#NYC parents outraged over decision for ‘blended’ learning in schools

Parents and students expressed outrage Wednesday over the city’s plan for “blended” instruction, saying remote learning already has proven a failure — and limiting kids’ time in school won’t keep them safe.

“Whatever the plan, it’s not going to meet everyone’s needs,” said Hana Jaber, 34, a stay-at-home mother of four from Park Slope, Brooklyn.

“You can’t win! I’m a qualified teacher, but my son does not want me teaching him. And remote learning is not effective. They are sitting in front of a screen in la-la land!”

She added: “My son, the 6-year-old, he tells me, ‘You’re not my teacher, I’m not in school, I’m not doing this!’”

Another Park Slope mom, Dina, 31, said of her three kids, “I don’t see how it’s going to be safe for them. How does only going for two or three days make a difference?

“Remote learning doesn’t work, and my kids don’t want me as their teacher. I have a third-grader going into fourth grade, and I don’t think he learned anything at home.”

Brooklyn grandfather Bobby Roman, 65, said that “the main issue is the younger kids have to go back to school so the parents can go back to work.”

“I don’t see how this is helping most people. We’re lucky. We can help my daughter. We’re retired, but a lot of people don’t have a built-in babysitter!” he said.

“What are the rest of the parents gonna do when they have to go back to the office?”

Jeannie Risolo, who lives on the Upper West Side and runs a test-prep and tutoring company, said there’s no way she and husband, Ray Angelo, will be sending their twin daughters, 7, back to school .

“Over time, they will learn, and I can fill the learning gap, even if it takes more time,” Risolo said while on a day trip to Southampton with her family.

“I fear for our family and extended family if our children go back to school . . . My mother visits all of the time, and I can’t have her compromised.”

Upper East Side resident Erin Aska, a furloughed television-industry worker, also said her 3-year-old daughter, Arcadia, won’t be attending preschool at PS 196, as planned.

“If they can’t open up the theater, how are they going to open up the schools?” she said. “I want them to be open if it is going to be safe for the kids, but I don’t think right now that’s going to happen.”

Bensonhurst resident Stan Skylar, 17, an incoming senior at Manhattan’s City-As-School HS, said he can’t “see the purpose of opening the schools now.”

“I still have to travel on a train, so I don’t know. They get pretty packed,” he said.

“Especially underground — it starts spreading on the trains, and it’s gonna get worse, not better.”

But Willa, a 14-year-old Park Slope resident who’s planning to enter high school, said, “I would rather just go back full-time.”

Sheepshead Bay resident Crystal Estrada, 30, a supermarket cashier, said she has a 10-year-old child entering fifth grade and a 6-year-old entering first.

“No! It makes no sense!” she said of the city’s plan. “I don’t think they should go back at all, not until it’s safe! The risk, it’s not worth it. All this going on, and they are going to bring it home. No! Not my kids, not until it’s safe.”

Carolyn Martinez, a hairstylist from The Bronx, said her child struggled with online learning the past three months.

“I would like kids to go full-time, but if it’s not possible, then they need to help the parents that have to go to work,” she said.

Lauren Anchor, a single mom of two from College Point, Queens, said she was initially able to work from home for her employer, a construction company that “has been considered essential during the entire pandemic.”

“But with everything opening back up, I am back at my office,” she said. “The thought of my kids possibly not going into the classrooms full-time will deeply impact my life. The days my kids might be learning from home, I will have no one there to watch or help them.”

Marble and tile installer Luan Demaj, 44, who was at Astoria Park in Queens with his wife and two sons Wednesday, said he has been collecting unemployment since the lockdown began and is worried he won’t be able to return to work in the fall due to the school situation.

“My wife does not speak English, so I have to help my children with online work,” he said. “If it was up to me, the children would go back to school five days a week. For me, that is better. If police and doctors can go back to work and be safe, why can’t teachers?”

Social worker Beth Manitsky of Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, who has two high school-age girls, called the city’s plan “not realistic.”

“I think it’s unsafe. I don’t think it’s going to work,” she said.

She favors all-virtual learning because “if and when we get hit again . . . I’d rather they have it together for staying home once and for all.”

Additional reporting by Julie Coleman, Doug Cortese and Lorena Mongelli