NEW YORK — The mayor of New York City announced Wednesday that the nation’s largest public school system will move to remote learning immediately after the citywide COVID-19 positivity rate hit an average of 3%.
New York City has reached the 3% testing positivity 7-day average threshold. Unfortunately, this means public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out an abundance of caution.
— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) November 18, 2020
We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19.
“We will have an update in the next couple of days on the plan to bring back the schools, what additional standards will be needed,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a news conference shortly after announcing the closures via Twitter on Wednesday. “We warned parents days ago that this moment might come, but we had to be 100% sure we were accurate this morning, and we had to have that conversation with the state.”
According to The New York Times, the school system that serves 1.1 million students across 1,800 schools has only been reopened for in-person instruction for about eight weeks. The fall return to classrooms was twice delayed “after union leaders objected to the lack of health measures to protect teachers, students and staff from the coronavirus.”
IMPORTANT UPDATE: starting tomorrow, all @NYCschools buildings are CLOSED for in-person learning until further notice. All students who were learning in school buildings part of the week will transition to remote learning every day. Visit https://t.co/a6osApfhy7 for more. pic.twitter.com/LhuVmiGTYi
— NYC Public Schools (@NYCSchools) November 18, 2020
Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine and a coronavirus adviser to President-elect Joe Biden, told CNBC when de Blasio first instructed parents last week to prepare for the resumption of online learning that she was concerned the city is “prioritizing the wrong things.”
“We know that the biggest spreaders of the infection are indoor dining, bars, indoor gyms and indoor social gatherings, which may be private gatherings. It’s not schools. Now, it’s not to say that there is no transmission in schools, but they are far less important in terms of community transmission than are some of these other settings,” she told the network.
Gounder’s sentiment is shared by New York City Councilman Mark Levine, who tweeted the following shortly after de Blasio’s Wednesday announcement:
BREAKING: NYC passes 3% 7-day positivity, closes schools as of tomorrow.
— Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) November 18, 2020
While continuing to allow indoor dining to continue, leaving gyms open, and not even telling NYers they should work from home if they can.
THIS IS TOTALLY BACKWARDS
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