Another last-minute reversal: NYC to delay school reopening for most students

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a phased-in approach to starting the school year, with the youngest students and those with disabilities attending in-person classes first.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a phased-in approach to starting the school year, with the youngest students and those with disabilities attending in-person classes first.

Just days before students were set to return to their classrooms, New York City is again delaying the full reopening of school buildings and will instead phase-in the start of the year, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday.

School buildings are set to open on Monday, Sept. 21, for children in pre-K and those in District 75, a separate set of schools that serve students with significant disabilities. Students in K-5 schools and K-8 schools will begin in-person classes on Sept. 29. Middle schools, high schools, and adult education students are expected to return on Oct. 1.

Those who do not head to classrooms Monday will begin learning online, in addition to at least 42% of New York City students who have so far opted for full-time virtual school. 

The delay means that the city will lean even more heavily on virtual instruction, but there is little evidence the city has invested heavily in improving teaching online. Even when school buildings reopen, most students will learn remotely on most days — and some students will receive digital instruction even when they’re in school buildings.

The mayor had dug in his heels on school reopening while facing growing calls for a delay. School leaders and teachers have, for months, been asking for such a reprieve. Instead, de Blasio has now delayed the start of in-person learning for the second time in recent weeks, forcing principals to rewrite plans and parents to scramble for child care. 

School buildings were originally scheduled to welcome students on Sept.10, before he delayed reopening to Sept. 21. Now, in-person learning will not be fully phased in until Oct. 1. Teachers are still expected to report to their school buildings on Monday, unless they have been approved for a medical exemption that allows them to work remotely.

New York City had been alone among the country’s largest school districts in attempting to welcome students back to school buildings this September, and Thursday’s announcement is a major setback to that effort. 

Many public health experts believe that schools should reopen given New York City’s low coronavirus positivity rates, as long as health and safety precautions are taken like mask wearing and social distancing. De Blasio said he would keep schools closed if positive rates surged above 3%. Currently, rates have hovered around 1% for several weeks. 

De Blasio said he spent hours talking with teacher and principal unions, which shared concerns about whether schools were prepared to reopen.

“They raised real concerns about specific things that have to be done,” de Blasio said. “We worked together in a respectful spirit to work through each and every issue.”

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De Blasio’s reopening plans have been criticized for the mountain of unanswered questions, not only regarding health and safety — like whether ventilation systems were working or whether there were enough cleaning supplies and PPE. School leaders also voiced grave concerns about whether there would be enough teachers to cover the various permutations of students: those learning in-school on their hybrid days, those hybrid students learning remotely, and students who opted to learn from home full time. 

The mayor emphasized an impending staffing crisis as the primary reason for the delay. Under the mayor’s hybrid plan, schools were asked to provide separate teachers on the days students learn in person and remotely — and the city never fully explained how schools were supposed to suddenly staff two simultaneous learning environments.

The mayor pledged 4,500 additional staff members on Thursday, up from 2,000 announced earlier this week. But that still falls short of estimates from the principals union and Independent Budget Office, which place the figure at 10,000 or more. As of last Friday, 58% of students were expected to attend school in person this fall, but educators said the numbers of families opting out continued growing as of this week. 

Principals have been sounding the alarm for months that the school system was not ready to open because of the lack of guidance, and hundreds of school leaders from across the five boroughs had asked the city to delay the opening. Still, educators and parents were frustrated that the mayor waited until just days before his Sept. 21 opening date to announce the change. 

“Opening Monday to everyone would not have been safe for our students, and this is something we’ve been talking about over and over again,” said Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, which represents principals and other school leaders. 

As teachers returned to their buildings last week, the city had a test run of its protocols responding to positive coronavirus cases, and many educators felt the test and trace program was too slow to close buildings and question staffers who came in close contact (within 6 feet for more than 10 minutes) of infected individuals.

Educators at several schools, where colleagues have tested positive for the virus or where many have concerns about ventilation or other safety issues, have been working outside of their building to demonstrate their distrust of the city’s reopening plans. To date the education department confirmed at least one case in 56 schools out of 17,000 staffers tested. The city launched a “situation room” this week to more rapidly respond to positive cases at schools. 

Also as students began this week meeting their teachers online for the first time, the education department announced a major change about instruction, backpedaling its promise that hybrid students on their remote days would get live instruction. Many families were shocked to learn at the last minute that their children — who would only be in person one to three days a week — may not have a teacher on their remote days. 

Christine Matias, a healthcare worker and mother of four young children in the Bronx, said she was devastated by another delay. Her children — twins who are 6 years old, a 7-year-old, and a 9-year-old — won’t be in school until Sept. 29. That is more than a week later than she anticipated. 

“I’ve changed my work schedule in the last three weeks three times based on the [hybrid] schedule,” Matias said. “I wouldn’t be able to handle that at all.”

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Matias and her partner worked full-time through the pandemic and struggled every week to find childcare because they didn’t feel it was safe to send their children out of the house, such as to the city’s childcare centers for essential workers, but could not afford to hire help. Sometimes Matias took days off to stay home and help the children navigate remote learning. 

She chose blended learning this fall because it would have alleviated some of their childcare challenges and the stress of full remote learning but also to have her children once again interacting offline with their friends and teachers. She sent them to in-person summer camp offered by New York Edge, the city’s largest after-school provider, in part to prep them for all the new rules they would encounter at school, such as wearing masks and keeping 6 feet apart. 

“It has been a struggle to have someone with my children while I was at work, but also, my children need to be around other people and they need to be in a classroom-like setting to continue learning,” Matias said. “As you can imagine our house is not set up to be four different classrooms.”

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