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It’s been five years since COVID shut down New York City schools. How are kids faring with the aftermath? How do they talk about the pandemic – or not?
The fallout is often framed around “learning loss” or dips in test scores, but what about some of the social impacts, like the quiet shifts in students’ personalities or the mounting mental health struggles many are still confronting?
Producers Mateo Tang O’Reilly, from Central Park East High School, and Katelyn Melville, from the Brooklyn Institute for Liberal Arts, explore the ripple effects that continue to weigh on young people’s lives, such as “school refusal,” which is when severe anxiety or other mental health issues prevent students from attending class.
Chalkbeat’s Amy Zimmer discusses how the prolonged isolation exacerbated school refusal, highlighting the challenges schools face in getting kids back into the classroom. Anika Merkin, a Chalkbeat Student Voices Fellow, shares her personal experience as someone whose struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, led to school refusal, and how she managed to do the hard work in therapy to turn things around. Her story serves as a reminder to hold onto empathy and grace for the students whose lives continue to be profoundly touched by the pandemic.
P.S. Weekly is available on major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Reach us at PSWeekly@chalkbeat.org.
P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Bell, made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation.
Listen for new P.S. Weekly episodes Thursdays this spring.
Read the transcript below
Speaker 1: Um, when I think of COVID, I think about me being alone in my room and logging on to remote learning,
Speaker 2: Loneliness, confusion and isolation,
Speaker 3: Isolation, staying at home and pandemic, you know, leading to millions of casualties all over the world,
Speaker 4: Depression, because that’s really what it brought.
Mateo: Welcome back to P.S. weekly, the sound of the New York City School System. Five years ago, COVID arrived in New York City and shut everything down, including the schools. How do you think that COVID, like, affected you personally?
Speaker 1: Speaker: I feel like it made me pretty much closer to myself, because I was alone all the like, most of the time, but it made it harder to develop connections outside.
Speaker 2: I feel like it changed my personality a lot, like I went from like, being like, very like, extroverted to a lot more introverted.
Speaker 3: I sit at home a lot. I ate a lot of food, which led to me gaining a lot of weight.
Speaker 4: COVID really turned me into a loner, because I was isolated from everybody else.
Speaker 5: I used to be a spelling bee champion in the fifth grade, and now I can’t spell at all.
Mateo: I’m Mateo Tang O’Reilly,
Katelyn: And I’m Katelyn Melville.
Mateo: So what do you think when you think of COVID, or, like, how do you think we can report this topic?
Katelyn: When I think of COVID, I think about how hard it is to talk about COVID. I kind of run into the same things over and over again. I think about online school. I think about like, day long facetimes. I think about being on TikTok all day, like my brain rotting away, you know, I kind of had no life and anything having to do with school, it just kind of felt like an afterthought, like I was attending my classes, but I was sleeping through my classes, and school was just kind of in the background, because it didn’t seem like something tangible. It was just like my computer, you know. And when it comes to reporting about COVID, I just kind of end up in the same place over and over, like, COVID happened, okay?
Mateo: I feel like I definitely resonate with that, I think, with discussions regarding it, or like headlines in the news, it’s always the same thing. Like COVID is making these literacy rates go down. Or, like, all of the teachers are like, oh, I know you guys are dumb because you went through COVID, like, it’s always the same thing.
Katelyn: Oh my god!
Mateo: It’s the same thing.
Katelyn: No, you’re right.
Mateo: And I feel like, uh, because of that, there isn’t really a lot of opportunity for students to, like, actually talk about how they felt during that time, or, you know, share, share their experiences. I think for me, COVID was a time where I found out a lot more about myself, because, you know, I had all that time to myself, and I think that changed my personality and how I presented myself to people. And, you know, you don’t really see that type of story in like the news or like you don’t hear that when you talk about it, it’s just always you know that they’re dumb.
Mateo: So, so we asked ourselves, maybe it’s not about rehashing the pandemic, but exploring the ways we’re still living in its ripple effects/
Katelyn: Right! Well, I actually had the chance to interview Amy Zimmer, New York Bureau Chief for Chalkbeat, and she’s kind of an expert on this and has been writing about the mental health impacts of COVID for years.
