Masks And Distancing Mark Return To School For NYC Kids

NEW YORK CITY — Mayor Bill de Blasio greeted the latest wave of New York City pupils to return to classrooms with elbow bumps and masked smiles. But the cheery scene was threatened by storm clouds, both figurative and literal, on the horizon.

Roughly 500,000 students are expected to return to classrooms this week, de Blasio said Tuesday during a conference that alternated between expressions of hope and grim warnings of rising coronavirus cases in a handful of city neighborhoods.

COVID-19 spikes in nine ZIP codes set the city's daily positive rate above 3 percent for the first time in months, de Blasio said. He stressed efforts to contain the infections but acknowledged if the rate continues at that level for seven days then the city's much-anticipated and debated school reopening will be temporarily shut down.

"We're going to do it carefully and we're going to do it safely," de Blasio said of reopening schools.

The United Federation of Teachers demanded Tuesday night that schools in badly affected areas – including Gravesend, Midwood, Kew Gardens, Far Rockaway, Borough Park, Bensonhurst, Sheepshead Bay and Flatlands – be closed.

Pupils in K-5 and K-8 schools returned to classrooms on Tuesday. They'll be joined by high school students and all other remaining types of pupils on Thursday.

The morning brought scenes of students walking into schools hand-in-hand with parents. Masked youngsters stopped at doorways for touchless temperature checks before lining up in socially-distanced queues before walking into well-spaced classrooms where they spent the bulk of the day.

Outside the schools, concerns continued to swirl over the reopening. Gov. Andrew Cuomo repeated a pledge that if coronavirus tests show any sustained spike in cases that the state will swoop in to shut down individual school buildings, or perhaps even the whole district.

"I say to every parent in the city of New York if those schools are not safe I will not allow them to operate," he said. "The state can close down any school in the state of New York."

Parents appear to have grown increasingly apprehensive about sending their children back to classrooms. The number of students who opted for fully-remote learning has steadily ticked up from 30 percent in August to 48 percent as of Monday.

More than half of 1,500 Patch readers who responded to a non-scientific survey over the summer said that schools should "absolutely not" reopen.

But it's principals and teachers who have been most vocal about concerns. Just days before the bulk of students were slated to return to school, the union representing principals cast a vote of "no confidence"in de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza over their handling of reopening.

De Blasio on Tuesday acknowledged union criticism of how he and other city officials rolled out — and walked back, twice — the school reopening.

"I do think there was a problem of sort of clinging to past procedure and approach that everyone needed to break out of and understand that we were in an absolutely unprecedented situation," he said. "I think that’s an area where we all could have done better."

School officials will continue to monitor cases day-by-day and make decisions if COVID-19 outbreaks spread out of the clusters, de Blasio said.

Carranza tried to bring the focus back to the "joyful" reopening. He told a story about a third grade student who was brimming with excitement to return to school.

The child, it turns out, was in foster case and schools provided the only stable environment in her life, he said.

"You see my friends, that's why it's so important that while we can do this safely we do what we do for our children," Carranza said.

Parents who want more information on New York City's return to schools, including helpful links, can clickhere.