After less than two months of in-person learning, New York City will again shut down public schools as coronavirus cases surge in the Big Apple and places around the country.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the decision on Wednesday after New York City reached a daily positivity rate of 3%.
“Unfortunately, this means public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday, Nov. 19, out an abundance of caution. We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19,” the Democrat said.
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.
We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19.
— Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) November 18, 2020
According to the New York Times, de Blasio was the first big-city mayor in the country to reopen school buildings.
However, while the city shuts down the nation’s largest public school district, it will keep open indoor dining and gyms at reduced capacity. Nonessential workers are also still using public transportation to commute to offices.
De Blasio has said that remote learning is not as effective as in-person learning in the classroom, and teachers and parents expressed frustration over the city not doing enough to improve online education.
The mayor said the closures will be temporary, but he didn’t say whether schools would automatically reopen once the seven-day positivity rate falls back below 3%.
New York has 1,800 schools that serve over a million students. The majority of the students in the city’s public schools are from low-income families and are black or Latino.
The United States has had over 11 million cases of COVID-19 and surpassed more than 250,000 deaths attributed to the coronavirus.