Katelyn: Do you think it’s still worth talking about COVID, although it was so long ago?
Amy: Absolutely, yeah, it was five years ago, right? There are still going to be long term impacts on students, right? There were students who lost parents or other relatives there. There are students whose families were destabilized financially, job loss, housing loss, like there’s just so many things that were related to the pandemic and also anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, like all of those issues we’ve seen data that shows like those issues are going up, right? And some of it might be pandemic related. It’s also complicated, just because, like, social media and phone use, all that is also like, at the same time happening. So I don’t think we can just move on. I mean, I’m curious your thoughts.
Katelyn: Yeah,
Amy: Well, how old? Can I ask you? Like, how old were you? What grade were you in?
Katelyn: I was in seventh grade. It was weird, because, actually, my birthday is March 20. Oh, wow, yeah. So I was planning my birthday, and I was seeing on the news, like, Oh, COVID. But I was like, Dude, that’s not gonna happen to us. Like, it’s fine. And then, like, school closed, any other thing, like a two week break, but that break changed my life. I feel like my brain, like, suffered from it, you know, because I wasn’t really paying attention in school at all. I would sleep through all my classes. I was on, like, FaceTime with my friends all day, and like we weren’t really doing anything. It just felt like I was in a limbo. And now, when I talk about COVID, I think about, like, how not talking to people for so long, like, socially stunted me. I think about how it made me feel so, like, disconnected from my peers at a time where I already was, like, I mean, I was like, one of like, three black girls in a school with mostly white kids, yeah, and I’m living with my grandma, you know, we don’t want anything to happen. And, you know, like everybody in my house got COVID. They shipped me upstate one time. Like, you know, it was chaos, but now when I look back, I can only think of, like, socially, how it impacted me,
Amy: Yeah, and right? And so that’s, that’s the thing, like, and seventh grade is this, like, formative time? Yeah, right. And of course, that’s going to impact you. And I’ve talked to teachers who have said they have seen that, right? They have seen high school kids who are still acting like middle schoolers. It’s really hard, and there was just so much uncertainty. I feel like, in hindsight, everyone looks back and says, Oh, this was a mistake. We shouldn’t have closed schools, but when people were living through it, that just there were so many unknowns.
Katelyn: It was scary!
Amy: It was scary, it was really hard, and there was no blueprint
Katelyn: In 2022, Amy wrote about a specific mental health phenomenon she started seeing known as school refusal, which refers to students who are unable to continue attending school for mental health reasons, like depression or anxiety.
Katelyn: So what made you want to start reporting about that, like what sparked the idea?
Amy: Yeah, so besides being a journalist covering the New York City public school system. I am a parent of public school kids, and I’m in a lot of parent groups, email list serves, and those sorts of things. And a lot of parents were talking about this. And there was this woman who is a special education schools consultant, and she was posting in the group that she was hearing a lot about it. So she was taking a survey of parents whose kids were exhibiting school refusal, which is, you know, a really extreme avoidance to school, such that, like, they basically are not attending regularly at all. And so I reached out to her at some point and asked her about her survey, and she told me some of the findings, and I realized, well, this is like, a real serious issue that needs more attention.
Katelyn: So okay, so can you tell me about, like, the reaction that you got when the article dropped?
Amy: Yeah, actually, it was really moving, because I had a lot of parents write to me after that first article, telling me that their children are going through this, and they felt so alone and unsupported, and they didn’t know that other kids and other families were experiencing this. And so the interesting thing is, you know, chronic absenteeism, school refusal, like those things existed before. It’s just that I think that the pandemic highlighted these issues and exacerbated these issues. So let’s take one at a time.
Amy: So first chronic absenteeism before the pandemic in New York City, the average rate was about a quarter of students were chronically absent, and that is defined as missing 10% of school per year. So that’s about a month of school. And then the pandemic happened, and here we are, five years later, and the chronic absenteeism rate is about 35% so it’s nearly 10 points higher, which is pretty significant.
