and she was just so warm. This is through a computer. I’ve never met this woman to this day in real life. I had the community of Oakland REACH behind me. I wouldn’t have made it without them.

David Brown: When we were in person, I had “lunch bunches” where I would eat lunch with the kids. So I went back to eating lunch virtually with the kids, and I found that really gave me a lot of positive energy. You find that you are equally, if not more, excited to see them in this virtual world than they are to see you. So it’s the, “Hey, Mr. Brown.” It’s the big smile. It’s the camera coming on. It’s the home environment. It’s the parents waving in the background. I think all of that does a good amount to lift your spirits.

‘The system itself is not changing’

Confusing guidance and vitriolic debate left many parents feeling lost. They watched helplessly as their children disengaged from learning, but also worried that their kids would get sick if they returned to school. School leaders were caught in what felt like a non-stop, high-volume war of words with unions, parents and state officials. 

Pedro Martinez, CEO, Chicago Public Schools; former superintendent, San Antonio Independent School District: Texas did not prioritize teachers [for vaccines] in the first round, but they were pushing hard and threatening districts about keeping schools open. Meanwhile, the positivity rate, I remember in San Antonio, was over 21 percent. The death rate was five times higher in my district than it was in the more affluent parts of the county. I just remember the frustration. You want these things, but yet you’re not providing vaccines to my staff, who actually want to keep the schools open. 

Michael Mulgrew: The city doctors are telling us it’s going to be nothing but a cold and the schools could remain open. The kids are going to be fine. They’re not going to get it, and we’ll create herd immunity, and we’ll be safer faster than everybody else. Literally, that’s the conversation I was having with the mayor and his doctors. Our doctors are telling us the absolute opposite. They’re saying, “Listen, children might not be getting this at this point in time, but this is a serious virus and people are going to die.” The big conflict was that first one. 

Marguerite Roza: I’m a data person. I really study the numbers, and I didn’t understand how a lot of people were driven by fear and couldn’t recognize what I was seeing. [They’re saying], “Your child could die,” and I was like, “Well, not really. The numbers here say, really, your child isn’t going to die. I promise you, driving to Grandma’s is more dangerous for your kid than this thing.” You’re having two different conversations if you’re talking about numbers and you’re talking about fear. The fear was so dominant that the numbers people probably felt, out of respect, we should step back and be quiet. I don’t want to tell somebody who’s having a panic attack, “You’re overreacting.” Looking back on it, I think that I probably kept my real views about the data quieter than I should have. I thought people were going to bounce out of it.

Mariela Garcia: We were able to pick whether to go back in person or stay online. I definitely wanted to go back. I missed my friends. I missed having class with a teacher right in front of me. My parents thought it was not a good idea. I was conflicted in making a decision, but for the good of my family, I decided to stay online for my whole senior year. That also meant no sports. I was so heartbroken because sports meant everything to me. I was unable to play my senior year. I had already claimed the captain position in my previous year playing, and I was looking forward to a great season. 

Parent power

The pandemic has dramatically changed parents’ relationships with their public schools, prompting some to seek new options and others to demand more from the schools their children attend. “I think the pandemic has created some sort of awakening in parents that we’ve not seen before,” Roza said. “I don’t think there’s any putting that genie back in the bottle.” 

Wendy Neal, executive director of My Child My Voice, a Houston-based advocacy group: I’m not saying the teachers are bad, I’m just saying that the parents were finding creative ways of being more of a teacher to their own child. Some parents were like, “Well, if you’re not going to help my child, I’m pulling my kid out of your school. Either I’m going to homeschool, go to an education pod or go to a private school.” Some of these parents really didn’t believe in charter schools either, and then all of a sudden, they’re putting their kid in a virtual charter school.

Marguerite Roza: In March of 2021, [my daughter’s school] finally got around to having their cross-country season outside, and they banned all parents from coming. They run three miles. They’re outside. It just got to the point where it was eye roll upon eye roll. A lot of parents showed up anyway, ’cause how are you going to keep parents off of a three-mile course, right? And we’re popping out of the bushes waving at each other. [It had been] a year, and we knew better. I should have marched out and said, “The evidence suggests we’re fine here,” but they were going to ban you and ban your team if you weren’t cooperating.

Sonya Thomas, executive director, Nashville PROPEL, a parent advocacy group: You would think that a pandemic would bring about a sense of urgency. We’re talking about decades of educational inequities, and what I’m seeing is that the system itself is not changing. It has actually grown richer in money. It has grown more savvy in messaging. And it’s hurtful. I’ve got tears coming down my face now. I just had a friend who died this weekend. He couldn’t read. And I have to ask myself, “What has changed?” 

