New York City Confronts Covid Spike as Students Return to Classes

New York City Mayor Eric Adams tried to reassure parents of the 1 million public school students that it was safe to return to classes on Monday after the winter break despite a surge in Covid cases, staffing shortages and no testing requirement to come back.

“The message has been clear, our schools will be open,” Adams said in a Monday interview with MSNBC. “Schools are the safest place for our children.”

Some school districts in New Jersey and around the country have gone remote for the first few weeks of January, while others in places like Washington, D.C., have mandated proof of a negative test to return to school. New York City has done neither.

The city’s seven-day Covid positivity rate surpassed 32% on Dec. 30 and reached nearly 45% in some areas of the Bronx, according to city data. The seven-day average of hospitalizations has more than tripled since mid-December to 447 on Dec. 30.

Parents, teachers and union officials have pushed back against the mayor’s decision to reopen schools without testing or remote options.

“We advised the new mayor that it would be safest to allow our school system to go remote temporarily until we could get a handle on the staffing challenges that each school is about to face as we return. However, he feels strongly that schools need to remain open,” Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said in a letter to teacher union members on Sunday.

Adams said on Monday that he’s been speaking to Mulgrew multiple times a day over the past week about contingency plans for what happens to schools if significant numbers of teachers test positive and schools lack enough staff to remain open.

“I am confident that we’re going to find the manpower” to keep schools open, Adams said, in an interview on Pix11. Adams said there are enough substitute teachers available to fill classrooms if teachers are out sick.

Over the past week, the mayor said the city and state distributed more than 1.5 million test kits to the U.S.’s largest school system. If a student tests positive for Covid-19, city schools have enough test kits to send one home with the other exposed children in the classroom, Adams said. Regardless of exposure, kids who test negative will be able to go back to class. All school staff will get two at-home rapid tests each week in January.

Although Adams has mayoral control of city schools, he said he doesn’t have authority to mandate tests in a press conference on Sunday. He said he supports mandatory testing, though the authority to require tests rested with New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who is encouraging testing in schools, but not requiring it.

(c) 2022, Bloomberg · Laura Nahmias

{Matzav.com}