Outrage As NYC Mayor Postpones School Opening At Last Minute… Again

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de Blasio

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has postponed school reopening for most students just days before they were set to return.

Both parents and teachers who already planned their lives around the reopenings are far from happy at the eleventh hour delay

In a press briefing on Thursday de Blasio announced that instead of returning to the classroom on Monday, elementary school students will come back on September 29. Middle and high school students won’t be returning until October 1 under the new schedule.

RT reports: It’s not the first time de Blasio has pushed school reopening dates forward. City students were initially supposed to return to the classroom on September 10, and the mayor repeatedly affirmed the date was set in stone in the preceding weeks, despite pushback from teachers, before postponing it at the last minute.

This time, he isn’t even pretending it’s a sure thing, telling reporters “We could always learn something new that might cause additional adjustment.” However, he attempted to shift the blame for the delay onto the teachers’ unions, which had been complaining that schools weren’t ready to reopen for weeks.

The mayor revealed an additional 4,500 staffers would be hired from the ranks of substitute teachers and other teacher’s union professionals — though that is far short of the 10,000 additional staff requested by the city’s schools.

Of New York’s 1.1 million school-age children, just 58 percent have opted to attend in person, with the rest taking classes online in what the city has referred to as a “blended” format. Even students attending in-person will only be in school a few days a week, as de Blasio has pledged that full-time in-person schooling will have to wait until a vaccine for the novel coronavirus is developed.

While few children have fallen ill with Covid-19 for reasons which aren’t fully understood, they are believed to be able to transmit the virus. Making matters even more confusing, online classes will begin as originally planned on Monday, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza clarified on Thursday — meaning students without internet access may start the school year several days behind their tech-enabled classmates.

The extra staffing and other Covid-19 school safety measures will cost the city an extra $32 million every week, according to the Independent Budget Office.

De Blasio has attempted to reassure parents their kids will be safe at school during the pandemic with a variety of safety measures, promising to shut down in-person classes if the citywide infection rate breaks 3 percent on a seven-day average. Teachers, who threatened to strike in August over what they claimed were lax, vague pandemic containment measures, are encouraged to get tested for Covid-19 on a monthly basis.

Parents who’d already had their schedules upended once were livid, calling for de Blasio’s firing — and worse.

One principal — who understandably wished to remain anonymous — called the mayor a “pathetic and incompetent bastard” and a “dictator,” calling for him to be “led away in handcuffs,” according to the Daily Mail.

Others took a more measured approach, noting that the citywide infection rate was both low and stable and the city’s education department had had months to figure out its policy. New York City schools switched to remote learning in March as the city locked down for the pandemic.

18 Comments

  1. OK, NYC… stop whining or GROW SOME FVCKING BALLS AND DRAG THIS CLOWN OUT, INTO THE STREET, AND ….. practice some BLM tactics on the demon.

    • Hahaha, yea growing balls is gonna get rid of COVID and make it safe for kids to be exposed to the virus and potentially endangering not only themselves but their family and friends. Grow some brain cells, and while you are at it, don’t comment on things. No one, I repeat, NO ONE asked for your immature and uneducated response.

  2. you see what fluoride and Bromate in flour has done to people’s brains? killed their critical thinking skills. easily controlled.

  3. Public schools need to be replaced with computer based distance learning and CBT and Learning Management Systems.

    Pay the kids for good test grades, and stop paying teachers and administrators who are just parasites wasting time in government make-work jobs.

    If a kid wants to read a textbook, put it in a public library.

    The goal is to educate and reward kids for good work, not build a Democrat-led educrat empire of regimentation and indoctrination.

    A modern system of computer distance learning is much closer to the real world than the crappy current system.

    Return control of public schools to local government, from where the federal government stole control.

    • How is it better that children cannot even socialize or be amongst their own peers? Now they’re stuck at home with 1000 NDAs and agreements they have sign, including, but not limited to their parents being unable to monitor their interactions with their teachers. They’ll never be around anyone their age because now there’s always going to be a boogeyman virus. And now, they can be modeled into totally retarded, braindead, Marxist robots better than ever before. Before college!

      Why also was schooling in-person always better? You can NEVER do NEARLY as much in person. You can’t insult, hurt, damage, or prey on someone with 10-25 other people in the same space unless all others agree or tag along and make themselves accessories. Sure, it’s garbage schooling, but brining it home WITHOUT parental input/consent is going to be a far, FAR bigger nightmare! And at least if you live in a decent town the schooling IS decent. It’s only rough cities and rural areas that the schools suck. Always been that way!

  4. In any other state, the governor decides when public schools open or close.

    Why is a suckass, demented mayor making school decisions in NYC?

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