In-person learners head back to school
A student makes her way to P.S. 971 in Bay Ridge on Wednesday. Photo by Caroline Ourso
COURIER LIFE, OCT. 2-8, 2020 3
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELLDOMENECH
Thousands of children fi -
nally returned to New York
City public schools for in-person
classes on Tuesday after
education offi cials pushed
back the start of the school
year twice this fall.
Elementary and middle
school students taking part
in the city’s hybrid learning
model, where students
take classes in schools and
remotely, returned to school
buildings on Sept. 29 with
spaced-out desks and mandatory
masks — more than six
months after schools were shut
down at the height of the coronavirus
pandemic. Roughly
500,000 students will return to
class this week, Mayor Bill de
Blasio said on Tuesday.
School was scheduled to begin
in-person on Sept. 10, but
Hizzoner called off the plan
after parents, teachers, and
school staffers raised concerns
about safety issues.
Roughly 90,000 preschool
and elementary school students,
as well as students with
special needs, returned to
classrooms on Monday, Sept.
21, and students in middle and
high school returned to school
buildings on Thursday, Oct. 1.
New York City houses the
largest school system in the
nation with roughly 1,600 public
schools serving 1.1 million
students — complicating the
schools’ in-person reopening
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dozens of school buildings
have already closed temporarily
because of COVID-19 cases
among staffers, and many families
have opted in for an all-remote
learning model, offi cials
say. According to the Department
of Education, 48-percent
of the city’s public school students
will take online classes
only as of Sept. 28.
But for some parents, the
benefi ts of in-person learning
outweigh some of the risks.
One parent, Jordan Feigenbaum,
said he sent his fi veyear
old son back to P.S. 9 in
Prospect Heights so he could
socialize after being cooped
up his parents for months.
Feigenbaum admits that he
was nervous sending his son
back into school, especially
with the recent uptick in coronavirus
cases in pockets of
Brooklyn. On Monday, the Department
of Health reported
that the virus was increasing
at an “alarming” rate in some
Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods,
and de Blasio announced
on Tuesday that the
positivity rate citywide broke
3 percent as a result of the outbreaks.
But Feigenbaum was surprised
by how smoothly the
transition has been for his son.
“Most people didn’t have a
lot of faith in the mayor or in
the chancellor, that they were
never going to get this right,
there were too many details or
lack of details,” Feigenbaum
said.