About 190,000 New York City students are expected to return to classrooms this week, starting with elementary school students on Monday, after a months-long rollercoaster of changes to the nation’s most closely watched school reopening effort. Students with complex disabilities will be able to return to school buildings on Wednesday.
Mayor Bill de Blasio became the first mayor of a major city in the country to reopen public schools this fall. But he briefly shut down the system last month after the city’s virus cases spiked, before announcing that classrooms would be open again for around 20% of the entire school system. It is not yet known when the middle and high schools will reopen.
The vast majority of the city’s roughly 1.1 million students have chosen to learn indefinitely from home.
Classrooms reopen amid an alarming increase in transmission of the virus in New York City: the city reported on Sunday that the average test positivity rate has exceeded 5 percent; it was below 3 percent just a few weeks ago.
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Mr de Blasio’s decision to reopen schools for young children is the most telling example of a national and international trend to welcome elementary school students into classrooms, while their older peers learn from a distance. Public health experts and educators generally agree that face-to-face learning for young children is relatively safe and particularly crucial for their development.
The mayor said he would try to keep the school system open even if cases of the virus continue to rise, although it is likely that many classrooms and schools will temporarily close in the coming weeks as cases positives are confirmed in individual schools.
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