As COVID-19 Cases Soar, New York City Schools Halt in-Person Classes
New York City’s public school district, the largest in the United States, will halt in-person instruction starting Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced, citing soaring coronavirus infection rates there and across…
New York City’s public school district, the largest in the United States, will halt in-person instruction starting Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced, citing soaring coronavirus infection rates there and across the country.
The mayor’s decision, unveiled Wednesday on Twitter, came as the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 neared a world record of a quarter-million lives lost, and as state and local officials nationwide moved to further restrict social gatherings and commercial activity to stem surging cases and hospitalizations heading into winter.
The move doubtless came as a relief to some teachers, many of whom have expressed fear of being placed at increased risk of exposure to the highly contagious respiratory virus.
But it will cause hardship for working parents forced to make new childcare arrangements once more.
“I could lose my job… I am stuck between bills and my son, and it’s a hard choice. Really hard,” said Felix Franco, 30, a U.S. Postal Service employee who has been on leave recovering from COVID-19 himself since spring and was planning to return to work in two weeks.
Franco, who said he has no one else lined up to care for his 6-year-old son during the school day, is already behind on his monthly car bill and racking up credit card debt.
New York City, the U.S. epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic last spring, has seen a late-autumn resurgence of the virus after a summertime lull. Schools have been following a staggered, part-time system of classroom instruction since September, with 1.1 million students dividing their school week between in-person and online learning.
But de Blasio said all instruction would revert to distance learning again on Thursday after the rate at which coronavirus tests in the city were coming back positive rose to a seven-day average of 3%, the threshold for ceasing in-person classes.
“Unfortunately, this means public school buildings will be closed as of tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 19, out (of) an abundance of caution,” de Blasio wrote on Twitter. “We must fight back the second wave of COVID-19.”
New York City joins other large school districts in cities like Boston and Detroit that have recently canceled in-person learning. Within the last week, the Clark County School District, which includes Las Vegas and is the fifth largest in the United States, and Philadelphia’s public school system both postponed plans to return to in-person instruction.