Toni Baker: When this school year came around, the COVID was just everywhere. The previous year, they did the COVID tests, they did the sanitizer, they did the masks, they did all these precautions. And when school started back the next semester, all of that went out the window. I let it slide the first two days of school, but by the third day, I’m like, “What’s going on? Where are the masks? Where is this? Where is that? We’re still in this stuff, and it’s worse now.” I had to make an executive decision as a parent. My kid’s class got exposed and I didn’t like the safety of it. I was worrying, like I had knots in my stomach. I had to remove my children from there. [My son’s] class went on quarantine for a week and then I just never took them back.

Beth Lehr: I have one teacher. This is her ninth year. She has already resigned for next year. She said, “I can’t do this anymore. I dread coming to work every day.” She goes, “You know, I love the day-to-day of being in front of our kids. The second I have to open my email or grade their assignments is when I realize why I resigned.” The emails. The constant onslaught of the very vocal unhappy parents. We have some amazing families, but we don’t hear the “Thank yous” as often as we hear the “You sucks.”

Lost learning

Educators love jargon. It’s not surprising, then, that lockdown introduced new terms like “COVID slide” and “pandemic learning loss” to describe the academic fallout students experienced from months of remote learning. In June 2020, researchers at nonprofit assessment group NWEA were among the first to predict the extent of the chaos. The return to in-person learning helped. But as recently as December, from McKinsey & Co. showed that academic recovery has been uneven and gaps between Black and white students have widened. Educators also report challenges with student behavior, which many to the lack of socialization during remote learning.

Beth Lehr: The learning loss is going to be there. There’s going to be a new norm, but trying to jam more and more and more down their throats is not helping. Continuing to create these high-stakes environments and making kids feel less than because of something that was totally out of their control is not helping. Meeting kids where they are is. Why do they have to learn all these things, right? They have to learn it to be successful in the future. Great, what does that success look like? How are we redefining success, because honestly, right now, for some of these kids, success is getting out of bed and showing up.

Mariela Garcia: I’ve always struggled in math, and since it was online I feel like I wasn’t really learning as much as I could. When I got to college, I took trigonometry, and it was difficult. I had to get a tutor or stay after school. I had to study more on my own time. I had to take a test in person for the first time in two years. I struggled the first couple weeks, but once I got help and once I started studying, it’s just like riding a bike.

Ricardo Martinez: Seems like we’ve already stopped talking about it. A lot of people refuse to acknowledge it. They’re trying to change the conversation to CRT [critical race theory], anti-CRT. Let’s not worry about what’s not really happening and worry about what’s actually happening. Kids are getting more aggressive. They’ve lost social skills. We’ve lost a lot of learning, and I don’t think that the parents have been able to help because we barely know how to do what they’re asking us to do. I hope that we’re talking about learning loss until we catch back up, which should be in a few years.

Beth Lehr: [Students are experiencing an] emotional stuntedness, for lack of a better term. Freshmen are notoriously immature, but what we’re used to seeing as freshman behavior isn’t even freshman behavior. The “devious licks” stuff [a TikTok challenge that included school property damage] — that was 100 percent only freshman. Oh my God, the soap dispensers were destroyed over and over and over again. We had to replace sinks. We had to replace toilets — not because they were stolen, but because they were destroyed. The older students were super-annoyed by the freshman because then we ended up having to lock our bathrooms during lunch. We’ve also had an increase in sexual infractions — not necessarily assaults. It’s consensual, but it’s much more frequent on our campus this year. This is my seventh year as assistant principal, and this year, hands down, we have had more issues with kids getting caught in positions that high schoolers should not be in.

Hosea Born, art and robotics teacher at Hope Academy of Public Service, Hope, Arkansas: We will be talking about it as long as there is the overwhelming reliance on standardized testing. The pandemic has shown us that adaptability is key, yet we are still measuring our students on how well they can take a test. Teaching a non-tested subject has allowed me to see the flexibility and amazing ways that students learn when there isn’t a looming requirement hanging over their heads. Some of my students haven’t had an art class since the start of the pandemic, but it is key for students to be able to create, and when given the opportunity, they have jumped right back in, and to me, are exceeding all expectations. 