Amy: And then school refusal, in particular, when you’re home, like, let’s say after a break, it’s always harder to go back to school the next day, even every, every weekend, right? Like Sunday comes along, and like, Sunday is difficult because you have to go back on Monday. And so for students who are exhibiting school refusal, like those, breaks are always harder. And so, like you think about the pandemic, we had a prolonged period where kids were home from school. And even when schools reopened, they might have reopened partially. So again, just kids were home so much more. And you know, what therapists have told me is that, like, you know, the anxiety is, it’s just more pronounced when you’re at school. So if you’re home, you’re not feeling it, and then you just want to stay home because of anxiety or other mental health related reasons. So we don’t have the data yet, and there was a lawsuit recently here in the city for saying, like, New York City schools aren’t addressing school refusal, in particular for students with disabilities, and that, like, there needs to be a system wide response, which there’s not, it’s school to school, and that the city needs to keep some kind of track of how many kids who are chronically absent are chronically absent because of mental health related reasons.
Katelyn: Yeah, exactly. So. Did you find that some schools were more prepared or empathetic in responding to post COVID School refusal than others? And what do you think determined that preparedness.
Amy: Absolutely and so what I’ve heard from families is that, you know, there were some families who their schools were just willing to work with them and follow the gold standard for kids who were refusing school. I mean, like exposure therapy, right? And so if you have a kid who hasn’t come to school for weeks, the most important thing is just like, to get them to go past the school building, then to get them to go into the lobby, then maybe to get them to go into the social worker or guidance counselor’s office and work from there, maybe get them to go to their favorite class of the day, right? And gradually build. And that’s hard work, right? It’s hard to come up a plan with a plan like that. Schools just don’t have unlimited time and resources and personnel. So it, I think it is really hard work. But like some schools, I’ve heard from parents do it, but then there are some schools, you know, I’ve talked to parents who just felt completely dismissed. And one mom said when her son wasn’t attending, the teacher dismissed him as just having cabin fever. And some schools will say to families, well, why don’t you just, like, homeschool your kid, as opposed.
Katelyn: That’s so hard!
Amy: It’s so–yeah!
Katelyn: That’s so hard.
Amy: Again. It’s like, but this is the thing. It’s like, super uneven in terms of the response to families. It really is school dependent. I have talked to families who their kids have had school refusal, and the schools then call Child Protective Services for educational neglect. Instead of saying, hey, we know that you’re struggling, and we want to help support you, they just call ACS on the family that has happened the–but the bigger problem is, like the whole system for mental health for young people is sort of, it’s not that it’s even broken. It’s like barely existing. And so schools have become the de facto mental health centers for a lot of kids. And you know, we were talking about inequities, the, a lot of kids do need support outside of school, and that whole system is really broken, right? They’re not enough therapists, and then who can afford it? You know? They’re just a lot of issues with that as well.
Mateo: That was Amy Zimmer from Chalkbeat coming up. We’re going to further explore something Amy mentioned school refusal, that’s after the break.
Amy: We hope you enjoy listening to P.S. Weekly as much as we enjoy making it. I’m Amy Zimmer with Chalkbeat New York. We spend a lot of time planning each episode, setting up and conducting interviews, cutting the tape, writing scripts. It’s a long process and totally worth it. But here’s the thing, we don’t have a bunch of money or millions of followers, so we’re counting on you loyal listener to help us get the word out. Take a few seconds and send this link wherever you’re listening to three friends so they too can enjoy P.S. Weekly. Thanks for your support.
Mateo: Welcome back to P.S. Weekly, where Katelyn and I are talking about the after effects of COVID on students. I’m Mateo,
Katelyn: And I’m Katelyn.
Mateo: Well before the break, Amy Zimmer from Chalkbeat brought up a term that I’ve never heard of before, school refusal.
Katelyn: Anika Merkin is a Chalkbeat Student Voices fellow, and she wrote about her experience with school refusal after COVID.
Mateo: So I think for a lot of people who haven’t experienced it themselves, it’s difficult for them to understand what school refusal is really like. So what do you wish more people would like understand about it? What do you want them to know?
