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#De Blasio must order NYC teachers back to school

#De Blasio must order NYC teachers back to school

It’s past time for Mayor Bill de Blasio to reopen all public schools, full time, shut down hybrid learning and end remote instruction. Period.  

Instead, all he’s done is give parents one last chance to opt-in to in-person classes —because that’s the most United Federation of Teachers chief Mike Mulgrew will agree to.

But why is de Blasio still kowtowing to Mulgrew, when the union boss regularly insults him in public? Just this week, he said all the problems with reopening are de Blasio’s fault, and even got mayoral wannabe Andrew Yang to endorse that lie.

The union plainly has no use left for the lame-duck mayor, except as a convenient scapegoat. He dumped huge pay hikes on its members in exchange for . . . nothing, even awarding “retroactive” raises. When COVID hit, he caved to almost all of the union’s demands, such that the great majority of its members are still teaching from homes while earning full pay, tenure credits and priority for the lifesaving vaccine.

They’re also more immune from accountability than ever, with most grading standards suspended so parents have no idea what their kids might have failed to learn.

Teachers have had three months to get jabbed. With a few rare exceptions, they have no excuse for not going back. What’s the point of mayoral control if de Blasio can’t find the guts to order vaccinated teachers back into classrooms without Mulgrew’s signoff?

Even the mayor’s change in the “two-case” rule is pathetic. The rule of two positive tests shutting down entire buildings (and thus often multiple schools) was nuts, but he’s simply upped it to four positives in a week (albeit with a supposedly tougher “tied to the school” addendum) closing things down for up to 10 school days.

It’s a concession to Mulgrew that has no rational basis. School grounds aren’t transmission hotspots here or anywhere in the world.  

Mulgrew (like Randi Weingarten, the president of his national union) isn’t really worried about safety; he just doesn’t want his members to have to trek back to their workplace this semester.

De Blasio may think he needs the UFT’s support if he wants to, for instance, run for governor. But you know who he needs more? The votes of parents who are fed up with this intransigence. It’s your last months in office, Mr. Mayor — stand up to the UFT and stand up for New Yorkers.

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