NYC students will return to school on staggered schedules, officials say
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza on Wednesday unveiled a plan to get more than 1 million public schoolkids back in the classroom this fall — sort of.
Students would alternate two- and three-day weeks of in-person classes as part of a “blended model,” in the most jarring change detailed by the duo at a City Hall press briefing.
Online classes would make up the balance of the schedule — and adding to the hodgepodge, parents can also opt in to having their kids learn remotely five days a week.
“For the 2020-2021 school year, it will look different,” Carranza said. “Students will return in September in a blended learning model or an online learning model, if they choose.”
He stressed, however, that, “New York City students will be learning five days a week, whether it’s in person or at home.”
Workers at all levels of the public-school system weighed in to help craft the proposal, Carranza said.
“I want to thank all of our principals and teachers and support staff, including our paraprofessionals, but including as well our student-nutrition workers, our school-safety agents, our custodians, who all had a voice in developing these plans,” the schools boss said.
The plan also apparently drew influence from a recent city survey of more than 300,000 families and 115,000 students.
Fifty-three percent of families asked in a first question if they would feel very or somewhat comfortable returning to school full time had said yes, along with 56 percent of students.
A second question posing options assuming no full return to class found a schedule of alternating days the most popular option.
Maintaining the status quo of five days of in-home learning was the second-most-popular pick, followed by a schedule of alternating weeks: Five days in a classroom, followed by five learning at home.
The need to maintain social-distancing rendered running schools at full-capacity impossible, Carranza said.
“We know that we cannot maintain proper physical distancing and have 100 percent of our students in school buildings five days a week,” he said. “It’s just geographically, physically not possible.”
When students do have in-person classes, the sizes will be significantly reduced, with Carranza calling groups of nine to 12 the “optimum” size.
The plan also features a number of other safety precautions.
As is the case everywhere else in the state, teachers and students will be required to wear face masks and practice social-distancing in the classroom.
The Department of Education will distribute disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer to all schools to all kill any germs not caught by nightly deep-cleanings with electrostatic antiviral sprayers.
School HVAC systems are also being upgraded to allow for better ventilation, hallways will run one-way, and spacious areas like cafeterias, gyms and auditoriums may be used as classrooms to let students spread out, the officials said.
One glaring problem in the plan, however, is the lack of child-care options to help working parents, many of whom will need to go back to their jobs while their kids are still learning remotely.
“I feel for parents who are juggling so much,” said de Blasio.
He pointed to the city’s Tuesday announcement that child-care centers are reopening as a first step, but said that more relief will be announced in the weeks ahead.
“Some parents are going to be able to make it work under current conditions,” he said.
“Some are going to need extra help, and we’re going to work over the coming weeks to find other ways to help them.”
Meanwhile, the plan remains just a proposal until it is approved at the state level.
The decision on whether or not to shutter schools and transition to remote learning in the first place played out as a public tug-of-war between de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo — one that appears to be ongoing.
In a briefing of his own held after the de Blasio-Carranza announcement, Cuomo said that the city officials were right to draw up a plan — but stressed that he has the final authority over whether it gets put into place — and, in fact, whether schools statewide reopen at all in the fall.
“No locality has the legal authority to determine if they open or not,” Cuomo told reporters. “I think the mayor would say . . . ‘I’m putting in the plan to reopen the schools.’
“That nuance is very important.”
The governor said the state’s 688 school districts should submit proposals to Albany by July 31, outlining how they can safely reopen.
“August 1 to 7, the state will announce a decision on whether or not those schools open,” Cuomo said. “We’ll look at the data in the first week and we’ll make a decision.”
Additional reporting by Lia Eustachewich