#31 NYC councilmembers call for delay in school reopenings

There are still “far too many unanswered questions” to safely re-open the New York City public schools for in-person learning next month, a group of 31 city councilmembers wrote in a scathing letter aimed at the Department of Education and Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Citing coronavirus safety concerns and a lack of DOE preparedness, the officials — including City Council education chair Mark Treyger — issued the call in a letter Wednesday.

“With less than a month until school is scheduled to start, there are still far too many unanswered questions around health and safety, programming, operations, and pedagogy,” they wrote.

“With so much ambiguity around the City’s ability to re-open schools safely, a majority of the New York City Council is calling for the Mayor to pause and delay the re-opening of schools, which allows the DOE time to better plan, from both a safety and an academic perspective.”

But de Blasio pressed forth Thursday with a plan to launch a hybrid learning model that would have kids alternate between home and classroom learning in a matter of weeks.

‘We need to help our kids begin the pathway to life coming back to normal,” he said at a press conference. “We need to support them. They’ve already lost so much. We need to be there for them and help them move forward.”

He has stressed the need to provide working parents scheduling relief along and the inferiority of remote learning.

De Blasio also issued a new “back to school pledge” that outlined the city’s ongoing efforts to tenably open the nation’s largest school system amid the coronavirus crisis.

Hizzoner reiterated that every school will have sufficient personal protective equipment, a building nurse, and the benefit of daily cleaning.

“We are going to make sure these schools are safe and ready,” he said. “And if we don’t think they are safe and ready they won’t be open. But right now, look what you see. Tremendous preparation and the heath situation in the city continues to get better.”

The city’s teachers union has pushed back on the city’s reopening plan and threatened to strike if particular safety demands aren’t met – including COVID testing of every student and staffer before the academic year begins.

“The minute we feel the mayor is trying to force people into an unsafe school, we go,” Mulgrew said at a press conference Wednesday.

The DOE has lost roughly 100 members to COVID-19 thus far.

“New York City must have a rigorous and intensive testing system in place,” Mulgrew said. “What happened in March cannot happen again.”

De Blasio repeated his position Thursday that teachers have a professional obligation to return to their buildings.

“Public servants rise to the occasions and answer the call,” he said. “Our transit workers did, our first responders did, our healthcare workers did, our grocery workers did. Public servants show up and serve people that’s what our constituents depend on that’s what parents and kids believe we are here to do and certainly taxpayers do as well.”

Those comments drew a stinging tweet from City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who accused City Hall of unfairly shifting responsibility to city instructors.

“Imagine being a teacher who spent the last five months watching the Mayor dither and delay—only to have him blame them for his failure to come up with a plan to make schools safe,” Stringer said. “It’s a disgrace. No teacher deserves to feel unsafe at work.”

A de Blasio spokesperson counterpunched in a statement to The Post.

“We have the most comprehensive and rigorous plan for reopening, coupled with record-low infection rates,” said City Hall spokesperson Avery Cohen. “Our heroic principals and school administrators have been working around the clock to ensure our children can go back to school safely. It’s easy to tweet and throw punches when you’re not in charge of making decisions on behalf of one million children and their families.”

Meanwhile, schools Chancellor Richard Carranza addressed comments made during a marathon Panel for Education Policy meeting Wednesday night where he warned of the potential for mass DOE layoffs.

Carranza said that a significant reduction in staffing due to state budget cuts would end any hopes for a durable return to school buildings.

“It’s also very important that we’re very transparent with our parents with our community about the challenges that would be imposed on the school system if we have to make cuts of this magnitude,” he said Thursday. “It defies credibility to say that a significant financial impact would not impact what we do in terms of in-person learning.”