As Buffalo schools prepare to reopen, parents say that 'we know nothing'

So is Nikki Howze, but she’s concerned the experience won’t be any better than what her daughter endured in the spring. And Magdalena Gil-Rodriguez has thought about home schooling.

And while Brittany Bandinelli is worried about sending her three children back, she’s also a single mother who needs them in school so she can go to work.

“I’m kind of stuck,” said Bandinelli, 33, of Black Rock. “If they don’t go to school, I’ll have to quit my job; and if I quit my job, there’s no income.”

Parents across the region are struggling with the same issue: What to do with their children this school year amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

But in the Buffalo Public Schools – the region's largest district – parents say they haven't gotten the answers they need to make informed decisions, even at this late date, and that the district should have started the process sooner, knowing what the fall likely would bring. 

Buffalo parents will get their choice of instruction for their children – remote, a mix of remote and in-person and, maybe in certain cases, in-person five days a week. But it  also has been difficult for them to decide because there are so many questions still left unanswered – and the district's initial informational meeting last week wasn't much help, with one parent saying they just got "the runaround."

“We are just a few weeks away and we know nothing,” said Landwehr, 33. “I just don’t understand how we’re so close to schools being opened up and we still don’t have any idea what our kids are going to be doing.”

Landwehr, Howze, Bandinelli and Gil-Rodriguez were among the parents who tuned in last Monday to the first in a series of virtual public meetings on the district’s plan for reopening.

Howze, for example, wanted to learn more about the district’s protocol for social distancing and wearing a mask. Gil-Rodriguez hoped to get more clarification on how the district plans to transport students safely and what happens once they’re in the building and classroom.

Neither heard any of those details from district officials.

“No one has fully explained everything,” said Howze, 29. “I’ve been reaching out to our principal saying, ‘What’s going on? There’s been zero communication.’ ”

“I just felt as a parent, we were pretty much getting the runaround,” said Gil-Rodriguez, 42. “I just would have liked to see this rolling out earlier instead of later.”

In fact, the Buffalo Teachers Federation on Friday said the district is not ready to reopen in person when schools resume on Sept. 8 and called for a remote start. The union, and some parent leaders, have been critical of the district for not involving them enough in drafting the plan submitted to the state two weeks ago. Now, the district is playing catch-up.

But Darren Brown-Hall, chief of staff, defended the district’s response and said a reopening committee that included parent representatives first met on June 2. He said guidance from the state didn’t arrive until mid-July; Buffalo is a large, complex district; and administrators are now trying to get feedback from a broader parent base on how they want schools reopened.

“I’ve listened to some of the meetings, and I think the district is doing their best right now,” said Neal Dobbins, who heads Most Valuable Parents, a group representing parents on the city’s East Side. “I think things will manifest as we go along. We don’t have a playbook or game plan for this that we’ve used before.”

Wendy Mistretta, president of the District Parent Coordinating Council, is not surprised parents have been confused – she was looking for more details, too. But she did acknowledge that since the first public meeting, subsequent ones have gone more smoothly and more information has been coming out.

“To take a little more time to offer choice and give input isn’t a bad thing,” Mistretta said. “I still feel like we should have been doing this back in June. I feel like we lost some precious and valuable time that we could have been working through some of these challenges.”

'Prove things are better'

Howze is leaning toward remote instruction for her daughter, who is going into fourth grade at School 81.

While Howze feels remote learning is the safe option amid the pandemic, she’s not convinced yet it will be better than it was in the spring.

“The spring was a mess,” said Howze, a freelance producer. “The communication was all over the place, the expectation of the kids was all over the place. It was stressful on the kids, the parents and the teachers.”

She listened to Superintendent Kriner Cash’s overview of reopening during the first meeting on Facebook Live and posted questions asking what teacher training has been done to improve the virtual format. She didn’t get an answer.

“He did say, ‘We’ve improved greatly from the spring,’ ” Howze said. “OK, how? Tell me exactly what you have done and what plans you are going to implement to prove things are going to be better. That’s what I want to know.”

'Up in the air'

Bandinelli was home recovering from surgery when her three children – ages 5, 8 and 9 – were learning remotely in the spring.

But last month, she returned to work as a front desk employee for a local hotel.

“Honestly, I’d love for them to go to school, because I’m not a teacher and I work full time,” Bandinelli said. “It’s going to be hard for me to do even remote learning at this point, because my shift is from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.”

Bandinelli is concerned about sending her kids back to Lovejoy Discovery School with the spread of the novel coronavirus, especially her youngest who has severe asthma. She has talked with his teacher from last year, who tried to reassure her.

“But in the meeting, I heard even the teachers were flustered about the plans, so that kind of threw me off,” Bandinelli said. “If the teachers aren’t on board how are parents supposed to be on board?”

“I’m really up in the air about what to do,” she said, before referring to schools elsewhere that saw Covid-19 spikes after reopening. “I just hope that Buffalo Public Schools thinks through this and plans it out correctly so we’re not turning into the schools down south.”

Home-school option

For Gil-Rodriguez, remote learning is the clear choice.

“After the meeting, I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not sending them back,’ ” said the mother of five, two of whom attend city schools.

Her job in human resources at a linen supply service will provide some flexibility for her to work from home. She has a daughter who will be home from college this fall, so she will help out. Gil-Rodriguez also was happy to learn the district will offer parents some training in the online platforms that will be used.

But she admits she has looked into leaving the district for a charter school. And if for some reason the school district doesn’t make a remote option available, she is prepared to give city schools a letter of intent to home-school.

“And that would be difficult,” Gil-Rodriguez said, “because I am a working parent and my husband is a working parent.”

Making child care arrangements

Landwehr, 33, agrees with the teachers union: The district needs to focus on starting school remotely.

Either way, that’s shaping up as the option she will choose for her sixth-grade daughter, despite the family’s sub-par experience learning remotely during the spring. Her daughter received little “real time” learning and, like many parents, Landwehr had to spend a considerable amount of time helping her through.

“The virtual, the whole process of it, I really hope they can streamline it,” Landwehr said. “My kid would open the computer last year and just start crying immediately.”

In the meantime, Landwehr is trying to figure out child care arrangements. Her job as a therapy consultant for a medical simulation company provides her some flexibility. And she is already cutting deals with her mother-in-law, a retired teacher, who can help out during the week.

As for her daughter, a student at Olmsted School 156, she wants to go back to school.

“She’s already getting tearful knowing it’s probably not going to happen,” Landwehr said.