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New York City’s entire public school system will close on Thursday, Chancellor of Schools Richard A. Carranza wrote in an email to principals, in a worrying signal that a second wave of coronavirus has arrived. Schools have been open for in-person instruction for just under eight weeks.
“As of this morning, November 18, the city has now reached this threshold of citywide testing positivity and as a result, the DOE will temporarily close all public school buildings for in-person learning on Thursday, November 19. Mr. Carranza said on Wednesday shortly after 2 p.m., about four hours after Mayor Bill de Blasio was due to give a press conference. M. de Blasio confirmed the news in a tweet.
The shutdown – which was brought on by the city hitting a 3% test positivity rate on a seven-day moving average – is perhaps the most significant setback for New York’s recovery since the spring when the city was a global epicenter of the epidemic.
It was also a great disappointment for Mr. Blasio, who was the first mayor of a large city in the country to reopen school buildings. The switch to distance education will disrupt the education of many of the estimated 300,000 children who have attended face-to-face lessons and will create major child care problems for parents who rely on their children in school for at least part of the week.
The number of cases is growing so rapidly in New York City that further restrictions appear likely. Mr. de Blasio said that the meals inside should be re-evaluated; only Mr. Cuomo has the power to shut down indoor dining rooms.
New York is by far the largest school system in the country, with 1,800 schools and 1.1 million students. Families in the city’s public schools, the vast majority of whom are low-income and black or Latin, endured about eight months of confusion over whether and when schools would be open or closed.
Mr de Blasio had placed the reopening of the school at the center of his efforts to revive the city, and he has repeatedly said that distance learning is inferior to classroom instruction. But many teachers and parents said the city hasn’t done enough to improve online learning.
The mayor said the closures will be temporary, but warned schools will not automatically reopen when the seven-day positivity rate drops below 3%.
He said it would be too disruptive for children and educators to switch between open and closed schools every few days, suggesting he would wait until the spread of the virus in the community has stabilized at a lower rate. He also said the city will release details soon on how it plans to reopen schools.
The mayor and teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers, faced fierce criticism as the 3% closure threshold approached. Mr de Blasio repeated on several occasions that the union had not pressured him to set the threshold; instead, he called the metric a “social contract” in a recent radio interview, saying it was a symbol of how seriously the city had approached school safety.
City officials said the number was agreed upon by the mayor’s public health team as part of a package of security measures they have set themselves as the toughest in the world.
The mayor set the threshold at 3 percent over the summer, when average positivity rates hovered around 1 percent or less. It has been made explicit that the number is less a strictly scientific measure and more a symbol intended to reassure parents, educators and the union.
In a recent interview, Michael Mulgrew, the union president, said he thinks the 3% threshold is healthy. He cited expert warnings that even if there was low transmission in schools, the infection could still spread from the wider community to schools, increasing the likelihood that students and members of the staff can spread the virus in their homes and neighborhoods.
Mr Mulgrew said he was dismayed that schools are closing so early and said expressions of frustration at the closure by some New Yorkers sounded hypocritical.
“We got a lot of criticism from people when we opened schools,” he said. “They didn’t want them to be open. A lot of it is coming from the same people who are now screaming that they want them open.
He also called on New Yorkers to take the virus seriously in order to bring the numbers down again. “If we are to keep our schools open, it’s up to everyone” to take precautions, said Mulgrew.
As parents in the city expect mixed messages about schools from the mayor and governor, Mr Cuomo said at a recent press conference that he had no plans to ” intervene in the city’s efforts to close schools.
But he said “the schools are not the problem” and encouraged the city to come up with new measures for a closure once schools reopen. The governor said the state would force schools to close only if they are in an area where the seven-day positivity rate reaches 9%.
Mr Cuomo also said the viral spread was more prevalent in bars and restaurants and at indoor family gatherings, although he did not order restaurants or gyms closed.
Some other large school districts have recently moved closer to reopening, either by presenting plans to welcome children back into classrooms or by reviving in-person learning for children with disabilities and other vulnerable students.
But many other major neighborhoods, including Los Angeles and Chicago, have yet to reopen, though Chicago plans to bring younger children back to classrooms in January. Philadelphia recently delayed the reopening of schools and Detroit suspended in-person teaching due to high rates of test positivity.
In bad timing, New York City said last month that families only have until Sunday to decide whether they want their children to return to classes in person, likely until at least until next September. Parents had to make this decision knowing that schools could close at any time.
Pupils who chose to resume classroom instruction had to resume classes between November 30 and December 7. They will now have to wait weeks, if not months, to return to school buildings.
Many charter schools in the city have yet to open face-to-face classes.
The city has been criticized by educators and parents for its relative lack of focus on improving distance learning versus preparing school buildings for students, even though around 70% of children attend classes at full-time distance.
Even students enrolled in the city’s blended learning system spent at least half of their week in virtual classes, the rest of their teaching in person.
Some students, including some children in homeless shelters, still haven’t received iPads or laptops from the city and don’t have internet access.
Many teachers have reported that children sometimes have difficulty signing in to classes due to technology issues. Teachers also said they had received little training on how to provide better education online.
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