Parents, students, administrators and teachers were already waiting 10 days beyond the scheduled reopening date for New York City’s public schools to resume in-person learning.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Thursday that most of them will have to wait a little more.
The decision came only days before schools were set to open their doors on Monday, and led to frustration and anger for many of the people involved, especially parents, who now have to make arrangements for their children with little lead time.
Here’s what you need to know about the new plan, and the rationale for it:
A phased reopening
In-person learning will resume in phases instead of all at once. Next Monday, pre-K and advanced special-needs classes will open; on Sept. 29, elementary schools will begin; and middle and high schools will start up on Oct. 1.
On Monday, many students will start the school year remotely, like those in most big cities around the country, which have opted to stick with online learning.
The phased approach is a dramatic, 11th-hour change from the original reopening plan, which we detailed earlier this week.
“We are doing this to make sure that all the standards we’ve set can be achieved,” Mr. de Blasio said on Thursday.
The rationale
Mr. de Blasio said he was persuaded to further delay reopening after a lengthy conversation with the heads of the teachers’ and principals’ unions and senior mayoral aides on Wednesday.
The mayor said one of the main reasons for the latest delay was an acute teacher shortage, an issue that had led the union leaders to warn for weeks that schools were not ready to reopen.
Mr. de Blasio did not elaborate on why he waited so long to recognize the gravity of the staffing issue, which arose because the city and the teachers’ union agreed that educators should not be required to teach both remotely and in person — so schools essentially need two sets of teachers.
The principals’ union estimated that the city could need as many as 10,000 educators; a Thursday report from the city’s Independent Budget Office put the number closer to 12,000.
Earlier this week, Mr. de Blasio announced that the city planned to hire 2,000 more educators, and on Thursday he said the city would add an additional 2,500.
The reaction
Many educators, parents and elected officials were furious about the delay, especially since it came with so little warning. Hundreds of principals had publicly beseeched the city for weeks to hold back in-person classes, only to hear about the delay on the news.
“I’m beginning to think this is part of a secret plan to mentally and emotionally break me,” Michael Perlberg, the principal of a middle school in Brooklyn, wrote on Twitter.
Some parents, many of whom now have to scrape together child care plans in a few days, were also upset.
“It is mid-September and there is still no plan on how to educate children,” said Natasha Capers, a parent who lives in Brooklyn, adding that putting off school even longer felt like “a punch in the gut.”
What’s next
At a news conference on Thursday, Mr. de Blasio did not exactly apologize to parents for the last-minute change of plans, though he said that he sympathized with them and appreciated their pragmatism.
“I think they understand we are going through a pandemic,” Mr. de Blasio said. “They understand that everyone is working nonstop trying to fix these really complex problems, and I know they will find a way forward.”
There is still a chance that in-person schooling could be canceled outright: Schools will close automatically if the city’s average coronavirus positive test rate reaches 3 percent.
The average positivity rate in the city has stayed around 1 percent or below for the last few weeks. But, Mr. de Blasio said, there is no guarantee that such a low average — and with it the latest plan for the school year — will endure.
“What I can guarantee is if we keep fighting back this disease, we start schools and we go from that point on and we never stop,” Mr. de Blasio said. “The one thing we all have to work on is to keep this disease at bay.”