New York City public schools will have to wait again for school reopening after Mayor de Blasio made a last-minute decision to postpone in-person school reopenings.
Students across the city were preparing to return to school on Monday, 21st September, following a similar postponement that would have seen the students already in classes by September 10. The recent indecisiveness on Mayor de Blasio’s part has not been received well by teachers, students and parents who had already made plans for the school reopenings.
Mayor de Blasio’s decision
The Mayor’s decision is causing confusion for everyone, with the uncertainty of when the schools will open again. To many of the parents, teachers and students who have been disappointed by the decision, there is little that can be done to give them confidence that Mayor de Blasio will get it right this time, after having postponed again and promised a new date would be final.
However, the Mayor has defended his administration’s actions citing coronavirus safety concerns that are yet to be addressed. The major indicated that the school buildings needed to prepared and kept clean in order to ensure that students are returning in a clean and safe environment.
He also indicated that there was also a shortage of teachers, a problem that they were addressing by first hiring 2,000 teachers earlier this week. He also indicated that the city was in the process of hiring an extra 2,500 more teachers. This will ensure that students are able to continue learning with protocols such as social distancing in place.
On Twitter, the news of postponement was met with harsh criticism from parents who were expecting to send their children back to school. One user criticized the Mayor for lack of planning, saying that he had an entire summer for preparations and still fell short of what was expected of him. Another user told the Mayor that he was not surprised and indicated that the Mayor did not have an answer in the first place, claiming all the Mayor’s decisions have been awful.
The Mayor has indicated that students should expect to start returning back to classes from September 29th up to 1st October. He indicated that kindergarten to fifth-graders will be the first to return school. They will then be followed by highschool students on October 1st.
Featured image by Pixabay