Pedro Martinez: Last year, our district had 100,000 students who were disengaged, including seniors who would have dropped out. We got the majority of seniors to graduate. Same thing happened in San Antonio. What I heard from teachers directly was, “These kids are coming every day. These are the same students who we couldn’t get to engage in remote. They’re coming every single day.” I saw the first-quarter grades. There are still gaps, but significant improvements over the remote year, and specifically with our kids of poverty and kids of color. That gives me a lot of hope. When we have the children in our schools, they actually do perform better.

Robin Lake: I think we will grapple with [learning loss] for as long as the COVID generation is alive. We’ll be looking at the immediate impacts for probably a decade, but there are sure to be lasting effects on individuals and on the economy for many decades unless we can change the trajectory of our response. The question is how we’ll be talking about it. Will the story be that we failed this generation of children, or will it be that we pulled together and found solutions for this generation, and designed a better education system for future generations?

A ‘five-alarm crisis’ for teachers

As they looked back, some recalled moments of doubt about perservering. According to from the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, more than half of teachers intend to leave the profession sooner than they originally planned. While some are dubious about “the Big Quit,” NEA President Becky Pringle called teacher burnout and staff shortages a “five-alarm crisis.”

Michael Mulgrew: I think most people in this profession thought of quitting throughout this thing. There were some really really tough times. The only way out of this is to go through it.

Susan Enfield: I don’t think I ever thought of quitting. There were moments where I thought I don’t know if I can do this, but that’s different than quitting. I never just was like, “I’m out of here,” and my was not a response to the pandemic. I’m ready for a fresh challenge and Highline is ready for a fresh leader.

Beth Lehr: I’m so torn. I’ve applied for a principal position within the district, but at the same time I’m like, “Why? Why did I just do that? What am I thinking?” I haven’t yet gotten to the point where the stuff that I dislike about my job has outweighed the stuff that I like about it, but it’s hit or miss on a daily basis. 

‘I don’t use the term normal anymore’

Like a sequel to a bad horror movie, the Omicron variant arrived just as educators and families thought they’d made it through the worst of the crisis. The sparked a spike in cases, resulting in further school closures and quarantines. But now, with increasing vaccination rates and a recent decline in positive cases, some states are lifting mask mandates. The nation’s three largest districts aren’t ready to let masks go, but some are starting to use a word they haven’t uttered in a while: hope.

Pedro Martinez: We’re now at a point where cases have been very steadily declining. Our city is now close to an over-70 percent vaccination rate. There are still gaps within my district, but I’m seeing good momentum, especially with 5- to 11-year-olds. We’re close to maybe half of our district that should be fully vaccinated within the next couple weeks. Over 90 percent of my staff are fully vaccinated. So it really gives me hope that we’re on the other side of this. There’s a chance that by springtime we could be talking about not wearing masks.

Susan Enfield: I am hopeful that in the coming weeks and months we are going to collectively adapt to a way of living, a way of working, that will feel more familiar to what we knew prior to the pandemic. I don’t use the term “normal” anymore. I think entering that phase gives me hope.

Michael Mulgrew: The buildings built after the last pandemic have these really big windows. They actually were built that way so that you could open them to keep ventilation in case there was another pandemic. That literally became part of the code for schools after the pandemic of 1918. For a period of time last year, the teachers kept opening up the windows the whole way, and it’s like 7 degrees out. So, we had to produce this video for all the teachers about how you only have to open like half the windows about 3 inches each and you’ll be fine. One of the first cold days when we got back last month, I was in a school, and one of the teachers had windows open all the way. And I’m looking at the windows, and she touched my arm and she goes, “I know I don’t have to open it that much, but my team teacher for 20 years died of COVID a year ago.” I said, “You keep that window open any way you want.”

Shawnie Bennett: I don’t think I will ever take off my mask.

Mariela Garcia: I’ve always been the type of person to talk to anybody, but it was different seeing people that I’ve never met before [at the University of Houston]. People have been socially awkward, and it’s hard to start a conversation. With my personality, I’m a happy person and I talk to anyone. So I’m going up to someone [last fall] like, “Hi, nice to meet you,” and they’re just like, “Whoa, 6 feet apart.”

Beth Lehr: It’s so hard to see the end, and it’s so overwhelming. What I’ve heard more this year from my teachers than anything is, “We thought that last year was hard. This year is 10 times harder.” We’ve had very, very low turnover. I do not foresee that being the case next year. There are kind of two camps. There’s the one camp of “This too shall pass,” and then there’s the other camp of “Yeah, it’s going to pass, but I don’t know if I want to wait for it to.”

