N.Y. Schools Can Reopen, Cuomo Says, in Contrast With Much of New York
New York City has permission to become the only major U.S. school system to hold in-person classes this fall, after Governor Andrew Cuomo said classrooms statewide would remain open with tight precautions.Parents of pupils in New York City have until Friday to decide whether to opt out and begin the year with all remote learning.
Schools across New York can reopen for in-person instruction this fall, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Friday, solidifying New York’s status as one of the few states in America that has a virus transmission rate low enough to forge ahead with reopening plans.
“By our infection rates, all school districts can open,” Cuomo said Friday on a conference call with reporters. “Everywhere in the state, every region is below the threshold that we established, which is just great news.”
The state conducted 70,000 tests on Aug. 6, of which 1% were positive, Cuomo said. There were 5 virus-related fatalities and 579 hospitalization as of Aug. 6, according to the latest state data.
Just a few months after New York became the global epicenter of the epidemic, the governor opened the door for millions of students across the state to return to classrooms, even remotely most of the nation's public school students during the school year Will start
But Mr. Cuomo’s announcement does not guarantee that school buildings in the state’s roughly 700 local districts will actually reopen in the coming weeks. It is now up to local politicians and superintendents to decide whether and how to reopen.
Under the governor’s announcement, schools can decide to open as long as they are in a region where the average rate of positive coronavirus tests is below 5 percent, a threshold recommended by the World Health Organization to begin general reopening that has recently been adopted by some school districts.
Most of the state, including New York City, has maintained a positivity of about 1 percent. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that schools can only open here if the positivity rate is below 3 percent.
Major school districts that have opted for virtual instruction for at least the start of the year include Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Miami, Atlanta and Houston. But Cuomo said New York is ready.
“We are probably in the best situation than any other state in the country right now,” Cuomo said. “If anybody can open schools, we can open schools.”The decisions about travel, business and education are being made against unrelenting pressure from Trump, whose theories on the topic isn’t always supported by his own health experts.
“This thing’s going away -- it will go away like things go away and my view is that schools should be open,” Trump said Wednesday on News. Children “are virtually immune from this problem. And we have to open our schools.”
Mr. Cuomo frequently celebrates the state’s transformation from a global epicenter of the virus to one of the safest places in the country in terms of transmission levels, and has received accolades for his management of the crisis. New York’s test positivity rate is now among the lowest in the nation; the rate in states like Florida where there has been enormous resistance to reopening schools reached as high as 20 percent last month.
The school reopening debate, however, presents the governor with a political conundrum from which it might be difficult to emerge victorious.
If the city does reopen schools, it could alienate him from educators and the teachers union, a crucial ally. But if the city halts or delays its opening plan, it could leave over 1 million families in the lurch over child care, and hundreds of thousands of low-income children, homeless children, and students with disabilities without in-person learning for months to come.
Mr. Cuomo has left most of the details about how to actually reopen safely to individual school districts, which have spent the summer creating reopening plans to be approved by the State Education Department. Districts across the state are tentatively planning to reopen late in August or early next month. New York City is scheduled to start school on Sept. 10.
The economic effects of keeping children out of school go beyond matters of convenience and pocketbook. They also expose imbalances in the economy, with some children unable to access the Internet as easily as others.
“The first-order short-term economic impacts will be likely centered around what this does to families needing childcare; loss of school meals for the kids making hunger worse; and whatever furloughing the district is doing,” said Diane Schanzenbach, professor at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. “Long term, the costs of all of this lost learning will be with us for decades.”
Senate Republicans have proposed a bill that would provide $70 billion to K-12 schools, but that may not be enough to safely reopen, or even to go remote and provide needed tech to low-income families. More than $116 billion will be needed to safely reopen the nation’s public schools, according to an estimate from the American Federation of Teachers union.
The teacher’s unions have been lobbying heavily against in-person school, citing budget restraints and health risks for staff and pupils.
