New York City Mayor de Blasio has just announced this…
This has NOT come from the NY Governor, who has the final say…
*Update….
[NY Gov Cuomo] He also said the state would publish guidelines on school reopening by July 13, and that school districts would need to submit their plans by July 31.
The state will decide between Aug. 1 and 7 whether schools can reopen for the fall semester in any form, he said Wednesday at a media briefing….Link
It is NOT gonna make President Trump happy….
But New York City (The largest school system in the country) classroom sizes have more than 25 children in a room during normal school days…
On-Line learning has proved to be no substitute for in classroom teaching…
It’s early July…
We’ll see how this goes forward…
It will a impact on the cities economy …
But the virus seems to be halting educational learning for America’s children students for a year (or More) of their lives…
About four months after 1.1 million New York City children were forced into online learning, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Wednesday that public schools would still not fully reopen in September, saying that classroom attendance would instead be limited to only one to three days a week in an effort to continue to curb the coronavirus outbreak.
The mayor’s release of his plan for the system, by far the nation’s largest, capped weeks of intense debate among elected officials, educators and public health experts over how to bring children back safely to 1,800 public schools.
The decision to opt for only a partial reopening, which is most likely the only way to accommodate students in school buildings while maintaining social distancing, may hinder hundreds of thousands of parents from returning to their pre-pandemic work lives, undermining the recovery of the sputtering local economy.
Still, the staggered schedules in New York City schools for September reflect a growing trend among school systems, universities and colleges around the country, which are all trying to find ways of balancing the urgent need to bring students back to classrooms and campuses while also reducing density to prevent the spread of the virus.
Under the mayor’s plan, there will probably be no more than a dozen people in a classroom at a time, including teachers and aides, a stark change from typical class size in New York City schools, which can hover around 30 children.
Educators widely consider online learning to be a poor substitute for the classroom, especially for younger children and those with special needs. The shift has also created enormous challenges for parents who have struggled helping their children learn even as they have had to maintain jobs from home or, if they are essential workers, had to scramble for child care.
Still, like New York City’s, many school districts around the country are planning on not reopening fully, and instead will use a mix of in-person and remote learning indefinitely….
The flip side might be that a student can participate and learn far better in a class of 1o to 12 than in one of 30 or 40 (my school years had both).
Conceivably (although it creates far more work for the teacher, or else requires recruiting or rehiring thousands of extra teachers), the benefit of smaller classes might counteract the losses from fewer in-person classes.
Yes ….
Smaller classes provide a better learning environment …
But?
Dividing the class in half means less classroom time…
Zoom on line learning has been a failure most agree…
Eliza Shapiro
@elizashapiro
As of today, 37 percent of NYC families have opted out of in-person classes, up just 3 percent compared to last week. That’s a smaller % than many predicted, 10 days out from the start of school.