51,000 NYC Public School Students to Return to In-Person Learning on April 26

By Yehudit Garmaise

   Instead of learning at home remotely, on Ipads and other devices, 51,000 New York City public school students will return their classrooms in two weeks, Mayor Bill de Blasio said this morning. 

   The mayor provided public school families the option to return to in-person in March after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relaxed its guidelines for social distancing in classrooms, allowing students to sit 3 feet apart, which allows classrooms to replace desks that had to be removed so that students could remain 6 feet apart.

   Staggering schedules was another step that public schools had to take to prevent overcrowded classrooms, although the mayor explained that the new inflow of 50,000 students will not affect the number of days per week that current in-person students are scheduled to be in their classrooms.

   The families of public school students had until last Friday to re-enroll in for in-person learning, and the students will return to their school’s buildings on April 26.

   “We feel very good about our ability to bring kids back, get them a great education in-person, maximize the number of kids that will be going five days a week, with the team that we have now,” said Mayor de Blasio, who throughout the pandemic has left the decision of whether children should return to classrooms up to parents.

   Although public school students are starting to come back in droves, Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter pointed out the approximately 28,000 teachers still have COVID-19 health accommodations and exemptions that allow them to work from home, which impacts the city’s ability to completely bring students back into their classrooms.

   In addition, one reporter today pointed out that more teachers are retiring after an especially difficult year of teaching on Zoom.

   Mayor de Blasio had faith that the next generation of teachers “would love to work in New York City public schools.”

   “We’re working to reset for next year,” said the mayor. “We are in a very different place than we were a year ago today, and so we’re looking forward to resetting what our system looks like.”

Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.