NYC elementary schools reopen in big back-to-school test

New York, September 29

Hundreds of thousands of elementary school students are heading back to classrooms Tuesday as New York City enters a high-stakes stage of resuming in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic, which is keeping students at home in many other big US school systems.

Twice delayed, the elementary school reopening comes over objections from school principals who said 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 neighbourhoods after a summer of success at keeping transmission fairly stable in the city as a whole.

“It’s a big moment for the city,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on cable news station NY1 Monday night. With in-person learning for middle and high school students scheduled to begin Thursday, he noted, “as many as half a million kids could be in school in the course of this week.”

With over 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 schoolhouses this fall.

Families have the option of choosing all-remote learning, and a growing number are doing so — 48 per cent as of Friday, up from 30 per cent six weeks earlier, according to 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 Sept. 21 as online instruction began for the rest of the student body.

Students were originally due back September 10. But the start date was pushed back, repeatedly, after the city teachers’ union said it wasn’t safe to open schools because of outdated ventilation systems, an insufficient number of school nurses and other issues.

Many other big school systems around the country began the fall term online, though some are reopening physical schools. In Florida, for instance, students opting for in-person learning returned to schools September 21 in Palm Beach County, where the nation’s 10th largest school system has over 197,000 students. AP