Public middle, high schools won’t
reopen until 2021, says mayor
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELL-DOMENECH
New York City public middle and
high school students will not return
to schools for in-person learning until
early next year, Mayor Bill de Blasio
said on Nov. 30.
“The focus will be over the next few
weeks up until the Christmas break,
getting elementary, District 75 special
education and Pre-k and 3-k up and
running … then we are going to come
back after the holidays, we are going to
be able to assess the situation then,” de
Blasio told reporters at a Nov. 30 press
conference.
On Nov. 29, the mayor said that students
enrolled for in-person classes at
public schools will begin returning to
recently re-shuttered school buildings
in phases beginning Dec. 7. The city’s
youngest learners, 3-K and Pre-K students,
are the fi rst group scheduled to
return to buildings with District 75
students set to return on Dec. 10.
The mayor issued a systemwide
shutdown of public schools after the
city’s COVID-19 positivity rate based
on a seven-day average reached 3 percent
on Nov. 19, which was set as a trigger
for school closures in the mayor’s
COURIER L 32 IFE, DECEMBER 4-10, 2020
state-approved school reopening plan
during the summer.
Since the second citywide public
school closure due to COVID, offi cials
have scrambled to come up with a new
reopening plan with de Blasio repeatedly
emphasizing the importance
COVID-19 testing will play in allowing
students to return to buildings.
Now, students will need to submit
signed COVID-19 testing parental consent
forms online or to their school’s
leadership before being allowed to
re-enter the building. In addition,
school communities will be tested for
COVID-19 more frequently once schools
re-open. Beginning the week of Dec. 7,
20 percent of all children and adults in a
school building are required to be tested
at random for the virus every week.
The city began requiring monthly
testing of 20 percent of all adults and
children in buildings in October.
“We are going to keep building up
our testing,” de Blasio said Monday. “I
want us to move on to middle and high
school as soon as we can but we have
to do one step at a time.”
The number of families interested
in sending their children back to public
schools to take part in blended
learning are the minority. Only about
330,000 out of the city’s 1.1 million
public school students are enrolled in
blended, according to DOE data.
On Nov. 30, de Blasio touted that
most of the students who will return
to school buildings next month will
be able to attend in-person classes for
fi ve days of the week.
Even so, the city has not revealed
how it plans to improve remote learning,
which has been plagued with challenges
since March.
The mayor recently hinted that the
next time the city could potentially offer
another window for families to enroll
their children in blended learning
is when a vaccine is readily available.
“We have the real possibility of
bringing back a large number of kids
once the vaccine gets pretty widely
distributed,” de Blasio said. “Remember,
we are still in November. There
are seven months of the school year
ahead.”
Jeenah Moon/Pool via REUTERS
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