#80 percent of teachers at this NYC high school will seek exemptions from returning

Roughly 80 percent of teachers at the city’s most prestigious public high school will seek exemptions from a return to classrooms next academic year, the Post has learned.

According to a planning document, Stuyvesant High School administrators surveyed instructors to gauge future staffing shortfalls amid the coronavirus crisis.

“In a survey of teachers, 40% indicated that they fall under CDC guidelines and will apply for medical accommodation,” according to the document. “Another 40% indicated that they do not feel safe traveling on public transportation and will ask their physicians to submit a medical accommodation form.”

Even if those who seek the latter exemptions don’t get them, school officials are girding for the other 40 percent to not be on campus in September and well beyond.

“We have approximately 150 teachers so if 40% are teaching virtually, that means 60 staff members are not coming to the building each day,” according to the document.

School officials said the looming absences will create a number of severe challenges in an already daunting environment.

“The students that come to class would not see their teacher in their classroom,” the documents states. “There would need to be a substitute teacher for that class. We anticipate incurring an additional $250,000 to $500,000 in costs to hire substitute teachers and to pay for teacher coverages.”

Stuyvesant administrators said “it is uncertain as to how this additional expense will be funded.”

According to Chalkbeat, the school initially sought a full remote learning platform for the upcoming year as internal polls showed 91 percent of teacher support along with 59 percent of parents and 56 percent of students.

But the Department of Education has thus far denied attempts by individual schools to adopt full distance learning models and Stuyvesant has formulated a byzantine blended learning plan.

Stuyvesant’s popular longtime principal Eric Contreras left the school at the end of last year to take a job at North Shore High School in Glen Head, Long Island.

Another top city school, New Explorations in Science, Technology and Math, also pushed for an abandonment of on-site teaching but was similarly rebuffed by the department.

The school argued that the remote only setup would allow the school to avoid splitting up classes and allow kids to learn in unison with their classmates – albeit through a screen.

The DOE will allow individual families to opt for full-time remote learning next year.

Parental opinion is split next year between a total resumption of on-site learning, remote only teaching and the blended format.

Mayor de Blasio has backed the mixed approach that would have kids alternate between classroom and home instruction. That plan would allow for a return to city buildings while enabling social distancing.

A final decision on the reopening of the nation’s largest school system won’t arrive until the cusp of the new academic year in September, de Blasio said this week.

Both the city teachers and principals unions have signaled their doubt about a tenable return to buildings if safety and other operational expectations are not met.