New York City Will Reopen Elementary Schools and Phase Out Hybrid Learning
Last edited Sun Nov 29, 2020, 01:19 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: New York Times
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Sunday that he would reopen public elementary schools, abruptly shifting policy in the face of widespread criticism that New York City was placing more of a priority on economic activities like indoor dining than the well-being of its children.
Mr. de Blasio said that middle and high schools would remain closed, but he also signaled that he would overhaul how the city manages schools during the pandemic, which has forced millions of children in the United States out of schools and is widely perceived to have done significant damage to their education and mental health.
The mayor said the city would abandon a 3 percent test positivity threshold that it had adopted for closing the school system, the largest in the country, with 1.1 million children. And he said the system would aim to give most parents the option of sending their children to school five days a week, which would effectively end the so-called hybrid learning system.
Students can return only if they have already signed up for in-person learning, meaning fewer than 335,000 of the city’s schoolchildren, or roughly a third, are even eligible. Children in pre-K and elementary school can return starting Dec. 7. Mr. de Blasio also announced that students with the most complex disabilities can return on Dec. 10.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/29/nyregion/schools-reopening-partially.html
This pandemic is just a nightmare with cities that have students in buildings that are close to or over a century old with poor retrofitting to handle a pandemic, some buildings of which were "new" when the last extreme pandemic hit in 1918.
I expect that in NYC, the "3%" is one of those figures that basically indicates that the "community spread" is relatively low and difficult to maintain when the nation is out of control. And like other places, a 5% positivity is cause for concern, but I suppose is manageable with focused remediation.
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I watched his (ETA - "he" as in Cuomo, with a few de Blasio ones in there) pressers, literally for the 100+ days he was doing them, 7 days a week since the beginning (he was on my "watch" schedule along with the PA pressers and the Philly pressers) and watched how the tracking regime was set up and tweaked (and I think even within the city, they go down into the boroughs and neighborhoods for granularity). Wasn't sure if it had gotten even more granular down to the school level! 
Thanks!! 
