#NYC to delay reopening of schools, Mayor de Blasio announces

New York City’s public-school classrooms will not reopen until Sept. 21 to give teachers and principals more time to ready facilities amid the coronavirus — under an 11th-hour deal struck between Mayor Bill de Blasio and the system’s powerful unions.

Students will start the year online Sept. 16, then be allowed to move to a hybrid approach including some in-person instruction five days later, de Blasio and schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced Tuesday.

The schools had been set to reopen for partial in-person instruction Sept 10.

The plan was so last-minute that “a lot of details were worked through especially yesterday,’’ de Blasio said.

Asked why the city waited till now — fewer than two weeks before the start of school — to suddenly change things, the mayor dismissed any disruption as “very modest.

“For all the parents of kids who are going to be in blended learning, it does mean a few more days where they are going to have to figure out accommodations,’’ de Blasio said.

“But … we were juggling a lot of important factors.

“It is a very modest change,’’ he said of the new plan. “It is a change. I do empathize with parents. But it is a very modest change.’’

Carranza admitted at the event, which also included Michael Mulgrew, president of the city’s largest teachers union, “We need more time.’’

The last-minute deal came after days of a tense war of words between City Hall and Mulgrew’s United Federation of Teachers, which threatened to strike if Hizzoner went ahead with plans to restart in-classroom learning Sept. 10.

The unions wanted mandatory repeat testing of all teachers and students, which City Hall balked at, saying it would offer virus tests as requested.

The mayor said Tuesday that the new plan requires every school to carry out random monthly testing on a sampling of students and teachers — 10 to 20 percent, depending on the size of the facility.

Asked By Post what the city will do if parents do not consent to their kids being tested, de Blasio at first said, “I don’t think that’s going to happen.

“It does involve parental consent,’’ the mayor acknowledged of the testing. “From what we’ve seen so far, we think we’re going to get a very strong, positive response.’’

But when pressed, he finally admitted that the city may block students from in-classroom instruction if they won’t get tested.

“We’re going to have to decide what to do, and it may be a case of the child not in school,’’ Hizzoner said.

De Blasio added that testing would still be available to everyone who wanted it, with the city setting up tents at school sites for it.

Teachers will begin to start to prepare for the year next Tuesday in school, he said.

De Blasio acknowledged that “a substantial number of kids will all be remote’’ through at least the fall — and the latest figures show more than a third, or 37 percent, have chosen that option.

That represents 366,553 of the city’s 1.1 million public-school kids.