NYC mayoral candidate Maya Wiley slams front runner Eric Adams for remote learning comments
Leading mayoral candidate Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, came under attack on Sunday over comments earlier this year suggesting one teacher could handle hundreds of students at a time during virtual summer school.
Rival candidate Maya Wiley, a former top legal aide to Mayor de Blasio, took aim at Adams and remote classes.
“Online learning is not racial equity because kids of color fall further behind in online learning,” she said at a press conference in Jackson Heights, Queens. “That was before COVID. We have not figured out how to make it work for our kids, any of them.
“Eric Adams, what did we not understand before COVID about our digital divide? We’ve been talking about it for decades,” she added. “What have we not learned about class sizes? Did online learning work for you? Did it work for your kids? Was it a good thing? Is it a model? No.”
The criticism was prompted by a video that surfaced over the weekend, thanks to a tweet from a supporter of another mayoral candidate, businessman Andrew Yang.
In the video of a February interview with the Citizens Budget Commission, Adams suggested assigning one teacher for a class of “300 to 400 students” during virtual summer school.
The Adams campaign slammed the tweet as misleading. The candidate said on Sunday that he’d misspoken and meant to say he envisioned virtual learning as enabling one teacher to teach 30 to 40 students at a time.
“It’s silly,” Adams told Politico New York after a campaign stop in Jamaica, Queens. “This is just the season that we’re in.”
But the interview with the commission wasn’t the only time Adams suggested assigning hundreds of students to one teacher in summer school.
“We need to master remote learning,” Adams told Bloomberg Opinion in February. “You could have one teacher who could instruct remotely 200 to 300 students, and give them the instruction that they deserve.”
Asked whether Adams also misspoke during that interview, his campaign spokesman Evan Thies told the Daily News that “the only thing that matters” is the candidate is “not going to require any student to attend 300-400 person classes or any teacher to teach them.
“He never was. He believes in in-person classes and small class sizes. He’s always said so,” Thies added.
The campaign manager also accused Wiley of trying to deflect from the fact that she sent at least one daughter to private school for part of her education.
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