The city has finally unveiled a few more details about its upcoming Learning Bridges program to assist working parents with childcare on their kids’ remote learning days.
On the first day of in-person schooling on September 21st, there will be space for 30,000 students in pre-K to 8th grade to attend the program, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday.
He said that capacity will increase to 70,000 students by the end of October, and the initial goal of 100,000 student-capacity by December, though he's said he wants to go beyond that number eventually.
“It's something we're going to start and continue to build as we go along, highly prioritized according to who has the greatest need,” de Blasio said.
“We have been working hard with our agency partners to identify suitable spaces, throughout the five boroughs including community centers, and cultural institutions. Whenever possible, outdoor activities will also be available,” said the Deputy Commissioner for Youth Services, Susan Haskell, at de Blasio’s briefing.
While the DOE hasn’t revealed any partners in the program, some organizations are hiring for Learning Bridges through online job sites -- the JCC of Staten Island, Good Shepherd Services at their Red Hook location, and Commonpoint Queens Youth Education Services in Little Neck, Forest Hills and Bayside were all hiring personnel to staff their Learning Bridges programs.
The JCC of Brooklyn said they’ve applied for the program and haven’t heard from the city yet -- Leonard Petlakh, executive director of the Kings Bay Y which oversees the JCC of Brooklyn, said the organization hopes to run sites in Sheepshead Bay and north Williamsburg.
A survey emailed to families in late August seemed to indicate a priority on accommodating the children of teachers and other staffers in the Department of Education who might be working full-time when schools reopen. The survey asked for information on whether students are the children of DOE staffers, first responders, or other essential workers such as hospital employees, or lived in public housing or temporary housing -- possible signs of who will get the first seats in the program’s initial rollout. All children in the program will receive free meals and snacks.
The Learning Bridges programming will not only supplement students’ curriculum but also offer space for recreational and creative activities, Haskell said. She described a typical day for a preschooler, which would involve “center-based play, social emotional skills development, early learning and physical movement.” Older students will “have support for your remote learning activities. It will also be balanced with physical fitness and STEM activities, creative arts, literacy.”
Haskell said the city will try to match school groups in the Learning Bridges sites, in part to bolster contact tracing efforts in cases of COVID-19 outbreaks.
“The goal there is to maximize group stability. We recognize that not every classroom group is going to be a match for Learning Bridges classrooms exactly,” she said. “But we are absolutely going to integrate the tracing and reporting on students and Learning Bridges programs in close coordination with their school groups.”
When he first announced the program, de Blasio said 100,000 seats would be ready from Day One of schools reopening.
(Correction: at the July 16th press conference announcing the program, city officials said "we will have some availability by the start of the school year" with the goal of building up to a capacity for 100,000 kids.)
On Tuesday, he explained the delay in meeting that capacity as part of the difficulty of mounting a brand new program: “It's starting something from scratch. It’s a huge endeavor, it just did not exist before and had to be created,” he said. “It will be prioritized so the parents who need it most will get the first seats and then we'll build out from there. But just a matter of how much had to be done so quickly to ensure that it could be safe, it could be free, it could be available.”
