Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday once again delayed the start of most in-person classes in the New York City public schools, acknowledging that the system had still not fully surmounted the many obstacles that it faced in bringing children back during the pandemic.
The abrupt announcement was a blow to the mayor’s effort to make New York one of the few major cities in the nation to hold in-person classes. And it threatened to deepen concerns and confusion over whether the mayor and his administration had mishandled the reopening by announcing deadlines and then pushing them back.
Instead of a triumphant return to schools for all students who wanted in-person learning beginning on Monday, the city will phase students back into classrooms on a rolling basis, starting with the youngest children, who will report to schools next week. Students in pre-K classes and students with advanced special needs will return on Monday.
On Sept. 29, elementary schools will open, and middle and high schools will open on Oct. 1.
All other students will begin the school year remotely on Monday, meaning New York now joins a long list of other big cities that will begin the school year online for most students.
During a Thursday news conference, Mr. de Blasio declined to apologize to city parents for the potentially major inconveniences caused by the 11th-hour shift. He asserted that the city’s parents, particularly working parents who live outside of Manhattan, are “a lot more pragmatic than you might imagine,” and “understand the realities of life.”
He said that the further delay would ensure that schools could open safely. “We are doing this to make sure that all the standards we’ve set can be achieved,” Mr. de Blasio said.
Parents, educators and elected officials almost immediately reacted to the news with outrage and confusion. Many principals and teachers only heard about the shift from the news, they said in emails shared with The New York Times, and many parents said on Twitter that the decision had eroded their trust in the public school system.
“The mayor of New York is the last person in the room to recognize facts on the ground and his stubbornness and inability to make sound decisions in a timely fashion cannot be overlooked during this pandemic,” said Mark Treyger, the chair of the City Council’s education committee.
The mayor said that he decided to delay the start of the school year and opt instead for a phased-in reopening after a three-hour conversation at City Hall on Wednesday with the leaders of the unions representing the city’s principals and teachers, along with senior mayoral aides.
Those union leaders have been explicitly warning for weeks that schools were not ready to reopen for myriad reasons, from poor ventilation in some aging buildings to a severe staffing crunch that the principals’ union estimated could leave the city needing as many as 10,000 educators. Some principals have said in recent days that they lacked dozens of teachers for their schools.
Mr. de Blasio said that the teacher shortage was his main reason for again delaying in-person classes. But he did not explain why he waited until just before the start of the school year to acknowledge the seriousness of the staffing issue, even though union leaders and his own aides have been raising alarms about it for weeks.
The problem highlights the profound logistical challenges inherent in hybrid education.
City students can only report to school buildings one to three days per week, to allow for social distancing, and were set to receive classes at home the rest of the time. But since the city and teachers’ union agreed that educators should not be required to teach both in-person and remotely, schools essentially needed to create two sets of teachers for two complementary versions of schools, one in-person and one online.
It was impossible for many schools to do so with their current rosters, even after Mr. de Blasio announced earlier this week that he was adding 2,000 educators to the city’s teaching pool. He said on Thursday that the city would come up with another 2,500 teachers soon.
Despite the teacher shortage, the administration has been threatening to impose layoffs across all city agencies, including the Department of Education, as a result of the enormous budget shortfalls created by the pandemic.
No large district in the country has yet attempted to reopen schools on a hybrid basis, and New York’s challenges may discourage other systems from trying a similar approach.
More than 1 million parents in New York City have been desperate for clarity on school reopening since June.
Over 40 percent of parents have already opted out of in-person classes, and that number is likely to grow, reflecting families’ deep frustration about the city’s reopening effort and skepticism about schools’ readiness.
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The city’s high-stakes reopening effort has been plagued by intense political opposition and serious logistical hurdles throughout the summer. Scores of educators have raised pressing safety concerns about ventilation and personal protective equipment, and have said for weeks they were not ready to reopen. Hundreds of city principals, many of whom have spent their careers avoiding political fights, for weeks publicly pleaded with the city to delay the start of in-person classes.
And teachers said the city’s early attempt to trace the relatively small number of teachers who tested positive for the virus — just about 60 people out of 17,000 — was botched, and that educators working in buildings with positive cases were not contacted by disease detectives for hours or days.
Regular coronavirus testing of students and staff was only scheduled to begin in October.
Asked what his message was to city parents — the vast majority of whom are low-income and Black or Latino — who are just learning about the delay, Mr. de Blasio responded, “I feel for any parent that has to make new arrangements,” he said, adding, “I know that people will do what they have to do.”
Mark Cannizzaro, president of the city’s principals’ union, summed up what parents, educators and 1.1 million students are likely feeling on Thursday morning, when he said, “We would rather not be here today, having this announcement.”
There is no guarantee that schools will physically reopen as planned. If the city’s average test positivity reaches 3 percent, schools will automatically shut down or will not reopen. The average positivity rate has hovered around 1 percent in the city for the last few weeks.
Jeffery C. Mays, Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting.
