In a major setback, New York City announced this week that its public school system would abruptly close once again after a delayed start.
This decision is not rooted in any sort of science, as recent data prove that transmission among school-aged children is extremely low. Nor does it reflect the wishes of parents or public health officials, both of whom have objected to school closures repeatedly.
There is, however, one group that has been unrelenting in its push for school closures: teachers unions. When the city reopened public schools eight weeks ago, the United Federation of Teachers made it clear that its teachers would not return to work if cases in the city (not in the school system) reached a 3% threshold. It was this number that Mayor Bill de Blasio cited on Wednesday when he announced the second shutdown, all the while insisting that it had nothing to do with the teachers union’s demands.
“The decision we made was made with our health care leadership and not with the unions at all,” de Blasio claimed. “I mean, literally the 3% decision, I remember vividly the meeting in which we decided it. It was not a proposal from the unions. It was not a collective bargaining matter.”
De Blasio’s own health officials seem to disagree. Indeed, the mayor’s top health advisers have been advising him for weeks that his 3% threshold is a flawed model that needs to be changed, according to the New York Daily News. The schools themselves have not reached the 3% threshold, de Blasio’s advisers argued, and even if they did, the impact would not be severe since schools are not the super-spreader sites many feared they would be.
Even the United Federation of Teachers admitted de Blasio’s decision to close the city’s schools was a direct result of his earlier negotiation with union officials.
“It was attested to by the city of New York that they would follow this plan,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers. “He’s following the plan he submitted and was approved. So yes, the mayor’s doing what he said he was gonna do. That’s the right thing.”
Moreover, the city’s health officials have enough common sense to understand that it makes no sense to shut down schools while allowing restaurants and gyms to stay open. Multiple studies confirm that indoor activities such as eating out and exercising pose a much greater risk than in-person education. This is why several European countries chose to keep their schools open even while forcing businesses to close. Data suggest this strategy has been fairly successful.
Health experts aren’t the only ones pushing back on the city’s decision. Many voices on both the Left and the Right have decried this new wave of school closures as irresponsible. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes pointed out that “3% isn’t some magic threshold,” and the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof admitted in a recent op-ed that these needless school closures will hurt children far more than they help anyone else.
They’re right, but it would be nice to see the Left go a step further and identify the culprit. It is obvious that the city’s teachers unions are responsible for this decision, and they must be condemned for jeopardizing the well-being of tens of thousands of students.
Similarly, city officials should be singled out for caving to the demands of these union leaders without even putting up a fight. It should be an immense source of shame for de Blasio to know that he put the political interests of a power-hungry organization before the needs of his city’s children. And it should force everyone to stop and ask: Who’s really running New York City?
