A coronavirus resurgence in New York City is threatening to halt the nation’s biggest experiment with in-person learning. The city’s public school system this fall became one of just a few large, urban districts in the U.S. to welcome students back into classrooms. A little more than a quarter of the city’s 1.1 million pupils have been attending classes in person between one and three days a week. Just a few weeks ago, the return was going well enough that officials decided to give a little shove to parents who had opted to stick with all-remote learning: Send your kids back now, parents were told, or forfeit the option of having them return later this academic year. But as the Sunday deadline to make the switch loomed, the city also approached a threshold the mayor set to suspend in-person learning. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he will close all school buildings if 3% of the COVID-19 tests performed in the city over a seven-day period came back positive. That mark was set over the summer as the city was trying to avoid a teachers’ strike. De Blasio said Friday that the citywide positivity rate has risen to 2.8% after climbing for several weeks. The city is preparing to close all school buildings as soon as Monday if the rate crosses the threshold over the weekend, he said. “I want to urge parents to have a plan ready that they can put into effect as early as Monday,” de Blasio said during his weekly talk on WNYC radio. “Parents should have a plan for the rest of the month of November.” Some parents expressed frustration that they were being asked to make a decision about sending children back into classrooms, when the city itself is not even sure what will happen next. “The information that we have seems to indicate that these next few months are not going to be so great,” said Jared Rich, who has kept his son out of pre-kindergarten so far but would consider sending him in the spring when teachers can open windows and take students outside. The mayor, Rich said, is “forcing us to make the decision to put our kids in person at a time when it’s not just a surge; this is out of control what’s going on.” “It’s so upsetting,” the Brooklyn attorney said. Over the summer, city officials gave parents a choice: They could do hybrid instruction, where students would be in classrooms some days, but learning online others. Or, they could go all-remote. About 280,000 students signed up for classroom instruction, far fewer than officials expected. The city initially said parents would have a chance each quarter to switch from remote to blended learning. The decision to end that system of quarterly choices was made “for the sake of stability,” Education Chancellor Richard Carranza said. The teachers’ union said the single opt-in period undermines parents’ trust. “The timing couldn’t be worse,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers. Until now, the city has relied on targeted closures, rather than citywide shutdowns, to keep schools from fueling the pandemic. Since the start of the school year, 1,800 students or staff in the system have tested positive for the virus. As a result, nearly 1,100 classrooms have gone […]
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