Anika: I think that when you hear the term school refusal and what most people would initially imagine is pretty negative. I think a lot of people might think that it’s because a student is lazy, or a student doesn’t want to do well in school, or they’re unmotivated, or they don’t care about school, kind of a lot of things like that. And I think that’s really not what school refusal is. It has to do with, like severe mental health issues that you’re dealing with within yourself. And I just wish it wasn’t viewed so negatively, and it wasn’t so stigmatized, because it was definitely something I was like embarrassed about.
Mateo: I see, are you okay with talking about how your school refusal initially started?
Anika: Yeah, so I, I transferred to Brooklyn prospect. Few weeks into the school year, and things were pretty good for a few weeks, and then I got sick, probably in like, late September, early October, and I was sick for like one or two days, but when I missed those two days, I, like, had missed some schoolwork, and I had some stuff piling up, and so going into school the next day felt more difficult. And so in my mind, I was like, well, I’ll just avoid it, which is not the way to go. And then it kind of became a routine for me, where at least once a week I was not going into school because I was having panic attacks in the morning, or I would have a hard time just like getting up and feeling motivated to go to school, and also being anxious can be really exhausting, and so having to kind of be on all day and interacting with people and making new friends and retaining friendships and working hard in school, it was all just a lot for me to handle at the time.
Anika: I think the first, like big chunk of school I missed was after Thanksgiving, because my school gives us an entire week for Thanksgiving, and so I had a week off for Thanksgiving, and then the entire next week, I didn’t go into school at all, and like the two days before Thanksgiving break, I also hadn’t gone into school. And so that was the first big chunk where my parents were like, Okay, this is not sustainable. This is not okay. And it’s like it wasn’t an issue that was getting better, it was just getting worse. And then I had winter break. When I came to school after winter break, it was all this prep for midterms and all of this. There was all this emphasis on grades and how this can’t be revised, and this goes into your GPA and all of this stuff. And so the whole week before midterms, I didn’t go into school. And when midterms started, I was planning on going in to take my midterms, and I thought it would be easier, because I wouldn’t have to, like, sit through the whole day. I wouldn’t really have to interact with people. It wouldn’t really be a full school day. But when I when you’re not in school for so long,it just becomes that much harder to go back. And so when I had to go back, and it was like, all this pressure in this midterm, it was my first time taking it, and it was like, one and done. You can’t mess this up. You can’t redo this. And this is going to affect the rest of your high school career and then your college career. And I would go down this rabbit hole. And so I did not make it to any of my midterms that week, and after that, I never went in again, because, like I said, it’s like all the it’s everything building up and getting more difficult each day than I missed.
Anika: And kids had also started to text me and ask me where I was and why I was always missing school, and I never really knew what to say, because it was like, What am I supposed to say? Like, I’m, I’m afraid to come to school, like, I don’t know why. So, yeah, that’s kind of how
how that started.
Mateo: So when you were diagnosed with OCD, did anything suddenly make more sense to you in retrospect?
Anika: Oh yes. So many things it was like, at like, when I first heard it like, Oh, you have OCD, I was like, What? No way, because I kind of thought OCD was like, oh, super perfect and organized. And this is kind of like, what my mom thought, too. She was like, she doesn’t have OCD her room is a mess. And they were like, well, it’s not really what it is. And so once they started kind of telling me about all of these different symptoms of OCD and how it can show up in different ways, I was like, Oh, my God, I’m not crazy. Like, this is a real thing. They were giving me tangible books that I could read about, and it was professionals who were writing about this disorder.
Anika: And I was like, wow, like, this is a real thing, and I’m not insane, I’m not lazy, I’m not dramatic. So it was like, very I think it was very validating, and it also just like, a lot of things made sense, both from what was happening at the time and just things from my like, childhood habits I’ve always had that you wouldn’t typically associate with OCD just because they’re not the stereotypical traits. But it was things where I was like, Oh, that correlates with OCD compulsions, and this makes so much sense now, even though it was like, it’s hard to hear you have a disorder that, like, is not going to go away. You’re stuck with it. For life, like it’s not something you can get rid of. That’s a hard thing to hear, but I think more than that, it’s validating, and it’s not my fault. It’s only like the only thing I can do is learn how to cope with that.
Mateo: After being diagnosed with OCD, Annika was enrolled into the Anxiety Institute, which is an intensive outpatient program with offices along the east coast.
