United States: New York will eliminate virtual schooling, an important step for the definitive reopening

The New York Times

05/24/2021 16:01

• Clarín.com

• World

Updated 05/24/2021 4:01 PM

New York City

will no longer offer the option of virtual

or distance

schooling

beginning in the fall, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday, an important step toward the total reopening of the nation's largest school system.

This school year, most of the city's 1 million students - some 600,000 - stayed home for class.

When the new school year begins on Sept. 13, all school students and staff will

return to school buildings full time

, de Blasio said.

"This is going to be crucial for families,

" de Blasio said at a news conference.

"Many parents are relieved, I know."

New York is one of the first large cities in the United States

to completely eliminate the option of distance learning

for the next school year.

But widespread predictions that online classes would be a fixture for school districts might be premature.

New Jersey Governor Philip D. Murphy announced last week that the state would stop offering distance classes starting in the fall, after the governors of Connecticut and Massachusetts made similar announcements.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, at a school in Brooklyn, New York.

AP Photo

New York City's decision will facilitate

the return of the school system to pre-pandemic status

, as students and teachers will no longer divide their activity between home and school buildings.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, expressed support for the mayor's announcement in a statement, saying

the city's

teachers union

wanted "as many students to return to school as safely as possible." However, he acknowledged that "a small number of students with extreme medical problems" may find it difficult to return to face-to-face teaching as the pandemic still remains a threat, and said a distance option may be necessary for these children.

De Blasio said the school system would implement

"abundant protections"

when the school year begins.

But his announcement is sure to alarm some parents who remain concerned about sending their children back to school buildings, even as the pandemic is subsiding in the United States.

More families in favor

Recent interviews with parents in the city have revealed that while many families wish to resume normal schooling,

some are hesitant to return to the classroom.

Non-white families

, whose health has been disproportionately affected by the virus, were the most likely to have their children continue to learn at home in the past year.

During the mayor's press conference, the city's head of schools, Meisha Porter, said there would be "no Covid-related accommodations," indicating that teachers and school staff will

no longer receive medical exemptions to work from his house.

A kindergarten in Brooklyn, New York.

AP Photo

The city's school system currently

plans to require masks

on school buildings, Porter said.

Schools will also follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's social distancing protocol, which currently recommends that elementary school students stay at least one meter apart in classrooms.

Both policies could change in the fall.

New York, like districts across the country, has

struggled to make distance learning successful

.

Online classes have been frustrating for many students and even disastrous for others, such as children with disabilities.

By one estimate, three million students across the United States, roughly Florida's school-age population,

stopped attending classes, virtual or face-to-face,

after the onset of the pandemic.

A disproportionate number of those disengaged students are low-income Black, Latino, and Native American children who have struggled to keep up in partially or fully remote classrooms.

De Blasio, who has been criticized for not taking further steps to improve the quality of virtual education, has said that

distance learning is inherently inferior.

It has also been extraordinarily complex for the city to manage two parallel school systems, one face-to-face and the other virtual, with many students switching from one system to the other every few days.

The fact that so many students and teachers work from home made it

almost impossible

for some schools to offer normal hours.

In recent months, de Blasio said he hoped the city would maintain some sort of distance learning option for the fall.

But he and his associates changed their minds in recent weeks, officials said, as numbers for the virus plummeted across the city and children 12 and older were allowed to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Pfizer and BioNTech plan to submit

applications for authorization of the vaccine for children ages 2 to 11 in September.

"The data has been incredibly clear," de Blasio explained Monday.

"The vaccination has worked ahead of schedule; it has had even more impact than we thought."

Eliza Shapiro and Michael Gold.

The New York Times

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