Here's How The City Plans To Reopen NYC Public Schools

NEW YORK CITY — Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday gave families a first glimpse of what to expect when it comes to reopening New York City public schools.

Elementary school kids, preschoolers and students in District 75 special education programs will be first in line to return to their classrooms, de Blasio said in a Monday news conference.

Students will also be "absolutely required" to have a coronavirus-testing consent form on file, de Blasio said, and teachers, staff and students will get tested in advance.

"To bring schools back we have to take our core vision which is health and safety first and intensify it," de Blasio said. "The data and the science govern all of our decisions.”

It was the first time de Blasio outlined how the city would reopen schools since ordering them closed last week, when the coronavirus positivity rate hit 3 percent according to the city's data.

But, other than outlining the phased approach to reopening, de Blasio offered few specifics.

The mayor did not specify what metrics would be used to determine when schools would reopen, and he did not say how the city was preparing to implement increased testing for educators, staff and students.

"This is an initial vision — a lot of work to do to make it come together, but I want to give people a sense of how things are going to go in the coming weeks and the focus we're going to have as we build out this plan," de Blasio said Monday.

New York City is expected to become an "orange zone" as soon as next week, a state designation that would require students and staff to test negative for the coronavirus before re-entering school buildings and require at least 25 percent of a school's population be tested each week.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said the state may design a different formula to reopen New York City schools in orange zones.

After ordering schools closed Thursday, de Blasio admitted that he did not yet have a plan in place for how and when to reopen schools.

"What I have learned sometimes is sometimes it is hard to imagine the next phase until you get there," de Blasio told reporters. "You do your damnedest to plan ahead, but you can't always do that."