During the pandemic of COVID-19, Mayor Bill De Blasio said all NYC public schools will be closed until the end of the year and start using online/remote learning to replace regular school learning. As a student, I keep getting stressed about the overwhelming work. I keep procrastinating because I mean, it's so easy to play a game instead of doing work because it's not blocked on your personal laptop. The overwhelming work has drifted away from my communication with my family time. I also will get much more tired because of sitting there with a blue screen.

What we (As the students) want

-Implementing Pass and Fail for students middle school and up

-Focusing on more Family time during this pandemic and taking a break from all classes

-Interacting with students and teachers instead of classwork and homework/giving students and teachers time off stress to relax

Why we (As the students) want to implement pass/fail for all students instead of remote learning.

-More Added pressure and stress from the online school than regular school. Stress can lead to depression can have low academic abilities.  

-Students can procrastinate or delay assessments for online school due to easy access to games when not blocked on the education laptops in physical/regular school.

-Using laptops/computers to teach students instead of teaching students physically, can lead to tiredness and not enough sleep. It's proven that sleepy students perform & learn worse. Between the people that sleep less and the people who sleep normally, the people who were sleep-deprived had a more significant academic problem than the people who sleep normally.

Our Mental Health Matters

During this pandemic, it's easy to go insane and have depression and anxiety because of all the deaths and infection counts in quarantine. We don't need to stress out all the students more than they already are. The students need time to improve mental health instead of stressed-out online work and sleepy non-academic students.

Why we need to implement pass/fail 

Due to all of these online-remote learning disabilities, students can't learn/perform to the best of their abilities. Online-remote learning disabilities include not enough sleep and stress. Sleepy students are proven to perform worse, stress and added pressure hurt our mental health, which can cause the students to learn/perform worse. It can risk your eyesight, and when your eyesight gets worse, the eyesight disabilities are only getting worse and maybe even becoming blind. Harvard implemented pass/fail and cares about the students having a stress-free experience because of an unfair advantage like tutors, meetings, studies, and more. When the pandemic is officially over, give us students a head start.    

I care about a stress-free COVID-19 shelter-in and want to ensure that we have an amazing school year because of how online school is worse.

And even if this petition doesn't make it, I give respect to you signing a cause of what I believe in. I appreciate your support. I hope you sign this now before the COVID-19 pandemic ends or school year. -Mark May