Students headed back to classrooms at elementary schools yesterday as New York City enters a stage of resuming in-person learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Twice delayed, the reopening comes over objections from school principals, who said that the city’s complicated, changing plans put them in a staffing bind.
Meanwhile, officials are worried about recent spurts in virus cases in some city neighborhoods.
“It’s a big moment for the city,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said on cable news station NY1.
With in-person learning for middle and high-school students scheduled to begin tomorrow, De Blasio said that “as many as half a million kids could be in school in the course of this week.”
With more than 1 million public-school students, New York City initially had a more ambitious timeline than many other big US school systems for bringing children back to school this fall.
Families have the option of choosing all-remote learning, and a growing number are doing so — 48 percent as of Friday last week, up from 30 percent six weeks earlier, according to New York City Education Department statistics.
Other students are already back in the city’s virus-altered version of in-person school, learning sometimes in classrooms and sometimes at home.
Pre-kindergarteners and some special education students began showing up on Monday last week as online instruction began for the rest of the student body.
Students were originally due back on Sept. 10, but the start date was pushed back repeatedly after the city teachers’ union said that it was not safe to open schools because of outdated ventilation systems, an insufficient number of school nurses and other issues.
At one point, the United Federation of Teachers threatened to strike.
The union was still pressing for changes as recently as Friday last week, when the city agreed to let more teachers work from home when instructing students remotely, rather than having to come in to school to conduct online classes.
The principals’ union said that the late-breaking change was too much.
Principals had already complained that the city was creating a staffing crunch by planning to have three different groups of teachers — one for all-remote students, another for in-classroom pupils and a third for blended-program students when they are at home.
Saying that De Blasio and New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza “have entered into grossly irresponsible staffing agreements,” the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators on Sunday called for New York State to take control of the school system for the duration of the pandemic.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday said that he understood the concern of the principals’ union and that the state would monitor virus testing data to determine whether any steps need to be taken concerning schools.
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