#de Blasio’s latest school retreat shows parents should give up on NYC

What a disaster: For the second time, New York City has delayed the start of school. This leaves parents like me up a creek. And it cheats kids yet again of the proper education they deserve and are entitled to.

This is a family column, so I won’t use all the words I’d like to use about this horrific nightmare. But I know I speak for many New Yorkers when I say that calling the city’s leaders incompetent would be a huge insult to incompetent people.

I knew schools wouldn’t open on Sept. 10, as originally planned, and not even this Monday, Sept. 21.

I predicted it in these pages because I knew the guy working to open them was Mayor Bill de Blasio — whose work ethic is poor to nonexistent.

Back on May 18, de Blasio was asked about school reopening, and he shrugged. “It’s May, for godsakes!” That right there was a sign to every parent schools would not open on time.

He’s not alone in his dereliction. After all, what’s the point of a schools chancellor who can’t open schools? Chancellor Richard Carranza arrived here having left his previous school district in disarray. He spends his time looking for racism under rocks and focusing on wokeism, to the detriment of our kids.

Who would believe he could step up and run a school system during times of trouble? No one. And sure enough — he can’t.

“It’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen,” de Blasio vowed Thurs­day. “I think the vast majority of parents appreciate we’re trying to bring back schools for their kids rather than giving up.”

Except, it’s not “gonna” happen. The system has failed. It’s over. It’s Sept. 18 already, and schools are still weeks from even having a chance of swinging open their doors.

Anyone who thinks Sept. 29 (the latest promised date when K-5 kids supposedly will be allowed back) or Oct. 1 (the date for middle- and high-school kids) will arrive and schools will magically, finally, begin providing in-person learning either has not been paying attention or is in the market for a bridge over the East River.

How do we know? Because no fact on the ground will change in 12 days. COVID-19 won’t be eradicated. A vaccine won’t be available.

The Department of Education won’t magically find extra teachers, a shortage of which is part of the latest excuse. Our leftist, labor-loving mayor won’t really stand up to the powerful teachers’ union, even after vowing to do so.

No, let’s face it: We’re screwed.

And city voters themselves have to take some responsibility for all this. We re-elected Bill de Blasio, even after he displayed inadequacy for the job and his abject lack of enthusiasm, and even though he ran his re-election campaign against Donald Trump instead of his actual opponent.

We fell for it. We let an unfit man govern New York for two terms, and he has brought our city to its knees.

The worst part: The mayoral election of 2021 will be a rerun of this strategy, even if Trump loses re-election. The Democratic candidates will compete to argue who hates Donald Trump more and to blame him for the city’s woes. But hating Trump is not a governing strategy, and the city’s dire situation is evidence of that.

My husband and I are both lifelong New Yorkers and proud New York City public-school parents to three children. But I worry mostly about my kindergartener under these conditions.

On Thursday, I felt forced to start calling private schools for him. Remote learning for kindergarteners just isn’t realistic. Kids that young are hard for teachers to understand even in person; with remote learning, it’s virtually impossible. Teaching rarely succeeds.

Which raises the bigger questions: Should we bite the bullet and just leave New York? We’re far from the only parents weighing the options.

New York puts schools last. Gov. Cuomo stuck their reopening into Phase 4 and continued with the insane part-time plan that de Blasio and Carranza can’t implement. The system has never been great, but now it’s collapsed completely.

Let’s be real: New York is dying. We don’t want to be the last ones out to turn out the light.

Twitter: @Karol