New York City schools will start opening for classes next week and within the next few weeks, there will be "over a half a million kids in classrooms," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday, one day after announcing the schools were once again delaying plans to resume in-person classes.
"On Monday, we're going to start with our early childhood education kids, our special education kids," said the mayor on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "Next week there's going to be almost 90,000 kids in New York City classrooms, the following week hundreds of thousands more. We’re going to be over half a million kids in classrooms in the next few weeks."
Classes will now start on Sept. 29 for elementary school students and on Oct. 1 for middle-and high-school students.
But when asked if he could guarantee all kids who want to be in school will be there by Oct. 1, de Blasio said he needs the healthcare situation to cooperate, but based on all he is seeing, he feels "confident" about that date.
He also said he won't bail out and return to all-remote schooling.
"If it was headed there, then why are 90,000 kids going to be in classrooms next week?" he said. "Come on."
The mayor has cited safety concerns and ventilation in some of the city's older school buildings, as well as a teacher shortage, and denied a question about if all the issues just dawned on him.
"All summer long we’ve been preparing," he said. "Ventilation is an example where so much work was done over the summer to improve the ventilation of classrooms. We set literally a global gold standard for what it would take to bring back schools."
When schools reopen, all adults and students must wear a mask at all times, and social distancing will be enforced, said the mayor.
There is also an "amazing pool of talent" that wants to teach the children, including thousands of teachers who already work for the system, said de Blasio, insisting the dates that are now laid out will hold strong.
"I was a public school parent," he said. "I remember when there was a snow day or any other disruption. It’s very tough for parents to make new plans, so I feel a lot of empathy."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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