‘A true hunger for doing things differently’

Two years of scrambling and false starts has offered ample opportunity to think about what has — and perhaps more to the point, what hasn’t — worked for schools. If there’s another pandemic — and scientists say there undoubtedly , and soon — will anything change?

Christopher Nellum, executive director, Education Trust West: I think we now appreciate mental health in a different way. The past two years have been traumatic. We have been scared, sick, overworked, unemployed. We have missed vital human connection and even lost loved ones. We have witnessed a surge in racially motivated hate crimes and a national reckoning over police brutality toward Black and brown Americans. It’s OK to be struggling to feel OK in the face of all of that. It’s OK to talk about it. And we all deserve access to the resources we need to address it. 

Sonya Thomas: Parent engagement is not what we want. When you engage us, what you’re doing is bringing your own agenda and you’re saying, “This is what we’re going to do, so get with the program.” That’s what engagement means, right? “I’m bringing something to you, this is what you’re gonna get and you gotta just walk in line with it.” I think what they’re learning is that we’re not going anywhere and we want parent partnership. We don’t want to be engaged. Throw that in the trash. That has never gotten anything for our children. What we want is true partnership. We want school districts to partner with us, intentionally take our feedback and use it. That builds trust. It’s not a talking point or a PR move. 

Dale Chu: If anything, we’ve learned what doesn’t work. For example, asynchronous learning [without live teaching ] — homework, study hall — stunk. We also learned that huge doses of it left millions of students isolated from their peers, the toll from which we’re just starting to come to grips with.

Robin Lake: I hear a true hunger for doing things differently. People are saying, “You know, the way we ask teachers to teach alone in a classroom, trying to be expert in all things and serve vastly different needs, is crazy.” I believe there is a powerful confluence of parents, educators and civic leaders who know things have to change and are determined to make that happen.

Michael Mulgrew: We never said [remote learning] was going to be the be-all-and-end-all. It was always a way for us to keep in contact, to keep our students engaged. Through the end of that [2019-20] school year, it really was more of a lifeline between teachers and students and their families. We thought it should have been more of a centralized process, but [the department] figured it’s better off to just let every teacher do their own thing. The majority of students really do regress in a remote setting. There was a small percentage of students who actually thrived in remote, so that says there’s something there we have to look at. If there’s a subset of children who were not doing well when they were going to school — and there’s all sorts of different reasons for that — who all of a sudden did really well in a remote setting, we have to look at this going into the future.

Marguerite Roza: We have seen districts jump in and be nimble in a way that we never thought districts could be nimble before. People always say, “You know, turning a district around is like turning an aircraft carrier.” I’m like, an aircraft carrier turns around in a day. Why is everybody using that as something that’s slow? I was in the military. [From 1988 to 1992, Roza served at the Navy Nuclear Power School in Orlando.] Aircraft carriers are pretty maneuverable. There are thousands and thousands of people on an aircraft carrier, and that thing could spin around and change direction with the wind. I do think that we had thought districts couldn’t adjust, and many of them did.

Beth Lehr: I’ve had a lot of teachers really rethink their philosophies — some of my most dyed-in-the-wool [teachers]. This has truly opened their eyes when they’ve seen the disparities. Not everybody’s home looks the same. When we first started doing all of the remote, we had a lot of really serious conversations about requiring cameras to be on or not. A lot of our teachers were like, well, “Why wouldn’t the camera be on?” They never took into account that there might be 10 people in a two-bedroom house. There might be somebody being slapped, hit, cut, whatever while they’re there. They might be embarrassed because they’re doing your class from their car in the McDonald’s parking lot.

‘So long and so short’

Seven hundred days have flown by for some and painfully dragged on for others. For many, it’s been a bit of both. 

Michael Mulgrew: It feels like 7,000 days.

Laurie Corizzo, counselor, Ridge Ranch School, Paramus, New Jersey: This whole pandemic, the virus, the water cooler conversations are never-ending. If someone isn’t discussing a vaccine, a booster, the virus, who has it, who had it, who passed, it seems that conversations are stagnant. My point is, it encompasses every single aspect of our lives. It is as if there were some sort of imaginary force field that prevents any semblance of any other conversation to happen anywhere on the planet. In a word, it is quite exhausting.

Christopher Nellum: I hope that 700 days in, we are seeing our education systems for what they are and what they have been for a long, long time: profoundly inequitable.

