The NYC Mayor Is Ready for School to Open. The School Buildings Are Not.

Limited space, broken air-conditioning, windows that don’t work; nothing will be easy about reopening school this fall.

Like all New York stories, the drama around the reopening of schools in the city is, in the end, a real estate story. It has the familiar whiplash plot — one that begins with hope and anticipation, is driven by obsession and uncertainty and then leaves you unraveled and scrambling for second- and third-rate solutions.

Perhaps this was as inevitable as it is tragic — the educational fate of more than one million children left to square footage and HVAC quality. So many of the vital decisions New Yorkers make — about when to move in with someone, about whether to have two children or three, about staying in Brooklyn or moving to Maplewood or Oregon — depend ultimately on a built environment both stingy and unforgiving.

Last week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that schools in the state could reopen, bringing relief to many parents who feared the devastating alternative. But it was soon clear — if it hadn’t been already — that while New York City had done an Olympian job of driving down viral rates to a point where medical experts considered it safe enough for teachers and students to return to classrooms, the extent to which buildings themselves were equipped to ensure that safety remained dubious. Air flow and ventilation were problematic, especially within the system’s many old buildings...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/nyregion/school-reopening-nyc.html