New York City schools will only offer in-person learning in fall

New York City’s school system, the largest in the country, will offer no remote learning option in the fall, requiring all of its 1.1 million students to attend classes in person after more than a year of disruption caused by the pandemic, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday.

In the current school year, the system has offered hybrid weekly schedule in which students attend classes in person three days a week and learn remotely for two days, and then reverse the pattern on an alternating basis. Most parents also opted to keep their children home for remote learning five days a week.

Neither of those options will be offered in September, when the new school year begins, De Blasio said.

Students exit a school as the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., November 13, 2020. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

“You can’t have a full recovery without full-strength schools, everyone back sitting in those classrooms, kids learning again,” de Blasio said on MSNBC. “And that’s what’s going to happen in September.”

The decision to open schools fully comes as positivity rates for COVID-19 in New York and the country have settled into a sustained decline as more people become vaccinated. In New York City, the share of residents testing positive for the virus on a seven-day average dropped to 0.71% on Saturday from 2.48% on March 8, according to state data.

Nearly half of the U.S. population has had at least one dose of a vaccine, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. In New York, 52% of residents have had at least one shot, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday.

A child skips to school at PS 361 on the first day of a return to class during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., December 7, 2020. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Given the declining number of new COVID-19 cases, de Blasio said he expected the CDC to relax its current guidelines that require students to maintain social distancing of three feet (1 meter) before the start of the next school year.

“Right now in New York City public schools, we can have every child three feet apart, we could make that work if we had to,” the mayor said. “But I actually fundamentally believe by August, the CDC will relax those rules further to recognize the progress that we’ve made in this country.”

A week earlier, Governor Phil Murphy in neighboring New Jersey declared that his state’s schools would no longer offer a remote-learning option in September, following similar moves by other states. Cuomo has also urged New York school districts to return to in-class instruction.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this month approved the Pfizer Inc coronavirus vaccine for children as young as 12 years old, and Moderna Inc said it planned to seek approval of its vaccine for children, as well.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Nick Zieminski)