Furious families fume over Forest Hills school shutdown
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Forest Hills families protested the state decision to shut down schools in the neighborhood as part of the new COVID cluster zone restrictions. Eagle Photos by Rachel Vick
By Rachel Vick
After a summer of uncertainty and miscommunication, dozens of families at Forest Hills’ P.S. 196 decided to send their students back to classrooms for a few days a week last month.
But those plans abruptly changed Tuesday, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced new restrictions that shut down school buildings in much of Forest Hills.
About a dozen confused and angry parents gathered in front of P.S. 196 on 113th Street Wednesday afternoon to protest the shutdown, which came days after the state closed schools in adjacent zip codes where COVID rates have spiked. City Health Department data showed that Forest Hills’ positivity rate was rising, but remained lower than nearby neighborhoods like Rego Park and Kew Gardens Hills.
The new closure zones were applied arbitrarily, said P.S. 196 parent Corey Kanterman. The elementary school is located in the very heart of Central Queens’s red COVID “cluster” zone, where all schools and non-essential businesses will remain closed for at least two weeks. An orange “warning” zone with fewer restrictions begins about three blocks away on the south side of Queens Boulevard.
“If Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio think it’s okay that people can shop at the Gap a few blocks away from here on Austin Street where only a mask is required to enter … then certainly 10 or 15 kids can enter a classroom where there are,” Kanterman said.
Since reopening last month, the school has seen two cases of COVID-19 — in siblings — and acted according to the safety protocols that had been put in place, sending students who came in contact with the children home for a two-week quarantine.
“The system works,” Kanterman said. “We have allowed our children to re-enter classrooms based on our faith in these protocols and the science behind these protocols.“
“The city had months to prepare,” he added. “It's maddening.”
Cuomo said Tuesday that the startling spike in COVID cases in Central Queens and a few other parts of the state demand “dramatic action.” A day earlier, he ordered school closures in zip codes surrounding Forest Hills.
Several parents said they were most concerned about special education students, who face challenges that go beyond adjusting to remote learning.
One mother, Julia Olsheski, said she had never seen such severe regression in her son with autism. The third grader cannot engage with online learning in the same way as his peers and has begun to harm himself, she said.
“His federally protected right to an education has been ignored and there are tens of thousands of special ed students we’ve never had a conversation about,” Olsheski said.
Other parents slammed the inconsistent and confusing messaging from the mayor and governor, a by-now-familiar feature of the pandemic response.
“It's an emotional tug of war that the children don’t need to go through,” said Rocky Bonanno, a public school parent and the rally organizer.
“We knew the risks,” Bonanno said, to cheers from the other parents.
Many questioned how Forest Hills became the new COVID cluster epicenter when the city had only begun monitoring a positive case spike a day earlier.
“If there’s going to be a rise anywhere, you shut down specifically where the spread happens,” one parent said. “Schools should be shut down only when they are the source, otherwise what was the point?”
“None of us signed up for a perpetual lockdown.”