Anika: So the Anxiety Institute was an outpatient program, which meant that I, it wasn’t residential. So it wasn’t like, I think a lot of people, they hear like rehab, that’s referred to as inpatient. And so it’s, you’re living in a facility. You eat there, you sleep there, whereas outpatient is, I sleep at home, I eat at home. I’m home on the weekends, but every single day, I was at a facility where they treated us with different types of therapy, so cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy, group therapy, art therapy, fitness therapy, it was just kind of a wide range of things to help us move past our struggles.
Anika: And when it was first suggested. I think both my parents and I were like, That’s really serious. That’s not something she needs. Because, like I said, this is not something that I’ve ever experienced, that I or that I had ever experienced before this. And so it was kind of like, well, she’s so high functioning normally, and she’s like, she’s never had an issue with this. Putting her in a program feels so serious and like jumping to conclusions, which also like delayed me going into treatment, and what was happening to me was very serious, but it was just so out of character for me that I think it was hard for both my parents and I to realize it was something I needed. But yeah, eventually, when they were kind of like, we’re out of options, and it’s not getting better, they decided to enroll me.
Mateo: All right, what would you say to your freshman yourself, who was like panicking about school,
Anika: I think I would just tell her that she’s okay, not she’s gonna be okay, like she is okay. And I think I would also tell her that avoidance is not the answer. And I’m not sure I would listen to myself, because I think a lot of people did tell me, you know, avoiding is only going to make things worse. But yeah, I would tell myself, don’t take harsh experiences or difficult experiences and struggles as something that has to put your life on pause.
Mateo: That was Annika Merkin, a Chalkbeat student voices fellow. So if there’s one thing we’re hearing loud and clear, it’s that COVID didn’t end when schools reopened or when the masks came off.
Katelyn: Yeah, I mean, the pandemic aftershock is definitely still in classrooms in ways that are super real but kind of invisible. I mean, take anxiety OCD or school refusal, like we saw with Annika. I mean, it’s kind of crazy that we didn’t even know what school refusal was. I mean, look at what Amy asked us.
Amy: I am curious. You know, speaking about school refusal, is that a term that you had ever heard of before?
Katelyn: No, when me and Mateo, like, first read the article, we didn’t like when we just read the title, we were like, school refusal. Like, what is that?
Mateo: Yeah, I thought it was like getting rejected from the school like, school refusal. Like, I was so confused.
Mateo: These conversations in schools should include topics like school refusal and other issues that actually affected students post COVID. Our schools are acting like it’s all behind us, pressing us students to just get back to normal without really seeing what we’re still carrying with us. It’s super dangerous, because when we don’t acknowledge what’s really happening, we risk leaving kids behind.
Katelyn: And I think what’s equally important is to have students lead these conversations. There’s such a lack of student representation in serious, reflective discussions regarding the impact of COVID on students,
Mateo: And there isn’t really a space for us to have honest conversations regarding how we feel about what happened. Even with my friends, when the topic of COVID comes up, we kind of just agree that it wasn’t the best time for us and then brush it aside. Our hope with this episode to have students continue the COVID conversation in a way that means something, to reintroduce empathy into the way that we deal with the fallout.
Mateo: Because moving forward isn’t about forgetting, it’s about holding space for the things we still need to heal.
Katelyn: P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between The Bell and Chalkbeat made possible by generous support from the Pinkerton Foundation, the Summerfield foundation and FJC
Mateo: Producers for this episode were me, Mateo Tang O’Reiley.
Katelyn: and me Katelyn Melville.
Mateo: Our executive producer for the show is Ave Carrillo and the executive editors are Amy Zimmer and Taylor McGraw.
Katelyn: Additional production and reporting support was provided by Mira Gordon, Sabrina DuQuesnay and our friends at Chalkbeat. Our engagement editor is Carolina Hidalgo.
Mateo: This episode was made using Hindenburg Pro, music is from the Blue Dot Sessions, and the jingle you heard at the beginning of the episode was created by Erica Huang
Katelyn: And a very special thanks to our mentor, Alina Kulman.
We make transcripts available for our episodes as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.
