After more than three full months since school opened, COVID protocols from the New York City Department of Education stay unchanged in WJPS. These protocols include staff and students remaining six feet apart in the school building whether it’s in the hallways, outside the school building, or in the classrooms.
However, the reality is that desks in classrooms are not six or even three feet apart. There are classes like Mr. Gardner’s classroom, located in room 354 that has desks three feet apart horizontally, but there isn’t a foot between students’ desks vertically.
AP US History teacher, Mr. Tesler from room 329 stated, “Students are masked. Students are sitting at individual desks, as opposed to tables. You cannot guarantee 100% safety from any communicable disease, cold, or flu. I believe the school is doing the best that it can do, given the size of our classes, and classrooms.”
“WJPS is doing the best they can with the social distancing of students given the limitations of the classrooms. We use rows instead of groups in my classroom because that gives more space between students,” added English teacher, Ms.LaVerda Byrne, from room 356.
“Absolutely not, the students are always in close contact with one another and usually in really large groups too,” argued WJPS junior, Luca Vivar Amaya.
Some solutions to this concern may be changing students’ schedules and splitting the class into different rooms to reduce the number of students in each classroom or adding a limit to the number of people in each room.