Susan Enfield: I didn’t know that 700 days could both seem so long and so short simultaneously. I think the last couple of years have felt like a lifetime in and of themselves, and yet, at the same time, it feels like it’s gone by in a flash.

Marguerite Roza: I mean, wow — what a seismic interruption to education unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Normally, we would say a 1 percent change in enrollment from one year to the next is earth-shattering to finance. We’re seeing 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 percent enrollment shifts in some districts. And some of those are large districts. Those kinds of things are going to change the structure of education forever.

Lead Image: Rippowam Middle School principal Matthew Laskowski looks on from a socially distanced cafeteria in September 2020 in Stamford, Connecticut. (John Moore / Getty Images)

In remarks where he took a swipe at Chicago’s recent labor dispute that shut down its public schools, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Thursday he was ” with the teachers union a temporary remote learning option.

While the mayor referred to United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew as his “good friend,” he did not indicate that the city and the union had reached an agreement on what a “quality” remote option would look like. A sticking point may be whether the union would allow classroom teachers to livestream their in-person lessons to remote students.

More than once, Adams described any possible remote learning option as temporary and strongly reiterated his position that students needed to be in school. “We’ve lost two years of education. Two years” he said. “The fallout is unbelievable. Math and English. English is is not as bad as math, but the numbers with math, they are frightening.”

One day after Mayor Eric Adams said it would take six months to develop a solid remote learning program, the head of the New York City teachers union pressed for quicker action and the schools chancellor said he was working on a plan.

But it might be at odds with how teachers want to deliver virtual learning, leaving students, parents and educators unclear about a path forward as the highly transmissible Omicron variant sweeps through the state and nation.

“We’ve called for a remote learning program since September, and we believe we need to do this,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said. “I think Mayor Adams is really thinking it through, because it is just the fact there’s over 200,000 children who haven’t been in school for over two weeks.”

Mulgrew’s remarks came during a town hall meeting Wednesday evening with roughly 15,000 UFT members and again Thursday morning on . 

“We need to set something up, because we hope this is the last wave,” he said, “but we do not know if it is. So, I think it’s time for the city really to think about it and contemplate it.”

Adams’s ​​estimate that it will take roughly six months for city schools to include virtual options would effectively push remote learning off until the end of the school year. He made the comments Wednesday during a conference call with officials, including more than two dozen city and state legislators who sent him a letter in the first week of January calling for a pivot to remote learning through Jan. 18 to slow the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, , schools Chancellor David Banks told a parent advisory council Thursday morning that the city was in talks with the union to create a remote option for this year, but needs to iron out the details. 

“My goal is to create an option that will take us at the very least to the end of the school year,” Banks said at a virtual meeting. “If I could figure out a way to do a remote option starting tomorrow I would … It’s not quite as simple as that because you have to negotiate this stuff with the unions.”

According to Chalkbeat, Banks suggested that one way to have remote learning immediately would be to do away with an agreement with the union that prohibits schools from requiring teachers to livestream their lessons and urged parents to take their demands for a remote option directly to their local UFT chapter leaders. 

The back-and-forth was prompted by one of the most chaotic weeks in NYC schools since the pandemic first shut down classes in March 2020. Fear of the Omicron variant sparked widespread school walkouts by NYC students, who say they feel unsafe on campus and at risk of contracting the virus and bringing it home to their families. Worried parents have also been keeping their children home in : The New York City Department of Education reported Wednesday’s at 76.34 percent. 

The figure is a marked improvement from last week when more than 300,000 students skipped class. 

While some reports show the city might have already hit its peak, the infection rate remains troubling with roughly  The fast-spreading Omicron variant now has scores of . 

Studies have generally shown remote learning has led to compared to in-person instruction. In its earlier incarnation in NYC schools, it also posed staffing challenges with one set of teachers instructing children remotely while another set worked with them in the classroom. 

Mulgrew, whose union represents nearly 200,000 public schools educators and school-related professionals, among others, said the city needs a reliable means to connect with those students who are unable or unwilling to come to campus. 

“We have to make sure we are getting to all of the children because the learning loss we’ve seen already … is quite large,” he said. “But on the remote option, we don’t want to go back to 65 percent of the children staying home. So, for parents, I’m going to ask again, please if we have this option use it judiciously. And again, think about giving us consent for testing your child and really contemplate about getting your child vaccinated. Because these are two of the things the school system needs right now for keeping your child and all of the children safe.”